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calam
2018-01-31, 08:08 PM
Inspired by my previous thread and a conversation I had I was wondering what pet peves you guys have when it comes to the mechanics or setting of tabletop games.

One of my pet peeves is how systems sometimes assumes certain styles of play without telling you like how in certain editions of D&D the to-hit and ac of monsters accelerates past you unless you focus on the right magical items. This annoys me because the first campaign tends to end in frustration because the monster was hitting the fighter on a three because you focused on giving interesting magic items to them so the fighter still had 21 ac.

Another is when systems are based on your party being part of an organization with few or no rules on how that organization works. For example in Dark Heresy you are part of what's essentially the FBI with a private army but outside of it being the source of your adventures the game gives very little info on how to work in this system so the GM has to figure out how to determine things that should already be covered like requesting equipment temporarily or getting in touch with other assets. This means as a person who likes mechanics for things like that over figuring it out on the spot ends up writing a significant amount of rules to make up for it.

LordCdrMilitant
2018-01-31, 11:48 PM
You're really supposed to ask nicely, and already be familiar with the Imperial Inquisition's operating procedures. Also, requisitioning anything big, like the support of a regiment of the Imperial Guard, isn't the purview of the acolytes, it's the prerogative of the Inquisitor. The players should inform her if they need heavy support from the Guard, Sisters, AdMech, or Space Marines, and she should arrange to have that support if it's available and within her power at the GM's discretion. The basic mechanic for it is a requisitions test, possibly preceded by a variety of other opposed tests, Commerce being the book-recommended one, but Intimidate, Charm, and Command are also definitely skills to consider. Getting in touch with other Imperial troops is definitely subject to the plot, because there may not be a significant Imperial Guard or Adepta Sororitas presence on the planet you're at. It's also never really assumed the Inquisition will give anything they take back, because they don't. It's logistically easier for the Departmento Munitorium to give you the meltagun permanently than it is for them to loan it to you, such is the massive bureaucracy of the Imperium of Man.


Anyway, the thing I like least are HP. I just find them kind of wonky, and a hold over from tactical wargaming where a unit represented a platoon or company of men, a scenario in which HP would represent a combination of remaining personnel and unit cohesion. I like wargaming, but I do feel that HP is just a kind of weird mechanic that does weird things to the way people fight and damage is resolved in an RPG when you're playing a single character.

Arbane
2018-02-01, 12:05 AM
Any system where as the characters grow in power, the spellcasters become Supreme Masters of the Overcosmos, while the martial types become Guy With A Sword Who Hits a Little Harder. Unless everyone's supposed to play the spellcasters, like in Ars Magica.

Any random character generation system that can leave one player with Captain America and another with Aunt May. (IIRC, REIGN gets this right - their random character generation gives everyone the same number of points, just allocates them for you - complete with backstory.)

Most of the rest of D&D, really. a b0rked economy, levels, gear-dependency, a bazillion stereotyped races, a bazllion sterotyped classes, inflating hitpoints, x-uses-per-day powers, AC...

Any game that lets people expend XP to use them as Luck Points. It's like a very slow death spiral for the unlucky or luck-pushing.

A lot of rolls to resolve one sword swipe. Initiative roll, Attack roll, Defense roll, Damage Roll, Soak Roll....(Even more annoying in Exalted 2nd ed, with its carefully stratified 'use THIS Charm at THIS step' system, and characters who can make flurries of attacks.)

Katrina
2018-02-01, 12:39 AM
My biggest pet peeve is poorly written abilities that made it through editing and never get an official errata, leading to table variance that isn't needed.

Example: Pathfinder's Witch has the Flight Hex, which gives the witch several abilities. The first is a constant skill bonus, the second two are the ability to "cast" two spells. The third is the ability to fly for a few minutes per day. It is listed as Supernatural, which means it falls under a vaguely defined niche and has sparked endless debate on how each works, what actions they require and everything. No official answer years after the class came out.

I also hate trap options. If you feel you have to rip the power out of something to the point it is not viable, just don't make it an option. Don't put it out there to kill new players.

Caster martial disparity has simply become part of certain games, and I don't mind a little complexity of it makes for a good simulation. One of my favorite combat systems is Anima: Beyond Fantasy. It requires two rolls and proportional mathematics to resolve even the simplest attack.

BlizzardSucks80
2018-02-01, 01:01 AM
There are so many things wrong with D&D 3.X and Pathfinder. I'll still play it if my friends want to, but I prefer to stay away from it if I can. A curse on those games. Ugh :smallsigh:

Ignimortis
2018-02-01, 01:30 AM
Any subsystem that makes you lose permanent resources (like EXP) for any kind of non-permanent resources, be it rerolls, or stats that can be reduced permanently after you've bought them up.

Any subsystem that discourages active action.

Any subsystem that penalizes you for having a bad stat, but doesn't really do anything if you have a high stat. Bonus points if that stat is integral for every character in the game.

Guizonde
2018-02-01, 01:33 AM
There are so many things wrong with D&D 3.X and Pathfinder. I'll still play it if my friends want to, but I prefer to stay away from it if I can. A curse on those games. Ugh :smallsigh:

you won't be popular around here with opinions like that :smallbiggrin: (even if it's true).

biggest tabletop pet peeve for me? overly complicated systems. i get it. collecting dice is fun, but do i really need to use 5 different dice for one attack resolution? plus bonuses? give me straight up d100's, please. this goes for both dnd and cthulutech, and cthulutech goes the extra mile for being based on d100 skills on top of d20-like mechanics. kudos, i can't think of a less user-friendly system that i've played.

Xuc Xac
2018-02-01, 01:44 AM
I hate when the fluff description of a rule only applies if you optimized the way the writers expected you to.

For example: The tank warrior is a matter of melee combat and can dish out and take huge amounts of damage! (Unless you didn't roll an 18 for Muscles and you rolled below average for your Meat Points.) The sage is a master of magic and knowledge and knows a lot about everything (unless you didn't put a 20 in Brains, because the Sage class only gets 1 skill point because it's assumed you'll have that high Brains score for the bonus skill points).

They say things like "fighters are strong" but what they mean is "fighters suck unless they're strong, so you shouldn't play one unless you have high strength". The class descriptions are actually prescriptions, but they don't tell you that.

NichG
2018-02-01, 02:06 AM
I have a lot of problems with the way many games use dice. For example, things like 'roll to see if you can do X' where failing just means 'try again until you succeed'. Similarly, rolling for things where leaving them in question is simply not interesting, such as some success accumulation systems where you roll until you collect a sufficient number in order to determine how long something takes (when often how long it takes isn't so relevant that the variation in the outcome will make a difference).

Worse is when system designers don't really get how successive rolls interact with probability, because in that case you can have potentially interesting things which just become impossible to rely on in any real way, meaning that it tends to decrease the tactical and strategic diversity of the game. For example, take something like a stealthy infiltration in systems where you might have to reroll your check (or where it's not made clear when checks should be rerolled). So now, if I have a 20% failure chance on one check, after 2 checks my failure chance nearly doubles (36%), and after 5 it's up to a 70% failure chance. On the other hand, a success in such a system doesn't tend to earn more than 'keep going until the next check', so eventually even minute failure chances build up. So its much more stable to design along the lines of e.g. 'when infiltrating a given location with a shared alarm, only roll stealth once'. Similarly something like grapple rules in D&D 3.5 which has multiple successive checks to navigate the endeavor, or stunting rules in some systems where choosing to stunt adds extra gatekeeper rolls rather than replacing rolls, have this kind of problem.

Khedrac
2018-02-01, 03:42 AM
I see no problem with someone saying that they don't like 3.5/PF so long as they stay out of the relevant sub-forum - a lot of people don't like those systems, or facets of them at least. Also saying "don't like" is not saying "intrinsically bad" which is what really annoys people - one is personal opinion which we are welcome to, the other is a red rag to a bull.

Anyway my pet peeves:

Systems where being good at a skill makes it possible for you to fail more spectacularly than someone untrained (old WoD I'm looking at you).
Skill systems that seem to define more what a character cannot do than what they can (yes this could be D20, but I am looking at the BECMI Gazatteers which were much much worse).
Systems where the resourse allocation system for character creation looks to flow seamlessly into the experience system - then the experience system doesn't use the same resource system (and worse, if it depends on the DM's imagination - Squadron UK).
Combat-based systems where starting characters are incredibly fragile and liable to die to a lucky roll from an opponent only there to illustrate how combat works (RoleMaster/MERP).

Grod_The_Giant
2018-02-01, 07:43 AM
Games with such a skewed skill:skill point ratio that characters can't even be good at one role.

Excessively random character creation for anything other than a one-shot.

Max_Killjoy
2018-02-01, 07:45 AM
Character classes, or any attempt to enshrine archetypes or certain favored concepts into the mechanics.

Level-based progression, particularly of the D&D "zero to worldbreaker" variety.

Hyperscaling Hit Points that end up turning the exact same sword wound that was highly lethal early into the game into a minor inconvenience or trivial scratch after some progression.

Any attempt to defend HHP by trying to claim that it's a muddle of overlapping mash of situational concepts that are also addressed elsewhere in the mechanics.

Random character creation of any kind, particularly mandatory random backstory.

"Save or suck", "save or die", and "no defense for you" powers, abilities, or mechanics of any kind.

Attempts to emulate genre, particularly when poorly done or inherently self-contradictory.

Rules that can't handle the mundane because their creators were to concerned with "what the game is about".

Rules that break down the instant someone stops treating them like blown glass art.

"Pay to suck" skill systems, wherein it requires a major investment just to be bad at something, and then you still have to go up from there.

Systems that lock basic combat maneuvers that anyone trained in a weapon should be able to use, behind big additional investments or reserve them for one class as a way to make that class "unique".

Systems that lock basic life skills or basic adventuring skills behind big investments or as part of reserved niche protection... "only thieves can be sneaky".

Max_Killjoy
2018-02-01, 07:51 AM
Systems where being good at a skill makes it possible for you to fail more spectacularly than someone untrained (old WoD I'm looking at you).


As an aside, that got addressed, but for some reason a lot of groups seem to completely miss the fix for years afterwards through multiple editions.

(The fix being that even a single success was enough to prevent a botch, regardless of the number of 1s rolled, IIRC.)


So there's a pet-peeve... adjustments and corrections in a new edition that aren't sufficiently explained or pointed out, resulting in many groups continuing to use the broken rules that those corrections were meant to fix.

2D8HP
2018-02-01, 09:03 AM
A lengthy character creation process without a shorter alternative.

Yes I totally get wanting the "mini-game" of making a special custom snowflake PC, but sometimes you just want to get to "What do you do?" faster.


Multiple skills/powers/abilities that do the same thing.

This happens a lot with "Social skills", Call of Cthullu haa "Charm", "Fast Talk", "Oratory", and "Persuade", 5e Dungeons & Dragons has "Deception", "Intimidation", and "Persuasion", yes I get that these are different "flavors" of convincing someone, but kinda redundant.

Guizonde
2018-02-01, 09:08 AM
As an aside, that got addressed, but for some reason a lot of groups seem to completely miss the fix for years afterwards through multiple editions.

(The fix being that even a single success was enough to prevent an botch, regardless of the number of 1s rolled, IIRC.)


So there's pet-peeve... adjustments and corrections in a new edition that aren't sufficiently explained or pointed out, resulting in many groups continuing to use the broken rules that those corrections were meant to fix.

i've noticed in my area that there's a clear lack of "faq-errata reflexes". a lot of people play dnd without checking if there are erratas, faq's, and fixes, and when one actually pulls out the relevant fix or errata, players and dm's alike call it a house-rule... just because they don't know that such a ressource exists. now, wouldn't an official fix be considered the base game and playing without it be a house-rule? and yet, when you tell people that such a service exists (wotc, paizo, white wolf, ffg...) they automatically think it's fan-made.

some explanations i dislike because of past house rules that streamlined the way it worked, but when the official makes it both clearer and working as intended, i can't see why anyone would play without it unless they simply didn't know about it.

Arbane
2018-02-01, 12:58 PM
Any system based on an existing fiction, where the sample story characters have levels of power/competence that can't possibly be met by player characters without about 10 years of playtime. (IIRC, the old Star Wars RPG was bad for this.)

Vitruviansquid
2018-02-01, 01:05 PM
I'm not a huge fan of rules in a system that don't respect playability.

Maybe it is the most balanced or the most realistic way to make you roll five times and check against five tables with modifiers for each result to determine if you've hit someone in a fight. That doesn't matter when the combat has become unplayably long.

martixy
2018-02-01, 01:21 PM
Not allowing you to easily break out of the stereotypical genre tropes.

Rhedyn
2018-02-01, 02:00 PM
DM picks what the player summons.

Elaborate intricate rules on what to roll for a skill where the DM still has to make up every DC (why waste my time)

HP on monsters.

DigoDragon
2018-02-01, 03:50 PM
I really get annoyed with systems that have poorly designed grappling rules. In every game I've run, no matter the system, someone is gonna want someone pinned down for reasons. So many systems out there have clunky grappling rules that feel like they were tacked on after the fact. Probably were in some cases.

Mordar
2018-02-01, 04:00 PM
Multiple skills/powers/abilities that do the same thing.

This happens a lot with "Social skills", Call of Cthulhu has "Charm", "Fast Talk", "Oratory", and "Persuade", 5e Dungeons & Dragons has "Deception", "Intimidation", and "Persuasion", yes I get that these are different "flavors" of convincing someone, but kinda redundant.


Everyone else stay out of this. 2D8HP is just utterly incorrect when it comes to the underlined section. Silly, silly ranger, you're just wrong. And here's why!

Call of C'thulhu is not only a skill-heavy system, it is a skill-based system. Heck, maybe I'd even call it a skill-only system, but there are a few attribute checks. On top of that, it is an information-gathering game. As such, the granularity of skills is an asset, not a flaw, and one that really allows different characters in this investigative game to shine. It really does help prevent the paradigm where everyone just waits for the one "social" character to make their uber-rolls and then the story continues. Sure, one character might be good at a couple of those...or maybe all four...but it'd be easy to see situations in which the dilettante can charm...but you need the crook to fast-talk past the security guard, the priest to use oratory to calm the mob with torches and pitchforks and the spy to persuade the shopkeeper to let her see the ledgers showing the orders from that Whately family.

And best of all? CoC actually empowers players to make their characters in such a fashion, more fully linking concept to mechanical/game abilities. Which brings me to one of my peeves:

Games which straddle level-base and skill-base and then fail to provide all/some character types with sufficient skill development opportunity to actually matter. That spawns the skill-monkey-while-everyone-else-twiddles-their-thumbs problem, even if a couple of other classes get a couple useful profession based skills (ala Arcana and Religion).

Not all such straddle games are bad, in my opinion...I love RoleMaster, for instance...but this was one of the parts of D&D 3.x that I disliked.

So the second part of 2D8HP's comment is correct. Probably. :smalltongue:

- M

CharonsHelper
2018-02-01, 04:38 PM
I really get annoyed with systems that have poorly designed grappling rules. In every game I've run, no matter the system, someone is gonna want someone pinned down for reasons. So many systems out there have clunky grappling rules that feel like they were tacked on after the fact. Probably were in some cases.

What about if a system simply lacks any grappling rules?

Especially in a modern game with guns etc. - it sort of feels out of place.

"You want ta' shoot me with them gunz!? Let's wrastle!"

DigoDragon
2018-02-01, 04:54 PM
What about if a system simply lacks any grappling rules?

Especially in a modern game with guns etc. - it sort of feels out of place.

Might be worse in that situation. :smallredface: As I said, grappling always comes up at some point in every game I've run. It's probably that my old group just worked that way, but even in a modern setting with guns there can be situations where a PC wants to grab someone; maybe to take a hostage, or wrestle away a weapon, or just to pin down a target so another PC can interrogate.

BlizzardSucks80
2018-02-01, 05:10 PM
I don't think D&D 3.X or Pathfinder are bad games. If you enjoy them, great. More power to you. In fact, D&D 3.5 holds a special place in my heart, for it was the game that I was first introduced to this hobby with, all those years ago. Both D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder have been inspirations to me.

However, whenever I play it with my group, stuff always seems to go wrong. It's probably my group and/or me that is at fault here, but these systems really don't help things when crap hits the fan, you know?

Guizonde
2018-02-01, 05:44 PM
I don't think D&D 3.X or Pathfinder are bad games. If you enjoy them, great. More power to you. In fact, D&D 3.5 holds a special place in my heart, for it was the game that I was first introduced to this hobby with, all those years ago. Both D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder have been inspirations to me.

However, whenever I play it with my group, stuff always seems to go wrong. It's probably my group and/or me that is at fault here, but these systems really don't help things when crap hits the fan, you know?

ain't nothing like losing 45 minutes of play-time to go dig out a rulebook at find out how works an obscure mechanic, only to find you misread another rule and have been using it wrong all session...

i prefer pf, myself, just because it streamlined some of the more abhorrent rules and mechanics of dnd. still prefer dnd fluff, though.

2D8HP
2018-02-01, 06:21 PM
Everyone else stay out of this. 2D8HP is just utterly incorrect when it comes to the underlined section. Silly, silly ranger, you're just wrong. And here's why!

Call of C'thulhu is...


Oh?

You want to rumble old man(or is it young man? I forget)?!!

Well BRING IT ON!!!

Your so wrongly wrong WRONG because. ...
.... yeah I got nothing, it's been too many years since I last played CoC.
Sorry.

I mean, MY STUNNING HUMILITY PREVENTS ME FROM COMMENTING FURTHER!!!

That's the ticket!

CharonsHelper
2018-02-01, 06:38 PM
Might be worse in that situation. :smallredface: As I said, grappling always comes up at some point in every game I've run. It's probably that my old group just worked that way, but even in a modern setting with guns there can be situations where a PC wants to grab someone; maybe to take a hostage, or wrestle away a weapon, or just to pin down a target so another PC can interrogate.

Curious - would it need to have grappling specific rules, or would more general ability checks work when they're designed to fill in the gaps that the crunchy parts don't cover?

Note: I may or may not be asking as I reconsider grappling rules for my own system. :smallwink:

DigoDragon
2018-02-01, 07:19 PM
Curious - would it need to have grappling specific rules, or would more general ability checks work when they're designed to fill in the gaps that the crunchy parts don't cover?

Note: I may or may not be asking as I reconsider grappling rules for my own system. :smallwink:

I think general ability checks could suffice. D&D 5e seems to have reduced grappling to a simple contest of opposing checks.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-02-01, 08:00 PM
I think general ability checks could suffice. D&D 5e seems to have reduced grappling to a simple contest of opposing checks.

That's correct, but one note about 5e grappling--all it does is reduce speed to 0 and allow the grappler to drag the grappled at 1/2 speed. Imposing restrained is harder and not entirely well supported (outside a particularly weak feat). You can, on subsequent attacks try to knock the grappled target prone, which imposes much the same difficulties (can't get up, disadvantage on attacks, others have advantage on attacks from melee range). Both of these are an opposed check:

Strength (+ Athletics proficiency if available) on the grappler's part vs MAX(Strength (Athletics), Dexterity (Acrobatics)) on the grappled's part.

NichG
2018-02-01, 08:32 PM
Everyone else stay out of this. 2D8HP is just utterly incorrect when it comes to the underlined section. Silly, silly ranger, you're just wrong. And here's why!

Call of C'thulhu is not only a skill-heavy system, it is a skill-based system. Heck, maybe I'd even call it a skill-only system, but there are a few attribute checks. On top of that, it is an information-gathering game. As such, the granularity of skills is an asset, not a flaw, and one that really allows different characters in this investigative game to shine. It really does help prevent the paradigm where everyone just waits for the one "social" character to make their uber-rolls and then the story continues. Sure, one character might be good at a couple of those...or maybe all four...but it'd be easy to see situations in which the dilettante can charm...but you need the crook to fast-talk past the security guard, the priest to use oratory to calm the mob with torches and pitchforks and the spy to persuade the shopkeeper to let her see the ledgers showing the orders from that Whately family.

And best of all? CoC actually empowers players to make their characters in such a fashion, more fully linking concept to mechanical/game abilities. Which brings me to one of my peeves:

Games which straddle level-base and skill-base and then fail to provide all/some character types with sufficient skill development opportunity to actually matter. That spawns the skill-monkey-while-everyone-else-twiddles-their-thumbs problem, even if a couple of other classes get a couple useful profession based skills (ala Arcana and Religion).

Not all such straddle games are bad, in my opinion...I love RoleMaster, for instance...but this was one of the parts of D&D 3.x that I disliked.

So the second part of 2D8HP's comment is correct. Probably. :smalltongue:

- M

Sadly, this reminds me of another pet peeve: 'go fish' gameplay (be it skills, attributes, etc). The kind of game where character creation is basically trying to guess which checks out of a big list are most likely to come up, and then during play those abilities pretty much have to wait for the GM to call for them to see any use. Spot, Listen, Climb, Balance, Swim, Disable Device, Search, Survival, and many Knowledge skills work this way in 3.5 for example. If you have Charm and go up to someone to engage them with it, and the GM says 'your intent is deception, so use Fast Talk instead' then that's a 'go fish' type of situation.

Skills should each promote at least one proactive thing that the character can reliably initiate, and where the results are fairly well defined. E.g. in the above case, if Charm can always be used to 'get someone to absolve the character of perceived wrongdoing or suspicion' then even if it's a 'fast talk kind of situation' on the face of it, the person with Charm can figure out ways to use their skill. So then choosing Charm over Fast Talk isn't divvying up the rolls between characters, but is rather making a stylistic choice about gameplay feel.

LordCdrMilitant
2018-02-01, 11:31 PM
Sadly, this reminds me of another pet peeve: 'go fish' gameplay (be it skills, attributes, etc). The kind of game where character creation is basically trying to guess which checks out of a big list are most likely to come up, and then during play those abilities pretty much have to wait for the GM to call for them to see any use. Spot, Listen, Climb, Balance, Swim, Disable Device, Search, Survival, and many Knowledge skills work this way in 3.5 for example. If you have Charm and go up to someone to engage them with it, and the GM says 'your intent is deception, so use Fast Talk instead' then that's a 'go fish' type of situation.

Skills should each promote at least one proactive thing that the character can reliably initiate, and where the results are fairly well defined. E.g. in the above case, if Charm can always be used to 'get someone to absolve the character of perceived wrongdoing or suspicion' then even if it's a 'fast talk kind of situation' on the face of it, the person with Charm can figure out ways to use their skill. So then choosing Charm over Fast Talk isn't divvying up the rolls between characters, but is rather making a stylistic choice about gameplay feel.

My 2c: if you have charm, and go up to a guard, and try to convince them that you're legitimately allowed into the area they're guarding because this is a surprise inspection, then that is without a doubt a deception test, and you can't roll charm, you're rolling deceive. However, if you're going to tell them that they're going to let you in or else your "boys" are going to murder their family, that's intimidate.

The way I see it is that you tell me what you're going to do/say, and I tell you what you're going to roll to see if it works.

NichG
2018-02-02, 02:42 AM
My 2c: if you have charm, and go up to a guard, and try to convince them that you're legitimately allowed into the area they're guarding because this is a surprise inspection, then that is without a doubt a deception test, and you can't roll charm, you're rolling deceive. However, if you're going to tell them that they're going to let you in or else your "boys" are going to murder their family, that's intimidate.

The way I see it is that you tell me what you're going to do/say, and I tell you what you're going to roll to see if it works.

This is what I'm referring to as 'go fish', because then rather than knowing concretely what a given skill investment empowers me to do, I'm being encouraged to do what makes sense in the situation but then I might end up being punished for that if its inconsistent with how I've distributed skills. So succeeding in that kind of game encourages a large component of metagaming - analyzing the DM to figure out what kinds of scenarios they like, how they'll tend to interpret ambiguous cases, etc.

So my preference is to systems where the player decides the skill that will be used rather than the DM, but where the effects that skill can achieve may be more precisely defined. In the guard example, if Charm can always proactively be used to allay suspicion or negative impressions in any context, the player with high Charm can know ahead of time that they could risk e.g. attempt to bribe or sneak past the guard and, should that go wrong, use Charm to escape the consequences.

LordCdrMilitant
2018-02-02, 10:33 AM
This is what I'm referring to as 'go fish', because then rather than knowing concretely what a given skill investment empowers me to do, I'm being encouraged to do what makes sense in the situation but then I might end up being punished for that if its inconsistent with how I've distributed skills. So succeeding in that kind of game encourages a large component of metagaming - analyzing the DM to figure out what kinds of scenarios they like, how they'll tend to interpret ambiguous cases, etc.

So my preference is to systems where the player decides the skill that will be used rather than the DM, but where the effects that skill can achieve may be more precisely defined. In the guard example, if Charm can always proactively be used to allay suspicion or negative impressions in any context, the player with high Charm can know ahead of time that they could risk e.g. attempt to bribe or sneak past the guard and, should that go wrong, use Charm to escape the consequences.

Charm can't and shouldn't get you out of all problems. I would rather not encourage players to dump every stat rank in one skill to solve all problems, and rather the majority of their skills be basically trained to be used optimally as the situation requires.

One of my peeves from players is when they say "I roll to charm the guard." If they say that, then they fail and the guard sounds the alarm. If my players say "I walk up to the guard and try to bribe him to let me past," then I'll tell them to roll charm [probably after asking them how much they're offering as a bribe].

And charm might not be useful in the situation, because the guards would report each other for such deficiencies in loyalty and the offender would be executed, and it's up the to PC's the analyse the situation and determine that perhaps charm is not effective compared to deceive or intimidate. As GM, I am not obligated to make every encounter vulnerable to one skill so you can put all your ranks in it and ignore the rest of the skill list, and I'd rather you be passably proficient in a great many than very, very good at one.

NichG
2018-02-02, 10:52 AM
Charm can't and shouldn't get you out of all problems. I would rather not encourage players to dump every stat rank in one skill to solve all problems, and rather the majority of their skills be basically trained to be used optimally as the situation requires.

One of my peeves from players is when they say "I roll to charm the guard." If they say that, then they fail and the guard sounds the alarm. If my players say "I walk up to the guard and try to bribe him to let me past," then I'll tell them to roll charm [probably after asking them how much they're offering as a bribe].

And charm might not be useful in the situation, because the guards would report each other for such deficiencies in loyalty and the offender would be executed, and it's up the to PC's the analyse the situation and determine that perhaps charm is not effective compared to deceive or intimidate. As GM, I am not obligated to make every encounter vulnerable to one skill so you can put all your ranks in it and ignore the rest of the skill list, and I'd rather you be passably proficient in a great many than very, very good at one.

Contrast this with, for example, 'I stab the guard with a sword'. Whether or not in the grand strategic sense stabbing the guard with a sword will resolve the scenario, it has a small set of well-defined outcomes which can be reliably brought about: the guard may be okay, injured, or dead. Repeated stabbings are likely to move down that chart. Now, that may not prevent an alarm from going out, it may not unlock the barred door that the guard is stationed in front of, etc, but the things that stabbing lets you do are basically really straightforward and clearly laid out.

If stabbing doesn't resolve the scenario, its because the logic of the scenario is such that achieve the state transition that stabbing promises (enemy: alive -> dead) doesn't actually resolve the tension, rather than that the GM decided 'stabbing isn't the right skill to resolve this scenario, so please roll bludgeoning instead.'

I'd rather skills be designed like that, where there's a concrete thing that the skill absolutely, clearly does, and which at any time the player can choose to use it for without it being asked for by the GM. Then, it's the players job to figure out how to use those abilities to navigate the scenario, rather than the game being designed such that the GM tells them 'this is how the scenario is to be navigated, did you invest points in the correct skills to pass the various checkpoints?'.

weckar
2018-02-02, 11:04 AM
I need to say I disagree NichG; or at the very least I must say I have never been in a game that ran that way.
If you wanted to use Charm instead of, say, Fast Talk - you change your approach. Your goal isn't to make them believe a false claim, but to distract/extract information/buy your buddies time. This could resolve the situation just as easily.
If you want to lie, but are a terrible liar, it doesn't matter how damn charming you are. At the same time, when playing the positive long-con angle Fast Talk isn't going to cut it by itself.

GungHo
2018-02-02, 11:10 AM
Those GM sections that talk down to me and tell me how to "do it right".

CharonsHelper
2018-02-02, 11:19 AM
This is what I'm referring to as 'go fish', because then rather than knowing concretely what a given skill investment empowers me to do, I'm being encouraged to do what makes sense in the situation but then I might end up being punished for that if its inconsistent with how I've distributed skills. So succeeding in that kind of game encourages a large component of metagaming - analyzing the DM to figure out what kinds of scenarios they like, how they'll tend to interpret ambiguous cases, etc.

So my preference is to systems where the player decides the skill that will be used rather than the DM, but where the effects that skill can achieve may be more precisely defined. In the guard example, if Charm can always proactively be used to allay suspicion or negative impressions in any context, the player with high Charm can know ahead of time that they could risk e.g. attempt to bribe or sneak past the guard and, should that go wrong, use Charm to escape the consequences.

I'm not a fan of being able to argue that any skill is useful for such things - but I do agree that the system itself should make the skills distinct enough that it's not an issue.

I actually think that 3.x did a decent job with Diplomacy/Bluff/Intimidate (though the execution of each had issues - I'm just talking about separation of them) - but I've seen systems which have a lot of overlap/subjectivity on the social skills which I do agree get annoying.

Lord Torath
2018-02-02, 11:46 AM
Here's how I see the breakdown in social skills.

Charm: Convince someone to break a rule for you because you're just so darn cute (sexy, harmless, flirty, or whatever)! You're not trying to get them to think you're allowed in, but you're trying to convince them to let you through, even though they know you're not on the list.

Fast Talk: Confuse the target into believing it's possible you have permission. At the end of a successful Fast Talk, the victim might never be able to decide whether you have permission or not, but they've decided to "err on the side of caution" by letting you through.

Bluff: Lie/exaggerate/twist the truth to convince your target that you have permission. (I left the invitation in my other pants. But look, there's Captain Tightpants! He knows me! (waves to Capt. Tightpants, who politely waves back to the obviously wealthy and well-dressed PC)

Intimidate: Threaten someone into breaking a rule for you. Again, they know you're not on the list, but they're more afraid of you than whoever gave them the list. (YOU DO NOT SEE OR HEAR THRUG!)

Does this count as "Go Fish"-ing? I don't know. I don't play 3.X/P. I've probably missed a social skill or two as well. Note that all of these approaches can accomplish the same thing, just using different methods. Intimidate strikes me as the shortest-term solution - as soon as the victim feels safe, they'll turn on you (though what they will require to feel safe depends on the nature of your threat). Bluff probably lasts for the longest time (good until their supervisor talks to them about what they did), while Fast Talk and Charm are probably somewhere in the middle.

Then you get the question: Can you use any of these skills to convince someone to believe something that's true?

Mordar
2018-02-02, 11:57 AM
I need to say I disagree NichG; or at the very least I must say I have never been in a game that ran that way.
If you wanted to use Charm instead of, say, Fast Talk - you change your approach. Your goal isn't to make them believe a false claim, but to distract/extract information/buy your buddies time. This could resolve the situation just as easily.
If you want to lie, but are a terrible liar, it doesn't matter how damn charming you are. At the same time, when playing the positive long-con angle Fast Talk isn't going to cut it by itself.

Totally agree here - I think I get NichG's point (that if there are 150 skills, how am I to know what will be useful and what will be underwater-basket-weaving equivalents?), but I think that's an issue that is well covered by a Session Zero kind of thing where the players and GM discuss the game to be played. Sure, some default and overlap is okay, but it needs to speak to the stylistic approach of the characters, and handle the truth that the skills are not the same thing. In a mixed game (say D&D), building a social character in what turns out to be a meat grinder game is pretty sucky, but that isn't necessarily a system issue.

In the situation laid out previously...the Charmer might not be able to convince the guard that he or she belongs in the secured area, but could probably engage and distract the guard so that others on the team could get into the secured area and either complete the required task or find a way to get the Charmer in later. Similarly, the Fast Talker might be able to convince the wealthy widow to allow him or her access to the mansion or the Rolls once, but the Charmer would be more able to "arrange" things so they had regular access to the house and the car. Just like you know that a sword attack isn't going to do much against a tank, you know the "skin" of the persuasion/deceive/socialize skills and can make reasonable assumptions about how they will work.

ASIDE: I think overly-broad defaulting of skills leads to a second pet peeve of mine - skill systems that allow the generalist to be better than the specialist because of an attribute-default system. Things were you roll a pool of dice (say Skill + Attribute) and keep a subset (say Attribute). Far better to have an Intelligence of 5 and a skill of 1 (Roll 6 keep 5) than an Intelligence of 3 and skill of 4 (roll 7 keep 3) for instance. The highly developed skill should greatly outweigh the naturally apt but untrained. Not to open another can of worms, but boy that exposes the munchkin-factor quickly!

- M

Grod_The_Giant
2018-02-02, 12:04 PM
While a certain level of granularity is good, my general experience has been that the more a system breaks down skills (ie, "Body" to "Athletics" to "Climb" to "Bouldering" to "Bare-Handed Bouldering"), the less competent characters feel. Particularly if you've got a pure skill-based game where there's no general ability score boosting multiple related checks, you wind up having a lot of trouble filling out a role. 3.5 has this problem to an extent; I remember a version of Traveller that I briefly played that was even worse.

NichG
2018-02-02, 12:21 PM
I need to say I disagree NichG; or at the very least I must say I have never been in a game that ran that way.
If you wanted to use Charm instead of, say, Fast Talk - you change your approach. Your goal isn't to make them believe a false claim, but to distract/extract information/buy your buddies time. This could resolve the situation just as easily.
If you want to lie, but are a terrible liar, it doesn't matter how damn charming you are. At the same time, when playing the positive long-con angle Fast Talk isn't going to cut it by itself.


I'm not a fan of being able to argue that any skill is useful for such things - but I do agree that the system itself should make the skills distinct enough that it's not an issue.

I actually think that 3.x did a decent job with Diplomacy/Bluff/Intimidate (though the execution of each had issues - I'm just talking about separation of them) - but I've seen systems which have a lot of overlap/subjectivity on the social skills which I do agree get annoying.

The direction I'd go is to move away from the sort of 'do stuff, then sometimes the GM asks you to roll a thing to proceed' methodology. So you can take a diverse set of social skills - lets say 'Charm, Fast Talk, Diplomacy, Deception, Intimidation, Persuade, Etiquette' in order to have a really ridiculous amount of overlap, then give each of them proactive abilities as follows (I'm just going to assume 'having the skill' means you get to do this thing for simplicity, but it could be skill rank dependent, have a roll, whatever).


Charm: You may invoke Charm in order to avoid being blamed or suspected of something. Mechanically, this allows you to undo a social or procedural faux paux, but you do not get the results of the action you undo. For example, a character is detected in an off-limits area and uses Charm to avoid arrest (but must leave the area); a character attempts a bribe but is rebuffed and the guard tries to escalate, but the character uses Charm to brush it off; a party member is being hunted by the police, who are searching door to door, and the owner of the house they are hiding in uses Charm to be above suspicion and therefore not be searched.

Fast Talk: You may invoke Fast Talk to change the topic of conversation or suppress or alter a conversational goal to something else that is still of interest to the participants but may be secondary. For example, during an interrogation the interrogator is trying to get a particular piece of information, but the subject uses Fast Talk to instead provide information about a third party (which the interrogator is still interested in) and thereby causes the initial question to be forgotten; a character is participating in a debate about ownership of a tavern, and uses Fast Talk to change the topic to accusations that the proper owner embezzeled funds from the city council.

Diplomacy: You may invoke Diplomacy in order to introduce terms or sanctions surrounding a discussion or agreement, such that violation of the agreement triggers those sanctions. These sanctions can be social (in that other parties who participate in the agreement will act to enforce them), legal (in that property or standing is lost should the agreement be violated), or even psychological if appropriate leverage exists (where the violator suffers a long-duration mechanical debuff for acting against the agreement).

Deception: You may invoke Deception to create the impression of complete sincerity (in the sense of pulling off a guise, or saying something that could be true but happens not to be), or given a day's worth of effort to create a rumor which will be spread throughout the community as if true (must be done in an appropriate population center). For example, a character wishes to ruin someone's marriage and invokes Deception to create a rumor that they are sleeping around. Additionally, as a harder check, Deception can be used to act as if affected by one of the social attacks (or to act as if bound by a magical contract) while in reality avoiding the normal penalties - e.g. falsely following an Intimidation ultimatum, avoiding a Diplomacy sanction, giving false information in response to a Persuade attempt, etc.

Intimidation: You may invoke Intimidation to attempt to create an ultimatum for another character, such that they can only violate the ultimatum by escalating to violence or withdrawing from the scene (if physically capable). If the character still chooses to escalate to violence, they suffer a penalty on Initiative. A character unable to escalate or withdraw is compelled to obey the ultimatum if the Intimidation is successful. Once a character has been intimidated once by a given actor (successfully or unsuccessfully), it will not work again within the next 24 hours.

Persuade: You may invoke Persuade to evaluate how a target NPC would respond to a given pressure or offer, or to correctly determine their priorities among a set of pressures or offers. For example, you are trying to get the king to send an army to support your hometown against an orc invasion, and use Persuade to discover that the king is most concerned about one of his feudal lords staging a revolt while his forces are divided.

Etiquette: You may invoke Etiquette to force a target to meet with you or else lose social standing or otherwise have their own social interactions with others be thwarted in some way. For example, a character uses Etiquette to create the situation where if the Duke doesn't give them an hour of his time to hear a request, a merchant he is trying to make trade negotiations with will snub him in return. The character need not have a direct relationship with the merchant - rather they have set up a situation where if the Duke acts improperly, the merchant will get cold feet due to the social perception of their interaction.


The point is, each of these are to be used proactively. There's no need for the GM to ever say e.g. 'okay, now roll Etiquette to figure out if you have proper manners' with a system like this. Rather, someone who invests in Etiquette is buying the ability to make a social attack via the rules of society, whereas someone who invests in Fast Talk is buying the ability to shut down difficult conversations or otherwise deflect the direction of social action. Someone could Charm, Intimidate, Fast Talk, Persuade, Diplomace, or Etiquette the guard, and each of those things would have distinct and definite outcomes if successful (specifically: they get off scot free but don't get past, they escalate to a fight where they have a combat advantage, they alter the guard's priorities possibly distracting them enough for someone else to slip past, they figure out what the guard wants and needs and have to proceed from there, they trap the guard in an agreement perhaps for blackmail purposes later but not immediately getting them past, they force the guard to be polite but not necessarily let them past).

PhoenixPhyre
2018-02-02, 01:57 PM
The direction I'd go is to move away from the sort of 'do stuff, then sometimes the GM asks you to roll a thing to proceed' methodology. So you can take a diverse set of social skills - lets say 'Charm, Fast Talk, Diplomacy, Deception, Intimidation, Persuade, Etiquette' in order to have a really ridiculous amount of overlap, then give each of them proactive abilities as follows (I'm just going to assume 'having the skill' means you get to do this thing for simplicity, but it could be skill rank dependent, have a roll, whatever).


Charm: You may invoke Charm in order to avoid being blamed or suspected of something. Mechanically, this allows you to undo a social or procedural faux paux, but you do not get the results of the action you undo. For example, a character is detected in an off-limits area and uses Charm to avoid arrest (but must leave the area); a character attempts a bribe but is rebuffed and the guard tries to escalate, but the character uses Charm to brush it off; a party member is being hunted by the police, who are searching door to door, and the owner of the house they are hiding in uses Charm to be above suspicion and therefore not be searched.

Fast Talk: You may invoke Fast Talk to change the topic of conversation or suppress or alter a conversational goal to something else that is still of interest to the participants but may be secondary. For example, during an interrogation the interrogator is trying to get a particular piece of information, but the subject uses Fast Talk to instead provide information about a third party (which the interrogator is still interested in) and thereby causes the initial question to be forgotten; a character is participating in a debate about ownership of a tavern, and uses Fast Talk to change the topic to accusations that the proper owner embezzeled funds from the city council.

Diplomacy: You may invoke Diplomacy in order to introduce terms or sanctions surrounding a discussion or agreement, such that violation of the agreement triggers those sanctions. These sanctions can be social (in that other parties who participate in the agreement will act to enforce them), legal (in that property or standing is lost should the agreement be violated), or even psychological if appropriate leverage exists (where the violator suffers a long-duration mechanical debuff for acting against the agreement).

Deception: You may invoke Deception to create the impression of complete sincerity (in the sense of pulling off a guise, or saying something that could be true but happens not to be), or given a day's worth of effort to create a rumor which will be spread throughout the community as if true (must be done in an appropriate population center). For example, a character wishes to ruin someone's marriage and invokes Deception to create a rumor that they are sleeping around. Additionally, as a harder check, Deception can be used to act as if affected by one of the social attacks (or to act as if bound by a magical contract) while in reality avoiding the normal penalties - e.g. falsely following an Intimidation ultimatum, avoiding a Diplomacy sanction, giving false information in response to a Persuade attempt, etc.

Intimidation: You may invoke Intimidation to attempt to create an ultimatum for another character, such that they can only violate the ultimatum by escalating to violence or withdrawing from the scene (if physically capable). If the character still chooses to escalate to violence, they suffer a penalty on Initiative. A character unable to escalate or withdraw is compelled to obey the ultimatum if the Intimidation is successful. Once a character has been intimidated once by a given actor (successfully or unsuccessfully), it will not work again within the next 24 hours.

Persuade: You may invoke Persuade to evaluate how a target NPC would respond to a given pressure or offer, or to correctly determine their priorities among a set of pressures or offers. For example, you are trying to get the king to send an army to support your hometown against an orc invasion, and use Persuade to discover that the king is most concerned about one of his feudal lords staging a revolt while his forces are divided.

Etiquette: You may invoke Etiquette to force a target to meet with you or else lose social standing or otherwise have their own social interactions with others be thwarted in some way. For example, a character uses Etiquette to create the situation where if the Duke doesn't give them an hour of his time to hear a request, a merchant he is trying to make trade negotiations with will snub him in return. The character need not have a direct relationship with the merchant - rather they have set up a situation where if the Duke acts improperly, the merchant will get cold feet due to the social perception of their interaction.


The point is, each of these are to be used proactively. There's no need for the GM to ever say e.g. 'okay, now roll Etiquette to figure out if you have proper manners' with a system like this. Rather, someone who invests in Etiquette is buying the ability to make a social attack via the rules of society, whereas someone who invests in Fast Talk is buying the ability to shut down difficult conversations or otherwise deflect the direction of social action. Someone could Charm, Intimidate, Fast Talk, Persuade, Diplomace, or Etiquette the guard, and each of those things would have distinct and definite outcomes if successful (specifically: they get off scot free but don't get past, they escalate to a fight where they have a combat advantage, they alter the guard's priorities possibly distracting them enough for someone else to slip past, they figure out what the guard wants and needs and have to proceed from there, they trap the guard in an agreement perhaps for blackmail purposes later but not immediately getting them past, they force the guard to be polite but not necessarily let them past).

I don't like permission-slip systems. They have a tendency to make players think that they can only do what's written as permission. Anyone can do all those things, by default. Skills should make you better at them. Same with combat maneuvers.

Keeping the skill list small and high-level (instead of detailed and granular) seems to work better--it's usually obvious if you should roll Persuasion vs Deception vs Intimidation. All of those are "get someone to do something by ________" skills, the only difference is how you do it.

Arbane
2018-02-02, 03:21 PM
BESM wasn't a very good system in a lot of ways, but it did have one idea I wish more games would use: skill costs depend on how _useful_ the skill is in that genre, not how difficult it is to learn in real life.


While a certain level of granularity is good, my general experience has been that the more a system breaks down skills (ie, "Body" to "Athletics" to "Climb" to "Bouldering" to "Bare-Handed Bouldering"), the less competent characters feel. Particularly if you've got a pure skill-based game where there's no general ability score boosting multiple related checks, you wind up having a lot of trouble filling out a role. 3.5 has this problem to an extent; I remember a version of Traveller that I briefly played that was even worse.

Try GURPS - separate skills for Biology, Biochemistry, Zoology, Botany... eventually they just created the Science! skill-group to compact these. :smalleek:

Or for true horror, the S.U.E. System. (http://irolledazero.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-sue-system-skill-rules.html), which can be summed up as "roll dice until I tell you you've failed."

Or, for a good idea, the CORPS generic system had a neat way of handling skills: IIRC, They were set up in a tree of increasing specificity, and to see what you rolled, you summed up all relevant skills: So, Body + Athletics + Climb + Bouldering + Bare-handed Bouldering for your example. The thing being, the cost of skills at every 'step' was the skill level squared - so while buying Body 5 (25 points) would make you competent at anything physical, it would cost less to get Body 3, Athletics 3, Climb 1, Bouldering 1. BHB 1 (21 points total) and you'd have a better roll (9!).

NichG
2018-02-02, 08:20 PM
I don't like permission-slip systems. They have a tendency to make players think that they can only do what's written as permission. Anyone can do all those things, by default. Skills should make you better at them. Same with combat maneuvers.

Keeping the skill list small and high-level (instead of detailed and granular) seems to work better--it's usually obvious if you should roll Persuasion vs Deception vs Intimidation. All of those are "get someone to do something by ________" skills, the only difference is how you do it.

I was trying to design the list so that each thing was something that you couldn't do without game mechanical support, and which also didn't require the skill in any situation where it could be covered by roleplay, but I might not have been successful at that. The intent was for each skill to be designed like a spell - when you fire it off, a specific mechanical thing happens which adds on top of whatever you do with roleplay or the logic of the situation.

E.g. Etiquette literally makes you able to cause NPCs you never meet or speak to to shun someone for slighting you; Diplomacy in the extreme lets you create a psychological catch where someone who betrays you will be driven to suicide; etc. Generally those are not just things anyone can do.

If I'd done it right, it should've been clear that anyone could convince someone of something, be scary to someone weaker, or successfully pursue romance without a single rank in any of them. Rather each skill gives an augmentation to those base abilities by saying 'in addition to stuff you can normally do, here's an extra thing'

calam
2018-02-03, 01:28 PM
Another pet peeve I have are purely reactive skills, as in skills that are niche enough that you only end up using it when the GM tells you to. If the GM is making the situation for the players it will never come up because no one can roll the skill unless a player invested in it and if the GM makes the situation up and sees what roles make sense without checking the characters' abilities then it will be pure luck if you take knowledge (virology) which is needed for the plot instead of the currently useless knowledge (nuclear). I understand that some campaigns will focus on different things but you can at least group them together like making knowing about virus spreading methods art of medicine since that's going to be useful in any campaign where people can get sick, poisoned or injured.

In a similar vein are feats and abilities that are very situational, especially because they tend to be either useless or very powerful depending on the campaign. Like if you're playing a sea campaign having a feat that halves all penalties from rough waters is probably the most powerful feat you can take but is essentially useless otherwise which makes for an awkward character building choice.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-02-03, 02:08 PM
Another pet peeve I have are purely reactive skills, as in skills that are niche enough that you only end up using it when the GM tells you to. If the GM is making the situation for the players it will never come up because no one can roll the skill unless a player invested in it and if the GM makes the situation up and sees what roles make sense without checking the characters' abilities then it will be pure luck if you take knowledge (virology) which is needed for the plot instead of the currently useless knowledge (nuclear). I understand that some campaigns will focus on different things but you can at least group them together like making knowing about virus spreading methods art of medicine since that's going to be useful in any campaign where people can get sick, poisoned or injured.

In a similar vein are feats and abilities that are very situational, especially because they tend to be either useless or very powerful depending on the campaign. Like if you're playing a sea campaign having a feat that halves all penalties from rough waters is probably the most powerful feat you can take but is essentially useless otherwise which makes for an awkward character building choice.

For me, these all fall under the umbrella of "niche quasi-trap options," and usually result from trying to be too granular in design. Paying a major resource (build points, XP, feat slots, skill points) for something that comes up basically never is really hard to balance. The expected value of the choice is roughly EV = (probability of use) x (value when used).

If (probability of use) is low (ie the thing is niche), then value has to be high to make it valuable. But then, when it does get used it's totally OP and mandatory. If value is too low, then it's just a total trap.

I strongly prefer broad skills/feats/features to narrow ones. Let things be useful a lot of the time and differentiate how you do things, not what you can do at all.

Socratov
2018-02-03, 02:21 PM
I am very surprised nobody has taken the opportunity to name the Wish Spell.

It never leads to a satisfying ending, it readily creates situations where the session just devolves in Contract law; the game and it either ****s up everything in its entirety, or it ends everything for always and forever.

The best use of the Wish spell imo is to wish for a sandwich.


As for other stuff, I hate roleplay requirements, especially if the rules regarding said roleplaying have no basis for doing so. Case in point: the 5e druid and its metal armour taboo.

But that's not all, I don't like systems where being the best there is at something doesn't prevent someone with a great random roll from showing you up. In 5e you can get as much as +11 to a given skill roll (assuming no expertise) at max lvl. If you roll a 1 on a d20 and the person with the absolute lowest modifier (a -1) rolls a 14 on a d20 he will show you up and I think that is a bad thing.

That said, systems where you can only succeed at a challenge by being the absolute best at the skill the challenge asks for is not desirable either: something in between where you are really rewarded for investing into a skill but not impossible odds when you are untrained (or someone who dabbles in the skill).

And lastly, after playing Anima Prime I found that a clunky way of resolving combat does not make a great gaming experience.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-02-03, 03:11 PM
But that's not all, I don't like systems where being the best there is at something doesn't prevent someone with a great random roll from showing you up. In 5e you can get as much as +11 to a given skill roll (assuming no expertise) at max lvl. If you roll a 1 on a d20 and the person with the absolute lowest modifier (a -1) rolls a 14 on a d20 he will show you up and I think that is a bad thing.

That said, systems where you can only succeed at a challenge by being the absolute best at the skill the challenge asks for is not desirable either: something in between where you are really rewarded for investing into a skill but not impossible odds when you are untrained (or someone who dabbles in the skill).



That's a very fine balance you're expecting. I'd be shocked if there's any system that has both those traits simultaneously--no edition of D&D has ever managed it. You'd need a bell-curve roll (so a dice pool, probably) with some wonky math.

And a -1 is not the absolute lowest modifier--a -5 is. More than that, competence in 5e comes more from class features (expertise or reliable talent) than it does from raw proficiency. The rogue in my game can't roll below a 28 on certain checks-- +12 from expertise, +6 from ability scores (he found a dex Tome), plus reliable talent that turns any roll of 9 or less into a 10. That's what it means to be an expert in 5e--proficiency + good scores just means you're better than most at it.

Knaight
2018-02-03, 03:46 PM
That's a very fine balance you're expecting. I'd be shocked if there's any system that has both those traits simultaneously--no edition of D&D has ever managed it. You'd need a bell-curve roll (so a dice pool, probably) with some wonky math.

No edition of D&D has ever managed it because D&D consistently has sad and pathetic skill systems by industry standards. Outside D&D it's pretty routinely reached, largely with curved rolls (sometimes dice pool, sometimes roll and add, sometimes other systems). This is even more true if you open the restrictions slightly to allow extremely low probabilities. That 5e example has a full 7% chance of the inept character doing better. Meanwhile in Fudge, my go to example, it's either 2.4% or 0.7% that the inept character does better depending on where you put the best out of the standard options. There's also a range there where they're guaranteed to succeed, a decent character has a pretty good shot, and a totally untrained person has respectable odds but will still probably fail.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-02-03, 06:35 PM
No edition of D&D has ever managed it because D&D consistently has sad and pathetic skill systems by industry standards. Outside D&D it's pretty routinely reached, largely with curved rolls (sometimes dice pool, sometimes roll and add, sometimes other systems). This is even more true if you open the restrictions slightly to allow extremely low probabilities. That 5e example has a full 7% chance of the inept character doing better. Meanwhile in Fudge, my go to example, it's either 2.4% or 0.7% that the inept character does better depending on where you put the best out of the standard options. There's also a range there where they're guaranteed to succeed, a decent character has a pretty good shot, and a totally untrained person has respectable odds but will still probably fail.

Tangentially, that reminds me of a couple of pet peeves.

When checks/actions take more than a few seconds to resolve. I’m fine with trading off fidelity for resolution speed, for individual actions. If I have to pull out a flow chart or cross-reference multiple tables or track a large number (more than about 1) situational or temporary modifiers, it’s too much. Instead, I’d rather get stochastic fidelity by rolling a lot more atomic checks. Not “roll fight (with all these bonuses, penalties, etc) to see if you win”, or worse, “roll to see if you hit, then roll to see if you actually damaged him, then add the angle of the moon and the height above ground, ...” I like things that incentivize doing more smaller actions instead of one big action.

The second is a dogged addiction to bell curves and statistics in general. While you might roll enough dice total over a session to start seeing the law of large numbers in effect, they’re not from the same distribution or distributed randomly. Not only that, but if you restrict the range enough, all distributions are flat.:smallamused:

Multi-dice resolution mechanics make things both harder to predict (because people are bad at probability, and worse at non-linear probability) and less variable. In real life, weird things happen way too often to be on a bell curve. Life has fat tails.

Max_Killjoy
2018-02-03, 06:57 PM
Tangentially, that reminds me of a couple of pet peeves.

When checks/actions take more than a few seconds to resolve. I’m fine with trading off fidelity for resolution speed, for individual actions. If I have to pull out a flow chart or cross-reference multiple tables or track a large number (more than about 1) situational or temporary modifiers, it’s too much. Instead, I’d rather get stochastic fidelity by rolling a lot more atomic checks. Not “roll fight (with all these bonuses, penalties, etc) to see if you win”, or worse, “roll to see if you hit, then roll to see if you actually damaged him, then add the angle of the moon and the height above ground, ...” I like things that incentivize doing more smaller actions instead of one big action.

The second is a dogged addiction to bell curves and statistics in general. While you might roll enough dice total over a session to start seeing the law of large numbers in effect, they’re not from the same distribution or distributed randomly. Not only that, but if you restrict the range enough, all distributions are flat.:smallamused:

Multi-dice resolution mechanics make things both harder to predict (because people are bad at probability, and worse at non-linear probability) and less variable. In real life, weird things happen way too often to be on a bell curve. Life has fat tails.

I'm not fond of variable die pools against moving target numbers, especially with exploding dice (think L5R 4th, for example). I have deeply fond memories of playing WEG d6 Star Wars, but I'd never use that kind of system now.

Give me a single die pool (3d6, 2d12, for example) that's looking for a specific target number determined by the character's ability in that regard, and modified by a reasonably small number of modifiers.

Steel Mirror
2018-02-03, 07:03 PM
The pet peeve I most recently had issues with is game systems that needlessly call for a whole bunch of time, effort, and/or dice rolling needed to resolve an action. Especially those that require the consultation of multiple tables or situational rules. I'm not talking about games that might give you a lot of options as a player, and you get to decide between them. Those can get a little overwhelming too, but it can also lead to some tense and rewarding gameplay. No, I'm talking specifically about games that take forever to resolve an action even after you've decided exactly what it is you are trying to do.

In general, these days I look very suspiciously on any system that requires more than one roll to resolve the consequences of an action. Rolling separate dice for attack and damage counts as one, because you can roll them both at the same time. But a system that, say, asks for an attack roll, then a damage roll, then a roll for hit location, then a roll for critical hit results at that location, then a roll for extra damage resulting from piercing your opponent's left kidney with an energy weapon....

I've been in more than one game where we all lost interest and wandered away in the middle of what should theoretically be a big tense battle, because it simply takes too much time and rule-crunching to figure out what the heck is going on. It's especially bad because the worst battles in these systems are the ones that should ideally be the most fun and interesting, like boss fights against the BBEG or desperate last stands against superior foes. I've played games that were supposed to be combat-heavy grimdark gorefests that ended up being mostly politics or diceless roleplaying because we were all too bored by the combat rules to ever get into a fight!

PhoenixPhyre
2018-02-03, 07:12 PM
The pet peeve I most recently had issues with is game systems that needlessly call for a whole bunch of time, effort, and/or dice rolling needed to resolve an action. Especially those that require the consultation of multiple tables or situational rules. I'm not talking about games that might give you a lot of options as a player, and you get to decide between them. Those can get a little overwhelming too, but it can also lead to some tense and rewarding gameplay. No, I'm talking specifically about games that take forever to resolve an action even after you've decided exactly what it is you are trying to do.

In general, these days I look very suspiciously on any system that requires more than one roll to resolve the consequences of an action. Rolling separate dice for attack and damage counts as one, because you can roll them both at the same time. But a system that, say, asks for an attack roll, then a damage roll, then a roll for hit location, then a roll for critical hit results at that location, then a roll for extra damage resulting from piercing your opponent's left kidney with an energy weapon....

I've been in more than one game where we all lost interest and wandered away in the middle of what should theoretically be a big tense battle, because it simply takes too much time and rule-crunching to figure out what the heck is going on. It's especially bad because the worst battles in these systems are the ones that should ideally be the most fun and interesting, like boss fights against the BBEG or desperate last stands against superior foes. I've played games that were supposed to be combat-heavy grimdark gorefests that ended up being mostly politics or diceless roleplaying because we were all too bored by the combat rules to ever get into a fight!

:Clapping.gif:

Amen. Glad to see I'm not the only one. And it's not just combat (although it can be there most visible offender in a lot of cases).

Steel Mirror
2018-02-03, 07:27 PM
Amen. Glad to see I'm not the only one. And it's not just combat (although it can be there most visible offender in a lot of cases).
That's true. I remember when the original Epic Level Handbook came out for 3E, and we decided to play an Epic level caster game, to really enjoy the experience of playing ridiculously powerful demigods who could reshape the rules of physics like putty.

I think we quit one and a half sessions into it when I pulled out a 4 window spreadsheet about my downtime magic item crafting antics, and my buddy passed out pages with his Leadership feat followers' buff schedules for each member of the party, as well as a file about 8 pages long in 11 point font detailing the math for each of his custom-crafted epic level spell rituals, the end goal of which was to make custom planes for all of us which generated infinite wealth, responded to our thoughts, bred massive armies for our multiversal onslaught, made us and our minions immortal, could nuke entire planes from a distance, and constantly blasted each of our theme music tracks throughout the entire plane.

I think we quit that game and decided to play L5R for a while with a different GM so the previous one could take some time off and find a way to forgive us. :smallbiggrin: That's a little different because it wasn't TECHNICALLY in-game rules slowing down the pace of play, but just ridiculously complex rules in general that made it almost impossible to even start the game. Still though, that experience definitely helped push me towards some more streamlined rule sets (not that I was aware of any at the time).

Max_Killjoy
2018-02-03, 07:46 PM
The pet peeve I most recently had issues with is game systems that needlessly call for a whole bunch of time, effort, and/or dice rolling needed to resolve an action. Especially those that require the consultation of multiple tables or situational rules. I'm not talking about games that might give you a lot of options as a player, and you get to decide between them. Those can get a little overwhelming too, but it can also lead to some tense and rewarding gameplay. No, I'm talking specifically about games that take forever to resolve an action even after you've decided exactly what it is you are trying to do.

In general, these days I look very suspiciously on any system that requires more than one roll to resolve the consequences of an action. Rolling separate dice for attack and damage counts as one, because you can roll them both at the same time. But a system that, say, asks for an attack roll, then a damage roll, then a roll for hit location, then a roll for critical hit results at that location, then a roll for extra damage resulting from piercing your opponent's left kidney with an energy weapon....

I've been in more than one game where we all lost interest and wandered away in the middle of what should theoretically be a big tense battle, because it simply takes too much time and rule-crunching to figure out what the heck is going on. It's especially bad because the worst battles in these systems are the ones that should ideally be the most fun and interesting, like boss fights against the BBEG or desperate last stands against superior foes. I've played games that were supposed to be combat-heavy grimdark gorefests that ended up being mostly politics or diceless roleplaying because we were all too bored by the combat rules to ever get into a fight!


IMO, there's always a tradeoff when trying to make the combat "like combat" -- between having enough detail in combat rules to allow for variation and grit and for things to feel active... and not bogging down so far in details and rolls and steps that, as you describe, you end up a tense and exciting fight that last less than a minute inside the "fiction" takes an hour to resolve at the table.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-02-03, 08:49 PM
IMO, there's always a tradeoff when trying to make the combat "like combat" -- between having enough detail in combat rules to allow for variation and grit and for things to feel active... and not bogging down so far in details and rolls and steps that, as you describe, you end up a tense and exciting fight that last less than a minute inside the "fiction" takes an hour to resolve at the table.

Put me in the camp that prefers fast, cinematic-ish (not fully cinematic, but more cinematic than gritty) combat over "realistic." I'd rather resolve lots of actions, each one taking next to no time but abstracting quite a bit, than resolve a few perfectly-accurate actions in the same amount of time.

And as DM, the system load is even worse than as a player. An average 5e D&D combat has 4-5 players, 4-8 monsters, plus terrain and possibly NPCs or environmental factors. Each player only has to manage one PC--I have to manage the rest while answering questions and resolving things that aren't directly combat related (interactions with terrain, how something looks due to time of day, lighting conditions, sound conditions, etc. 5e's fortunately light enough (although not very light on an absolute scale) that I can manage it. I still find myself using poor tactics just from sheer brain overload and desire to actually move things along. Armed standoffs aren't that fun to run, even if it's pretty realistic (both sides waiting for the other to make the first mistake).

I jokingly think that the reason 3e D&D does so (comparatively) well with large solo fights (one monster vs a party) is that that's all it can do--adding many more monsters with non-trivial abilities makes DM heads explode (or bogs things down to a standstill).

sleepy hedgehog
2018-02-03, 10:01 PM
My biggest peeve is exponential anything.
I don't really even like linear scaling.

It was one of my favorite parts of Shadowrun, back in my last group.
It felt like a starting squad with intel could beat an experienced team going in blind.

Steel Mirror
2018-02-04, 02:02 AM
IMO, there's always a tradeoff when trying to make the combat "like combat" -- between having enough detail in combat rules to allow for variation and grit and for things to feel active... and not bogging down so far in details and rolls and steps that, as you describe, you end up a tense and exciting fight that last less than a minute inside the "fiction" takes an hour to resolve at the table.That's true, and everyone will have their own sweet spot when it comes to finding that balance.

And for me...

Put me in the camp that prefers fast, cinematic-ish (not fully cinematic, but more cinematic than gritty) combat over "realistic." I'd rather resolve lots of actions, each one taking next to no time but abstracting quite a bit, than resolve a few perfectly-accurate actions in the same amount of time.I used to be further along towards the "give me tables!" side of things, but as I get older and frankly have less time to game, I really prefer streamlined mechanical resolutions that let the group spend more time on what we actually find interesting as opposed to number tracking and flow-chart following. That's not a universal thing, just a personal preference. Though I have played a few games that I would argue are objectively overcomplicated and could accomplish the same design objectives in a less obtuse way. And those games would trigger my pet peeve. :smallsmile:


On a completely different note, I've remembered another pet peeve of mine: games that have disadvantages/flaws/whatever you want to call them that are designed such that they actively discourage the player from ever trying to roleplay them.

For instance, grabbing a trait called "binge drinker" that gives your character a mechanical penalty in any situation where they imbibe alcohol. In term of game fiction, that should mean that your character has a weakness for booze and a tendency to over-indulge to their detriment. There are lots of interesting RP situations you can spin out of that. But in mechanical terms, a player is actually rewarded for avoiding those situations entirely, never drinking at all, so as to never encounter the penalty.

As a result, for most players that trait might as well read "you get free character points, with no drawbacks as long as you make sure not to RP your character", and that undermines good matchup between what it says on your sheet and how your character acts.

Ignimortis
2018-02-04, 04:59 AM
My biggest peeve is exponential anything.
I don't really even like linear scaling.

It was one of my favorite parts of Shadowrun, back in my last group.
It felt like a starting squad with intel could beat an experienced team going in blind.

So...do you dislike character advancement on a mechanical level?..

Socratov
2018-02-04, 05:00 AM
Tangentially, that reminds me of a couple of pet peeves.

When checks/actions take more than a few seconds to resolve. I’m fine with trading off fidelity for resolution speed, for individual actions. If I have to pull out a flow chart or cross-reference multiple tables or track a large number (more than about 1) situational or temporary modifiers, it’s too much. Instead, I’d rather get stochastic fidelity by rolling a lot more atomic checks. Not “roll fight (with all these bonuses, penalties, etc) to see if you win”, or worse, “roll to see if you hit, then roll to see if you actually damaged him, then add the angle of the moon and the height above ground, ...” I like things that incentivize doing more smaller actions instead of one big action.

The second is a dogged addiction to bell curves and statistics in general. While you might roll enough dice total over a session to start seeing the law of large numbers in effect, they’re not from the same distribution or distributed randomly. Not only that, but if you restrict the range enough, all distributions are flat.:smallamused:

Multi-dice resolution mechanics make things both harder to predict (because people are bad at probability, and worse at non-linear probability) and less variable. In real life, weird things happen way too often to be on a bell curve. Life has fat tails.

You are completely right and I have yet to see a system that uses 2 resolution mechanics for skills and combat. From a statistics standpoint and usability I find that CoC 7th does a great job: d100 resolution where you skills and combat are graded by a threshold. the higher your threshold (i.e. the higher your score), the more often you will be successful. Sure the n00b can still beat the expert, but the chances for that are very, very slim (let's say expert is at 75%, n00b is at 5% for a normal skill check, that means 0.05*(1-0.75)=1,25% of that happening). If you are at advantage/disadvantage that is done though rolling an extra D100

Xuc Xac
2018-02-04, 02:04 PM
You are completely right and I have yet to see a system that uses 2 resolution mechanics for skills and combat.

Most versions of D&D. I think 2nd edition actually had 3: THAC0 for combat, percentile dice for thief skills, and roll-under ability checks for proficiencies. Some versions use a d6 roll for skills. Do you consider ambushing and/or detecting an ambush to be a skill? That's a fourth mechanic for surprise/being surprised, but they didn't consider what would happen if a good ambusher tried to ambush a good ambush spotter (they only cover good skill on one side and default skill on the other).


So...do you dislike character advancement on a mechanical level?..

Advancement doesn't have to involve getting better options (e.g. "+1 melee" becomes "+2 melee"). It can be gaining more options (e.g. your fighter with "melee" learns "camouflage" or "tracking" to become more rangery).

Khedrac
2018-02-04, 03:18 PM
Thinking about it, there's another fun one from AD&D - and that's a part of the system where the different factors that influence it are not compatible with each other...

I bring you "Suprise":
I htink most characters were suprirsed only on a 1 on a D6
Some characters were suprirse don a 1 on a D8 or a D10
Some monsters suprprised on a 1 or 2 on a D6 (or a 1, 2 or 3)
So - how do the monsters with a greater surprise chance interact with chacters with reduced surprise?

Don't get me wrong, I liked most of AD&D 1 & 2, but there were some rules that just did not work.

Socratov
2018-02-04, 03:23 PM
Most versions of D&D. I think 2nd edition actually had 3: THAC0 for combat, percentile dice for thief skills, and roll-under ability checks for proficiencies. Some versions use a d6 roll for skills. Do you consider ambushing and/or detecting an ambush to be a skill? That's a fourth mechanic for surprise/being surprised, but they didn't consider what would happen if a good ambusher tried to ambush a good ambush spotter (they only cover good skill on one side and default skill on the other).

(snip)

I have never played 2nd edition (I only met with DnD and TTRPG's in general a when 3.5 was already done and 4th was just launched), so I can't really comment on wether or not it plays well. I have noticed that when a game uses the same system for combat and skills that one is going to suffer. In DnD that is a bad thing as both are supposed to be important. In CoC combat is not much more then an after thought, especially when the more supernatural enemies show up it quickly becomes a situation where the attacks are made up and the numbers don't matter. However, in DnD, and similar games, the expectation exists that you are not out of your depth and you have a real option of surviving and even winning the encounter. At least, that is what the epic fantasy genre implicates. And finding a unified system that is statistically sound, equally for situations where you are expected to fail without many consequences, i.e. combat where a missed attack isn't the end of the world, and for situations you are expected to succeed at under dire consequences where failure and success are synonyms for death and life, like saves and in some situations skills. Especially with compound skillchecks or a situation where it seems the best thing to do is to resolve a series of skill challenges. Where the degree of success means an easier time the next time. IMO the bell curve is fantastic for skillchecks: I'd much rather have a reliable skillcheck which I could depend on in tough times, then a high probability ceiling. In terms of probability distributions I'd rather have a linear progression for attacks, and a bell curve for skills.

Cluedrew
2018-02-04, 05:42 PM
Tabletop: I don't like the battlemat thing. I occasionally comment that D&D seems to be two games welded together (that might be better on their own) and I think that battlemat is a great simple of that, only applies in one of the two sides. Drawing a map is OK (you are probably going to want one anyways) put mapping out positions on a grid doesn't really add anything in my mind. Except time spent.

Pre-Planned Plots: I can't think of any story that A) would be largely the same with different protagonists and B) was good. I think the best results where I didn't actually care, or really pretend to, about the plot but I did care about the setting. So I wondering from plot point to plot point was fun not for what happened, but the things already there. Not quite the same though.

To Khedrac: I can see how with just a bit of rewording you could make those two sides fit together flawlessly. I wonder if that was there intention.

Kadzar
2018-02-07, 06:00 PM
You are completely right and I have yet to see a system that uses 2 resolution mechanics for skills and combat. From a statistics standpoint and usability I find that CoC 7th does a great job: d100 resolution where you skills and combat are graded by a threshold. the higher your threshold (i.e. the higher your score), the more often you will be successful. Sure the n00b can still beat the expert, but the chances for that are very, very slim (let's say expert is at 75%, n00b is at 5% for a normal skill check, that means 0.05*(1-0.75)=1,25% of that happening). If you are at advantage/disadvantage that is done though rolling an extra D100Stars Without Number uses a d20 for attacks (and, I believe, saves) and 2d6 for skills.

calam
2018-02-07, 06:47 PM
Tabletop: I don't like the battlemat thing. I occasionally comment that D&D seems to be two games welded together (that might be better on their own) and I think that battlemat is a great simple of that, only applies in one of the two sides. Drawing a map is OK (you are probably going to want one anyways) put mapping out positions on a grid doesn't really add anything in my mind. Except time spent.


Yeah, some games have battlemats without being that important and most editions of D&D seem to be it since its mostly for spell area of effect and the people who keep finding that play in campaigns with a significant amount of cliff-side battles. I wonder if there's a tabletop game that really takes advantage of it

Steel Mirror
2018-02-07, 06:51 PM
Yeah, some games have battlemats without being that important and most editions of D&D seem to be it since its mostly for spell area of effect and the people who keep finding that play in campaigns with a significant amount of cliff-side battles. I wonder if there's a tabletop game that really takes advantage of it4E really used the battlemat well. I've heard from a few people that played 4E without a mat and apparently it worked just fine for them, but for my group the grid was absolutely indispensable in basically every fight we ever had, and it wasn't unusual for the outcome of a fight to come down to proper placement of a 5 foot shift, or careful nudging of an opponent by 1 or 2 squares at the opportune moment. That campaign also was very strongly on the "TRPG as tabletop skirmishes with plot and character as thin (but enjoyable!) connective tissue between fights" side of the spectrum, so I don't think I'd say it was typical, but we absolutely wouldn't have had the same experience if we didn't take advantage of the mat.

Guizonde
2018-02-07, 07:59 PM
4E really used the battlemat well. I've heard from a few people that played 4E without a mat and apparently it worked just fine for them, but for my group the grid was absolutely indispensable in basically every fight we ever had, and it wasn't unusual for the outcome of a fight to come down to proper placement of a 5 foot shift, or careful nudging of an opponent by 1 or 2 squares at the opportune moment. That campaign also was very strongly on the "TRPG as tabletop skirmishes with plot and character as thin (but enjoyable!) connective tissue between fights" side of the spectrum, so I don't think I'd say it was typical, but we absolutely wouldn't have had the same experience if we didn't take advantage of the mat.

seems like there really are two schools here. i come from the "if you can't describe it, show it" school. meaning, unless your dm is good enough to describe accurately a battleground and your team is tight-knit enough, you'll need a battlemap. i've rarely had needs for battlemaps. i'm pretty sure in over 10 years of weekly play, i've needed one 6 times. that said, we've come upon a real need with rogue trader, to the point we're chipping in and buying old battlefleet gothic figurines and gear just for the space fights. you simply can't describe accurately a voidfight, you can't keep track of all the parameters.

now, if anyone could help me out with a pickle i'm in... how do you guys represent 3 dimensional fights on battlemaps? my old team used to fight with a team split on 3 levels (under, over, and on ground). battlemaps were simply not doable, and we never could build scale models since it usually was corridor fights. here, it really was a case of "describe it because you can't show it". in my pf game, next level, half the team will be able to perform "death from above" style feats of dynamic entry and my dm is worried he'll only be able to narrate it. any words of counsel i can transmit? because out of the 7 in the group, we're all at a loss. i voted for description, but when it comes to bonuses, it'll be hectic to calculate without a visual aid.

Jay R
2018-02-08, 10:22 AM
now, if anyone could help me out with a pickle i'm in... how do you guys represent 3 dimensional fights on battlemaps? my old team used to fight with a team split on 3 levels (under, over, and on ground).

The mini for a flying character is on top of a die, or some other prop that lifts it up. One of our players has several clear cubes that we use.

I've never dealt with an underground character. I'd probably get a flat marker to put under him - a poker chip or circle cut from construction paper.



Thinking about it, there's another fun one from AD&D - and that's a part of the system where the different factors that influence it are not compatible with each other...

I bring you "Suprise":
I htink most characters were suprirsed only on a 1 on a D6
Some characters were suprirse don a 1 on a D8 or a D10
Some monsters suprprised on a 1 or 2 on a D6 (or a 1, 2 or 3)
So - how do the monsters with a greater surprise chance interact with chacters with reduced surprise?

They get surprised more often. Why is this hard?

I think I'm failing to understand your difficulty. In what way is a character who is more alert incompatible with a different character who is less alert? Some people are more alert than others.

Khedrac
2018-02-08, 12:47 PM
They get surprised more often. Why is this hard?

I think I'm failing to understand your difficulty. In what way is a character who is more alert incompatible with a different character who is less alert? Some people are more alert than others.
The fact that they incerease the surprise chance is not a problem, the working out what dice to roll is the problem. The various parts don't interact well - it would have been better with fewer rules.

Jay R
2018-02-08, 01:00 PM
The fact that they incerease the surprise chance is not a problem, the working out what dice to roll is the problem. The various parts don't interact well - it would have been better with fewer rules.

Each one rolls a different die, just like if they all use d6s. Sometimes the least alert character is the one who notices the enemy first.

Hunter Noventa
2018-02-08, 03:02 PM
I don't like games where disparate systems can leave chunks of the party with nothing to do for long periods of time. Shadowrun was pretty bad at this when I played. 'oh the mage is going astral/the decker is hacking, the rest of us can just sit and wait' was always a problem. And it boiled down to that because you have to guard the mage/decker's body while they go astral/hack, or even if you're doing remote hacking, time passes faster in the matrix, so you're still there as player, doing nothing, because only a matter of seconds or minutes passes for your character. it's terrible design.

Xuc Xac
2018-02-08, 08:39 PM
Each one rolls a different die, just like if they all use d6s. Sometimes the least alert character is the one who notices the enemy first.

I think you missed the fact that it's not alertness. "Surprise" is active ambushing. "Surprised" is noticing the ambush.

Some characters get surprised less often than normal. Some can cause surprise more often than normal. The rules aren't set up as "X rolls its ambush skill vs Y's notice skill". The rules ask you to roll one die to see if the defenders are surprised or not. They add extra rules for modifying the roll if an "extra alert" character gets ambushed OR if an "extra sneaky" character did the ambushing. They fail to take into account what happens if an "alert" character is ambushed by a "sneaky" one.

Random Sanity
2018-02-08, 09:22 PM
My pet peeve is fumble mechanics. It doesn't matter how small the chance is - if your own turn can potentially mess you/your party up worse than an enemy's turn through sheer RNG, the game developers screwed up. Period.

Nobody with a measurable chance of blowing himself up, skewering his own teammate, or just randomly dropping his shield for no reason would ever live long enough to begin a career as a PC.

PCs are supposed to be a cut above the random mooks wandering around the game world. Random displays of incompetence are for the loudmouthed idiot in the street who dies in his first significant encounter, not the main characters.

Guizonde
2018-02-08, 10:03 PM
My pet peeve is fumble mechanics. It doesn't matter how small the chance is - if your own turn can potentially mess you/your party up worse than an enemy's turn through sheer RNG, the game developers screwed up. Period.

Nobody with a measurable chance of blowing himself up, skewering his own teammate, or just randomly dropping his shield for no reason would ever live long enough to begin a career as a PC.

PCs are supposed to be a cut above the random mooks wandering around the game world. Random displays of incompetence are for the loudmouthed idiot in the street who dies in his first significant encounter, not the main characters.

those are recurrent themes here. ffg's warhammer games (fantasy and dh) handle it pretty well. only on a 100 will you screw up completely, and based on the quality of your weapons, it'll either ignore one fumble, or you'll jam your gun. a good quality hellgun will jam on a 96+, a good quality automatic gun on a 94+, and really experimental or damaged guns can go as low as 85, iirc. in warhammer, jezzail rifles don't just jam, they fail catastrophically, as it should for a gun that's powered by warpstone. fate points help a lot with that, but let's imagine that you screw up in close quarters. you don't hurt yourself with your sword, you'll give an advantage to your opponent. this could mean you having to roll better to dodge or parry, getting disarmed... and of course the "oh no, this isn't good" moment, such as having a grenade going off in your pants because your opponent hooked the grenade's pin with a blow you couldn't handle. this would be two 100's in a row, or the pc rolling a 1 on a mook who's packing grenades. it fits with the setting, and even though i like fumble mechanics as much as i like critical hit mechanics, the typical dnd style "you suck 5% of the time" is simply not representative. my current dm usually gives a +2/-2 on further rolls after natural 1's in fights to represent that your character overstepped, fumbled a block, or another near-miss like that. it feels a lot more natural than a barbarian chopping off his foot because he fumbled a roll. statistically, nobody would ever to get to level 20 if they got into a fight a week. they'd strangle themselves with an anvil before that, judging by some stories of dm abuse i've read here.

Gnoman
2018-02-08, 10:25 PM
The mini for a flying character is on top of a die, or some other prop that lifts it up. One of our players has several clear cubes that we use.

I've never dealt with an underground character. I'd probably get a flat marker to put under him - a poker chip or circle cut from construction paper.



Checkers or the right kind of poker chip (the sort that lock together) work well. Use one color for "up" and one for "down".

Quertus
2018-02-08, 10:28 PM
I suppose, if I had to pick one pet peeve, it's that I don't like systems where I don't get to play the game that I signed up for.

What's this? A world that's supposed to be steeped in magic, yet everything feels so... mundane? (many GM's D&D games, Earthdawn?). Nah, I'll pass.

What's this? Oh, cool, a point buy for a generic system... that I can neither use to emulate any of my favorite characters, nor to build some cool ideas I have for which I haven't found am appropriate system? (GURPS, etc). Eh, I'm not feeling it.

What's this? The character creation minigame takes 3 sessions and a PhD, minimum? Why?

What's this? I'm sitting out, twiddling my thumbs, not playing any game, let alone the one I signed up for, most of the game? (Shadowrun). No, that doesn't sound fun.

What's this? The better I get at something, the more of a liability I am / the worse I seem? (D&D with fumbles added). Horrible times.

I want the character I create to match my vision of that character, to play the way I expect them to play, straight out of the box. And I want it to be possible (but not necessarily easy) to build the character that I want (so long as it fits the genre).

-----

Oh, another pet peeve: systems which give the GM toxic advice (D&D, I'm looking at you).

-----

And, of course, Alignment, bane of role-playing.


HP on monsters.

Explain? Do you mean that you want all opposition to have "narrative" health, and did when it's grammatically appropriate? :smallconfused:


I am very surprised nobody has taken the opportunity to name the Wish Spell.

It never leads to a satisfying ending, it readily creates situations where the session just devolves in Contract law; the game and it either ****s up everything in its entirety, or it ends everything for always and forever.

Never? No, I can't say that I agree with that assessment. Why, one campaign ended with my character getting a Ring of Three Wishes, using one to fulfill its McGuffin purpose, and, by using the second Wish for the party, allowed the reveal that my character was illiterate. So, good times all around. :smallwink:

Cluedrew
2018-02-08, 10:43 PM
They fail to take into account what happens if an "alert" character is ambushed by a "sneaky" one.Maybe? If they had just phased it as rolling some alert die and rolling under a score. The former coming from the watcher and the latter the sneak. I can't help but feel that was the intended interaction because it just follows so naturally from the set up they have. But if those are actually the rules given (Khedrac's post)... it almost went out of its way to make that not happen.

calam
2018-02-08, 10:56 PM
those are recurrent themes here. ffg's warhammer games (fantasy and dh) handle it pretty well. only on a 100 will you screw up completely, and based on the quality of your weapons, it'll either ignore one fumble, or you'll jam your gun. a good quality hellgun will jam on a 96+, a good quality automatic gun on a 94+, and really experimental or damaged guns can go as low as 85, iirc. in warhammer, jezzail rifles don't just jam, they fail catastrophically, as it should for a gun that's powered by warpstone. fate points help a lot with that, but let's imagine that you screw up in close quarters. you don't hurt yourself with your sword, you'll give an advantage to your opponent. this could mean you having to roll better to dodge or parry, getting disarmed... and of course the "oh no, this isn't good" moment, such as having a grenade going off in your pants because your opponent hooked the grenade's pin with a blow you couldn't handle. this would be two 100's in a row, or the pc rolling a 1 on a mook who's packing grenades. it fits with the setting, and even though i like fumble mechanics as much as i like critical hit mechanics, the typical dnd style "you suck 5% of the time" is simply not representative. my current dm usually gives a +2/-2 on further rolls after natural 1's in fights to represent that your character overstepped, fumbled a block, or another near-miss like that. it feels a lot more natural than a barbarian chopping off his foot because he fumbled a roll. statistically, nobody would ever to get to level 20 if they got into a fight a week. they'd strangle themselves with an anvil before that, judging by some stories of dm abuse i've read here.

I think you're remembering houserules a bit here. In dark heresy grenades blow up your hand more than 1% of the time since it explodes if it jams (a 5% chance) and you roll a 9-10 on a d10 (with a bit of a boost because 6-8 makes you reroll but I can't be bothered to do the exact math) and on the other hand penalties don't stack for jams so the worst you can get is 91-100. This reminds me of a friend who trained for the military who got annoyed at how easily the guns jam since guns tend to jam once out of every couple shots, especially when you're firing a laser. I mean what is jamming in a gun described to have zero moving parts?

I tend to dislike fumble rules outside of automatic failure because it tends to ruin the tone of the scene. Nothing makes a villain less dangerous than falling prone at the end of a charge making him trip and slide on the floor like a slapstick character.

LordCdrMilitant
2018-02-08, 11:10 PM
I think you're remembering houserules a bit here. In dark heresy grenades blow up your hand more than 1% of the time since it explodes if it jams (a 5% chance) and you roll a 9-10 on a d10 (with a bit of a boost because 6-8 makes you reroll but I can't be bothered to do the exact math) and on the other hand penalties don't stack for jams so the worst you can get is 91-100. This reminds me of a friend who trained for the military who got annoyed at how easily the guns jam since guns tend to jam once out of every couple shots, especially when you're firing a laser. I mean what is jamming in a gun described to have zero moving parts?

I tend to dislike fumble rules outside of automatic failure because it tends to ruin the tone of the scene. Nothing makes a villain less dangerous than falling prone at the end of a charge making him trip and slide on the floor like a slapstick character.

Lasguns are Reliable. They shouldn't jam often, since they only misfire on a nat 100. The weapon jam is also fixed by a unmodified BS test, so it's also not a big deal when it happens. A best quality weapon never jams.

Jay R
2018-02-08, 11:54 PM
I’m fascinated by how many people’s pet peeves are the exact opposite of mine.

My pet peeves include:

Any “fast” character generation. That’s not a character; it’s a set of abilities. [Yes, I played this way when I started, too – and loved it. But eventually I got into role-playing.]
One-mechanic systems that try to simulate things with a single mechanic, when the actual actions simulated don’t work that way. [I]will [/B]win the tug of war. Using the same mechanic is just bad, bad, bad design.]
Any game set in an archetype-dominated genre which does not steer characters towards those archetypes.
Any rules-system that tries to assume the referee/GM/DM is not the final authority, leading some people to believe that all games will be played the same. The GM is the one true defense against stupid rules exploits.

LordCdrMilitant
2018-02-09, 12:32 AM
Explain? Do you mean that you want all opposition to have "narrative" health, and did when it's grammatically appropriate? :smallconfused:


I too would like HP to go away. It's a relic of battle occurring on the scale of a larger military formation representing an amalgamation of personnel remaining and troop cohesion, that does not belong on the "more detailed" scale of an RPG.


I would like a system where all damage on all things is resolved on a module-basis, and you die when the table says you die. Here's what I would do in my ideal system:

A creature's body would have a hit location table, used to determine where a non-called shot lands.

Then, for each location, there'd also be a damage table, used to determine what the shot does to the target. Damage would apply as modifier to the damage table increasing result severity, Armor would reduce damage, and Penetration would reduce armor. The damage table would range from "Minor Scratch" to "Creature Dies". Most results would impose temporary or permanent penalties on the target. I would keep most of the descriptions mechanical. There'd be a set of general tables for common body parts, and some creatures may have unique tables for special body parts of because of their special defensive qualities.

Gnoman
2018-02-09, 01:03 AM
That not only sounds like a potential nightmare to play due to nested table syndrome, but it would be an enormous pain to develop creatures for. The greatest strength of a tabletop RPG is the ease in which you can develop new content, and needing that level of detail for the new monster you've invented would be unpleasant.

Knaight
2018-02-09, 01:10 AM
I'm going to try and aim for legitimate pet peeves - tiny little things that really don't matter to overall design, that nonetheless manage to irritate me to no end. It's a short, but pronounced list. Design preferences is a much longer list, and as such will be avoided.

Variably discrete probability distributions. I don't like "holes" in my die mechanics. Exploding dice that produce gaps around the edges (e.g. 1-5, 7-11, 13-17, etc.) of possible results. The d66 with its 36 results and giant jumps from 16 to 21 and similar annoys me to no end. A multiplicative die mechanic that largely avoids prime numbers (with the possible exception of 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, and 19) and has other gaps is deeply irritating. This irritation persists even when the mechanic works just fine.
Reporting distances in battlemat/grid units. I don't tend to play RPGs with battlemats that often (deeply spatial board games, war games, and videogames, sure), but for the ones that do reporting ranges on the mat instead of in the fiction is a significant pet peeve. Sure, it's a split second conversion most of the time. In actual gameplay both are being used heavily anyways. Still, I just don't like it.
Magick. To some extent magick is a synecdoche here, for any number of tiny stylistic things that have no effect on the game, can basically be ignored, and are roughly at the level of a word being spelled slightly differently or a grammatical quirk that just shows up over and over.
Skill Specializations and Specialized Skills. For all that I adore the Ubiquity system, I do have to throw some shade here. Again, this isn't a mechanical issue - I like skill specializations, and I like specialized skills. The decision to have two different and to some extent opposite mechanics and then give them two names that are almost identical? That's a pet peeve.

Steel Mirror
2018-02-09, 01:11 AM
I would like a system where all damage on all things is resolved on a module-basis, and you die when the table says you die. Here's what I would do in my ideal system:

A creature's body would have a hit location table, used to determine where a non-called shot lands.

Then, for each location, there'd also be a damage table, used to determine what the shot does to the target. Damage would apply as modifier to the damage table increasing result severity, Armor would reduce damage, and Penetration would reduce armor. The damage table would range from "Minor Scratch" to "Creature Dies". Most results would impose temporary or permanent penalties on the target. I would keep most of the descriptions mechanical. There'd be a set of general tables for common body parts, and some creatures may have unique tables for special body parts of because of their special defensive qualities.I've played systems with similar rules, and in fact it was on my own list of pet peeves earlier in the thread. :smallbiggrin: Not to say that those things are objectively wrong, I just don't enjoy them, myself. There a couple things on other people's lists of pet peeves that I personally enjoy in my games, too.

One pet peeve I have is systems that use roll-under and roll-over for different parts of the game. So like, for skill checks say you have to roll a d100 and land UNDER your skill rank to succeed, but when rolling opposed checks you both roll 1d100 and add some number and the higher number wins. Somewhat related, systems that list some modifiers with respect to adding/subtracting from your roll (bracing your rifle gives you -10 to the roll, which makes it easier to hit!) and other modifiers with respect to the TN you are aiming for (if your target is moving, they get -10 to their TN, which makes it harder to hit!) so that I'm always confused where I should be adjusting my numbers and how hard it is to do what I want to do. :smallannoyed:

Quertus
2018-02-09, 02:09 AM
I’m fascinated by how many people’s pet peeves are the exact opposite of mine.

I felt much the same on people's "things that they want to see on other systems". Mine was simply an option, to allow people to create playable simple characters -or- more complex, customized creations. Whereas many other people seemed to want to make all games bad. :smallfrown:

Speaking of,


My pet peeves include:

Any “fast” character generation. That’s not a character; it’s a set of abilities. [Yes, I played this way when I started, too – and loved it. But eventually I got into role-playing.]


One of my "ideal" character creation methods would be to write "Quertus - Wizard" on my sheet, and be done. The sheet is the mechanics, not the character - how much does a starting character need for mechanics?

What, exactly, would you like to see here? Keep in mind, last time we let The Creator try to add mechanics for role-playing, we got alignment :smallannoyed:




Any rules-system that tries to assume the referee/GM/DM is not the final authority, leading some people to believe that all games will be played the same. The GM is the one true defense against stupid rules exploits.


Ya know, when I go for a drop in game of Monopoly, I really don't want to spend 4 years getting a masters degree in "this guy's house rules" - I want to just be able to play the danged game. When I bring my Magic deck over to someone's house, I don't expect to have to deal with different rulings for each of my (and their) cards than I'm used to - I expect things to just work.

Now, I have a MtG rule or two that I shove down everyone's throats - whether it's my house or not - to fix a part of the rules that "don't work" (at least not in a casual atmosphere - it "works" (as well as Mew-tew) in tournament level play).

So, I guess my question is, why would you want all the bad that comes with incompatible games, unknown rules, and "rule zero", when the problem you described could instead be solved at the group level, or even by errata from the company?

Florian
2018-02-09, 02:34 AM
My pet peeve is fumble mechanics. It doesn't matter how small the chance is - if your own turn can potentially mess you/your party up worse than an enemy's turn through sheer RNG, the game developers screwed up. Period.

Splittermond actually makes good use of a fumble mechanic. The core mechanic is 2d10+mod vs DC, failures happen on twin ones. You can always opt to make a save roll of 1d10+mod, completely negating the fumble chance or you make a risky roll of 4d10+mod for higher chance of success, but also higher chance of fumble. That's overall a pretty good risk vs. reward mechanic.

Zombimode
2018-02-09, 03:33 AM
Most versions of D&D. I think 2nd edition actually had 3: THAC0 for combat, percentile dice for thief skills, and roll-under ability checks for proficiencies. Some versions use a d6 roll for skills. Do you consider ambushing and/or detecting an ambush to be a skill? That's a fourth mechanic for surprise/being surprised, but they didn't consider what would happen if a good ambusher tried to ambush a good ambush spotter (they only cover good skill on one side and default skill on the other)

For what it's worth THAC0 and roll-under ability checks are not really different mechanics. Or rather: they are different only in the sense that THAC0 and 3e style attack rolls are different. All These mechanics conform to the 3e core mechanic: 1d20 + modifieres compared to a DC. THAC0 and roll-under just obfuscating this.

Percentile thief skills are different because they are more granular. Ambush rolls are less granular.

Concerning ambushes: thats not true, from what I remember. There is a baseline for ambushes (ambush happens on 1-3 on d10, iirc). Then there are creatures that are better at ambushes. Usually this is confusingly described in absolutes ("Tigers ambush their prey on 1-2 on d10..."). Then there are creatures that are apt in avoiding ambushes, also confusingly described in absolutes ("Halflings are only abushed on 6-10 on a d10..."). Ignoring the confusing description those are just modifiers to the baseline DC of 3: if a Tiger wants to ambush an Halfling a roll of 3 + 3 (Halflings "ambush spotting" skill) - 1 (Tigers "ambusher" skill) = 5 on a d10 is needed.

Guizonde
2018-02-09, 05:06 AM
I think you're remembering houserules a bit here. In dark heresy grenades blow up your hand more than 1% of the time since it explodes if it jams (a 5% chance) and you roll a 9-10 on a d10 (with a bit of a boost because 6-8 makes you reroll but I can't be bothered to do the exact math) and on the other hand penalties don't stack for jams so the worst you can get is 91-100. This reminds me of a friend who trained for the military who got annoyed at how easily the guns jam since guns tend to jam once out of every couple shots, especially when you're firing a laser. I mean what is jamming in a gun described to have zero moving parts?

I tend to dislike fumble rules outside of automatic failure because it tends to ruin the tone of the scene. Nothing makes a villain less dangerous than falling prone at the end of a charge making him trip and slide on the floor like a slapstick character.

dark heresy, perhaps you're right. lordcmdrmilitant will know more about that, they seemed pretty knowledgeable about that system from previous posts. i only rifled through the rulebook, and i'm currently playing rogue trader. the stats for hellguns and autos are legit for rogue. the low low bar for jams comes from whfrp2e, and that i know due to unfortunate circumstances. in rogue trader, the dm pulled out the rulebook due to the table's disbelief at the natural one mechanic. it's a short paragraph but it's in there, and the silliness is too good to pass up. might be an alternate rule, but i remember reading "natural 1 = automatic success no matter the degrees of success".

finally, the "+2/-2" mechanic is indeed a houserule for my pathfinder game, and it works great, or should i say a lot better than pf's usual nat1 failure mechanics. i was throwing it out there so other people might benefit from it.

i realize mixing up 4 systems together in the same post was very unclear, my bad.

Tanarii
2018-02-09, 10:49 AM
Unnecessarily complex rules to resolve anything. The worst offenders I've played and run are Gurps and Shadowrun. The worst I've merely read but not played or ran is Burning Wheel (including Tocherbearer).


Those GM sections that talk down to me and tell me how to "do it right".
Yup. Especially bad are Kevin Siembieda (Palladium/Rifts), Erick Wujcik (Amber DRPG & Paranoia, but also cofounder of Palladium) and Luke Crane (Burning Wheel).

Siembieda and Wujcik occasionally approach Forge-level talking down. Crane is a product of the Forge, so it's hardly surprising in his case.

CharonsHelper
2018-02-09, 11:34 AM
Yup. Especially bad are Kevin Siembieda (Palladium/Rifts), Erick Wujcik (Amber DRPG & Paranoia, but also cofounder of Palladium) and Luke Crane (Burning Wheel).

World of Darkness is pretty bad too - where they basically say if you're not playing with enough angst you're not doing it right.

The Random NPC
2018-02-09, 11:38 PM
For what it's worth THAC0 and roll-under ability checks are not really different mechanics. Or rather: they are different only in the sense that THAC0 and 3e style attack rolls are different. All These mechanics conform to the 3e core mechanic: 1d20 + modifieres compared to a DC. THAC0 and roll-under just obfuscating this.

Percentile thief skills are different because they are more granular. Ambush rolls are less granular.

Concerning ambushes: thats not true, from what I remember. There is a baseline for ambushes (ambush happens on 1-3 on d10, iirc). Then there are creatures that are better at ambushes. Usually this is confusingly described in absolutes ("Tigers ambush their prey on 1-2 on d10..."). Then there are creatures that are apt in avoiding ambushes, also confusingly described in absolutes ("Halflings are only abushed on 6-10 on a d10..."). Ignoring the confusing description those are just modifiers to the baseline DC of 3: if a Tiger wants to ambush an Halfling a roll of 3 + 3 (Halflings "ambush spotting" skill) - 1 (Tigers "ambusher" skill) = 5 on a d10 is needed.

So wait, ambushes happen on a 1-3 normally, tigers are better at ambushes so they ambush on a 1-2? Halflings are better at avoiding ambushes so they only get abushed on a 6-10? And if a tiger trys to ambush a Halfling it happens on a 5?

LordCdrMilitant
2018-02-10, 03:29 AM
That not only sounds like a potential nightmare to play due to nested table syndrome, but it would be an enormous pain to develop creatures for. The greatest strength of a tabletop RPG is the ease in which you can develop new content, and needing that level of detail for the new monster you've invented would be unpleasant.

I've never had a problem with nested table syndrome, only when the tables were in 6 different places in the book. I would appreciate it if the relevant tables were all in the same damn place so I could just flip to the "tables" section.


I like the idea of a system that is both detailed and not HP based. HP systems always feel wrong, and I also desire a sufficient level of damage granularity somewhere between "alive" and "dead".

I also think that if a supply of stock tables were provided then it wouldn't be an issue to stick as many arms as you wanted onto your critter. 99% of my enemies are humanoids with armor and weapons anyway.


dark heresy, perhaps you're right. lordcmdrmilitant will know more about that, they seemed pretty knowledgeable about that system from previous posts. i only rifled through the rulebook, and i'm currently playing rogue trader. the stats for hellguns and autos are legit for rogue. the low low bar for jams comes from whfrp2e, and that i know due to unfortunate circumstances. in rogue trader, the dm pulled out the rulebook due to the table's disbelief at the natural one mechanic. it's a short paragraph but it's in there, and the silliness is too good to pass up. might be an alternate rule, but i remember reading "natural 1 = automatic success no matter the degrees of success".

finally, the "+2/-2" mechanic is indeed a houserule for my pathfinder game, and it works great, or should i say a lot better than pf's usual nat1 failure mechanics. i was throwing it out there so other people might benefit from it.

i realize mixing up 4 systems together in the same post was very unclear, my bad.

I might. I've run 3 major Dark Heresy campaigns, am currently running a Deathwatch campaign, and will likely run Black Crusade for next year's campaign. I'm also playing in a Rogue Trade game, and have played Deathwatch before. I have a fairly good handle on the rules, but when in doubt I generally defer to the tabletop over the RPG.

I use the codex as a Monster Manual, and am pretty good at converting a real 40k statblock into a DH statblock.

Florian
2018-02-10, 06:14 AM
Yup. Especially bad are Kevin Siembieda (Palladium/Rifts), Erick Wujcik (Amber DRPG & Paranoia, but also cofounder of Palladium) and Luke Crane (Burning Wheel).

Siembieda and Wujcik occasionally approach Forge-level talking down. Crane is a product of the Forge, so it's hardly surprising in his case.

*Shrugs*

I don't really have a problem with that. When I actually sit down and write rules, they have a certain purpose beyond being mere resolution mechanics. They are there for people who want to play _my_ game as _I_ present it. You want to play D&D with Warhammer? Your problem.

Zombimode
2018-02-10, 12:04 PM
So wait, ambushes happen on a 1-3 normally, tigers are better at ambushes so they ambush on a 1-2? Halflings are better at avoiding ambushes so they only get abushed on a 6-10? And if a tiger trys to ambush a Halfling it happens on a 5?

Ah, I got it backwards. Sorry :smallredface:

Tanarii
2018-02-10, 12:18 PM
*Shrugs*

I don't really have a problem with that. When I actually sit down and write rules, they have a certain purpose beyond being mere resolution mechanics. They are there for people who want to play _my_ game as _I_ present it. You want to play D&D with Warhammer? Your problem.
Sure. It's their game, they can put what they want in it. It just means I'll never pay good money for their products. I don't want to support their elitist and toxic One True Way-ism attitudes toward role playing.

Edit: in the case of Siembieda, it was support any more. He sure made his money off me in Robotech and the initial Rifts books in the 80s and early 90s, before he started sticking his rants in his books.

The Random NPC
2018-02-10, 08:59 PM
Ah, I got it backwards. Sorry :smallredface:

I still don't understand, do tigers ambush on a 1-4 and Halflings get ambushed on a 0? Or are Halflings the easily ambushed ones?

Mr Beer
2018-02-11, 12:49 AM
World of Darkness is pretty bad too - where they basically say if you're not playing with enough angst you're not doing it right.

God so much this...I read a couple of their books and could feel my blood pressure rising. OK Pretentious Pants, I get that you think only WoD does RPGs properly but please stop rubbing my face in it.

Jay R
2018-02-11, 03:41 PM
Quertius asked some great questions, which I've tried to answer fully and in good faith. So it's kind of long.

We disagree about role-playing, and that's fine. I'm not trying to convert anyone to my views, just explain what they are and where our differences come from.


One of my "ideal" character creation methods would be to write "Quertus - Wizard" on my sheet, and be done. The sheet is the mechanics, not the character - how much does a starting character need for mechanics?

He needs, well, a character. You may know what character you intend to play, and how that character fits into this particular DM's world at this particular moment, but that information is not contained in "Quertus - Wizard".


What, exactly, would you like to see here?

Step one for me is to read the DM's introduction to the scenario. If she hasn't written one, then I tend to pester her with questions by email for a couple of days. When I start to get a handle on the part of the world the PCs come from, I start asking myself what character that fits in that culture would be fun to play. There's no point designing a wyvern hunter if the continent has no wyverns, or an anti-slavery paladin in a world with no slaves. So I share each idea I have for the character with the DM.

As I start feeling my way towards a character idea, his abilities and equipment become more clear. A nobleman who is a spy/assassin has social skills and thin, easily hidden blades that a warrior wouldn't bother with.

By the time I'm finished, I have a clear idea of who the character is, what he wants, how he acts, and how he fits into this part of this DM's world.

I repeat - the result of a "fast" character generation isn't a character; it’s a set of abilities.


Keep in mind, last time we let The Creator try to add mechanics for role-playing, we got alignment :smallannoyed:

Alignment didn't come from the creator of role-playing games. It came from Gygax, not Arneson. Gygax got the lion's share of the credit, and won most of the arguments about the rules, because he was the only one who could type, not because he created role-playing.


Ya know, when I go for a drop in game of Monopoly, I really don't want to spend 4 years getting a masters degree in "this guy's house rules" - I want to just be able to play the danged game.

Your analogy isn't analogous. Every game of Monopoly is based on the exact same layout of Atlantic City's streets. You are not exploring in a world designed by the banker.

Playing the danged game is exactly and precisely synonymous with exploring the DM's imagination. Even if there were a single set of rules that was right for every single world, and even if there were universal agreement on which rulebooks would be included and which version of which game would be played, exploring the mind of the DM is what we're doing.

"Any player knows the rules. A good player knows the extensions. A great player knows the DM."


When I bring my Magic deck over to someone's house, I don't expect to have to deal with different rulings for each of my (and their) cards than I'm used to - I expect things to just work.

If I accepted the idea that we were playing a game like Magic – just a tactical game of "defeat the bad guys" – this argument might sway me. But in fact, I want my character to enter and explore an unknown world. It sounds like what I want in a fantasy game is exactly what you want to avoid.

And there's nothing wrong with us having different goals. But if our goals in the game are that different, then of course our pet peeves will be equally different.


Now, I have a MtG rule or two that I shove down everyone's throats - whether it's my house or not - to fix a part of the rules that "don't work" (at least not in a casual atmosphere - it "works" (as well as Mew-tew) in tournament level play).

And this is exactly why I want the DM to be in charge. There are things that I think "don't work". On these discussion threads I've had people recommend to me character builds that appear to me to be deliberately taking two rules that were not written together to get an absurd result that no rules writer intended.


So, I guess my question is, why would you want all the bad that comes with incompatible games, unknown rules, and "rule zero", when the problem you described could instead be solved at the group level, or even by errata from the company?

No problems come from incompatible games, unknown rules, and "rule zero". Those problems all came from DMs with poor judgment. I don't want all the bad that comes from them, so I play with DMs whose judgment I trust.

A competent DM fixes all problems that come from incompatible games, unknown rules, and "rule zero". But no rule or agreement about what rules must be used can ever fix the problem of incompetent DMs.

Play with a DM you trust, and then trust your DM.

Tanarii
2018-02-11, 04:22 PM
That's definitely a minor personal peeve for me: If I can't, after reading the rules thoroughly on my own time and scanning the GM's 1-2 page session 0 document for the character creation rules, walk in to the first session and make a character in 15 minutes, and then start playing that very same session, the rules for making a character are too complicated. And I certainly don't want to have design my character's personality and history in depth before the game begins, just to know what I can do. That is stuff that comes out from a bare-bones framework during play. A character just needs to be what they can do mechanically, with a short list of motivations to tell me where they differ from just being myself while I'm playing and making decisions.

That's not always the rules fault of course, many times it's the GMs. If they're running D&D and requiring reading a multi-page setting document, or detailed written backstory, or a dedicated session 0 meeting, I'm definitely out. But some games that's impossible even with a thorough knowledge of the rules. For example Amber DRPG/Lords of Gossamer and Shadow have a ability score auction and character creation they recommend an entire session for.

Cluedrew
2018-02-11, 04:26 PM
OK, this one I just have come across in FUDGE (reading it out of curiosity), where the defined average rating is "Fair", which is one level above mediocre. Was I misinformed, because I was under the impression that mediocre meant average. Sure people sometimes seem to focus on the "not above average" part, so it has some negative connotations to it, but you had a word that literally meant the thing you were trying to say. Then you put it somewhere else and used a different less precise word in its place. You were so close.

It does however highlight the fair/mediocre pair as one you can change if you don't like the words given, I wonder if it was a point of discussion amongst the creators.


Play with a DM you trust, and then trust your DM.I'd extend this to every player+, in the ideal case. The main not ideal case is probably when a new player comes. Even then... well circumstances change but so far give them a chance and don't play with them there after if it doesn't work out has worked fine.

Darth Ultron
2018-02-11, 06:03 PM
One of my "ideal" character creation methods would be to write "Quertus - Wizard" on my sheet, and be done. The sheet is the mechanics, not the character - how much does a starting character need for mechanics?

This makes it sound like you don't want any rules or even want to play a game. You just want to do Free From Role Playing.



Ya know, when I go for a drop in game of Monopoly, I really don't want to spend 4 years getting a masters degree in "this guy's house rules" - I want to just be able to play the danged game. When I bring my Magic deck over to someone's house, I don't expect to have to deal with different rulings for each of my (and their) cards than I'm used to - I expect things to just work.

Of course many RPGs are way, way, way, way more advanced and complicated then simple games like Monopoly and Magic. And lots of games are simple so everyone, even little kids can play them. A lot of RPGs are complicated, as adults like complicated things.

Though you might note that people do have house rules for Monopoly. For example: putting all the 'taken' money under Free Parking, and giving it to the player that lands on that spot.



So, I guess my question is, why would you want all the bad that comes with incompatible games, unknown rules, and "rule zero", when the problem you described could instead be solved at the group level, or even by errata from the company?

No company can do or predict everything...and few people can. But that is the reason RPGs have a real person there to make calls and do things.

2D8HP
2018-02-11, 07:33 PM
......Of course many RPGs are way, way, way, way more advanced and complicated then simple games like Monopoly and Magic. And lots of games are simple so everyone, even little kids can play them. A lot of RPGs are complicated, as adults like complicated things......


Um... quite the opposite in my case D. U., as my craving for complexity is much less than when I was younger.

Tanarii
2018-02-11, 10:36 PM
Um... quite the opposite in my case D. U., as my craving for complexity is much less than when I was younger.
Agreed. I used to be into character building pr0n and reading complicated rules pr0n, and then desperately trying to find anyone else willing to try the damn things.

Now I just want to play or run the game, as smoothly and easily as possible, with full groups of other players who want to play the game and enjoy themself doing so. Challenge can come from actual xhallenges, not from struggling to understanding complex rules.

Steel Mirror
2018-02-11, 11:39 PM
Agreed. I used to be into character building pr0n and reading complicated rules pr0n, and then desperately trying to find anyone else willing to try the damn things.I'll throw in a +1 on this trajectory for tastes in RPG. I used to LOVE making characters for M&M, spending many hours on a character carefully calculating arrays and feats and disadvantages.

These days my system is FATE.

That's just like, my opinion, and people who like complex systems are totally legit, but it certainly hasn't been the case for me that more complicated=more adult.

Zilong
2018-02-11, 11:50 PM
Um... quite the opposite in my case D. U., as my craving for complexity is much less than when I was younger.

I can't even qualify for grognard status yet, but I already prefer simplicity over complexity. Maybe it's because I tend to GM for people who are either new or not particularly invested in mechanics. Whatever the reason, simple works better for me.

Quertus
2018-02-12, 02:06 AM
Quertius asked some great questions, which I've tried to answer fully and in good faith. So it's kind of long.

We disagree about role-playing, and that's fine. I'm not trying to convert anyone to my views, just explain what they are and where our differences come from.

Thanks!

Your response is excellent, and I think (correct me if I'm wrong) helps me see a lot of where you're coming from... Which, as you'll see, is, at times, scarily close to where I'm coming from.


He needs, well, a character. You may know what character you intend to play, and how that character fits into this particular DM's world at this particular moment, but that information is not contained in "Quertus - Wizard".

True. I guess my point was, that information is rarely contained in anything on the character sheet, so why should I care about (a complicated) character sheet? Why can't I just write down a name (Quertus), and maybe some reference to the rules set I'll be using (Wizard), and get on to the important stuff - the character, which isn't on the sheet?

All in all, I think we're on pretty much the same page here. :smallwink:


There's no point designing a wyvern hunter if the continent has no wyverns, or an anti-slavery paladin in a world with no slaves.

Actually, that depends (IMO). If you're running a hyper-focused **** like Quertus*, who really doesn't want to be "out adventuring" unless there's something related to their specialty, then, yeah, the content has to match their primary shtick. However, I've totally run a self-identified X-hunter in a game with no X.

Where we most likely differ, though, is that you want the character to match the setting, whereas I explicitly want the character to be "not from around here", and to explore the setting. So, for me, such mismatch is not only fine, but actually desirable.

But, absolutely, for a character to make sense, there must be something to have sparked their anti-slavery sentiment, or other such personality traits. Whatever it takes to understand where they came from to tie all this together is absolutely worth the effort.

But the extent that it needs to be reflected on the character sheet is merely a property of how mechanically complex the character sheet is, is it not? If the system / sheet doesn't have skills, you don't need to represent skills on the sheet, regardless of what skills the character reasonably would have based on their background.

And, if the GM were, say, running an established setting straight out of the books, the time you'd need to spend poking the GM for details - if you already knew the setting - would be zero, right?

* I may be being a bit hard on my signature character here to get a point across.


By the time I'm finished, I have a clear idea of who the character is, what he wants, how he acts, and how he fits into this part of this DM's world.

I guess I prefer for this to be an emergent property, developed in play. No, that goes too far.

I like to have developed the character "as an island", uprooted and transplanted to this setting. Some people seem to like to have the character start as a blank slate, and develop a personality and a backstory in play. I suspect you find my desire to have my character find their place in the world as an emergent property developed in play as alien as I find the aforementioned players' development of a personality in play.

But for a character from around here? Yeah, what you're saying makes perfect sense.


I repeat - the result of a "fast" character generation isn't a character; it’s a set of abilities.

Sure, but... You have no issue with "generating a list of abilities" being "fast", though, right?


Your analogy isn't analogous. Every game of Monopoly is based on the exact same layout of Atlantic City's streets. You are not exploring in a world designed by the banker.

Playing the danged game is exactly and precisely synonymous with exploring the DM's imagination. Even if there were a single set of rules that was right for every single world, and even if there were universal agreement on which rulebooks would be included and which version of which game would be played, exploring the mind of the DM is what we're doing.

"Any player knows the rules. A good player knows the extensions. A great player knows the DM."

Ok, but... I sent a deep sea probe to explore the GMs world, not the mars lander. I asked, "tell me about your mother" to explore the GMs mind, not "what are you afraid of?".

I don't want to have to fight to determine the definition of the word "railroading", or hear back that it depends on what the meaning of "is" is. :smallannoyed:

I want a nice, firm foundation of the rules and the English language to be the toolset with which I explore the world, and the GMs mind.

Changing those makes the process... needlessly laborious.


If I accepted the idea that we were playing a game like Magic – just a tactical game of "defeat the bad guys" – this argument might sway me. But in fact, I want my character to enter and explore an unknown world. It sounds like what I want in a fantasy game is exactly what you want to avoid.

And there's nothing wrong with us having different goals. But if our goals in the game are that different, then of course our pet peeves will be equally different.

No, terrifyingly enough, I think we want very much the same thing here. :smalleek:


No problems come from incompatible games, unknown rules, and "rule zero". Those problems all came from DMs with poor judgment. I don't want all the bad that comes from them, so I play with DMs whose judgment I trust.

A competent DM fixes all problems that come from incompatible games, unknown rules, and "rule zero". But no rule or agreement about what rules must be used can ever fix the problem of incompetent DMs.

Here you're just wrong, and I hope I can make one example very clear.

I one played a game of... Unreal Tournament*, I believe... where the "GM" was running so many custom mods that, by the time my computer had downloaded half of them, the match was over.

Similarly, I've seen too many GMs butcher too many otherwise viable characters or games by focusing overly much on labyrinthine rules changes.

If I have to spend the first 5 sessions rewriting your 20+ pages of house rules that left me begging for the clarity of gygaxian pros, into, you know, readable English, as my way of asking, "is this what the **** you meant to type?!", there might be a problem.

And, if I try to take that character to someone else's game, with their pages of cruft built on top of those pages and pages of house rules, it's just not going to be worth the GMs time to try to decipher that mess. Especially for a drop in game. Let alone if they have another 50 pages of house rules themselves. :smalleek:

Give me compatible games, thanks. Let what my character is be what my character is, and let them and the world make sense, and their place in the world make sense, no matter whose game I'm in.

It's hard to take the game seriously when, say, my weakling scribe is suddenly tossing planets because, oops, house rules. :smallannoyed:

Give me compatible games, thanks. Let what my character is be what my character is, and let them and the world make sense, and their place in the world make sense, no matter whose game I'm in.

* FPS video game that allowed custom content to be added piecemeal, and downloaded from the machine which started a given match.


Play with a DM you trust, and then trust your DM.

...


This makes it sound like you don't want any rules or even want to play a game. You just want to do Free From Role Playing.

Fair point, that is a bit potentially misleading.

As I tried to explain above, I was attempting to indicate that "wizard" was just a pointer to the rules set I could use during the game - kinda like the notion of having a "playbook" in... um... Apocalypse World? Or saying that my character was a "Bishop" in Chess - just a "here's the moves I can legally make, now let me get back to (focusing on) role-playing".

Don't get me wrong, I'm a war gamer - I'll totally care about that set of moves. Just... That isn't the character, you know?


Of course many RPGs are way, way, way, way more advanced and complicated then simple games like Monopoly and Magic. And lots of games are simple so everyone, even little kids can play them. A lot of RPGs are complicated, as adults like complicated things.

Though you might note that people do have house rules for Monopoly. For example: putting all the 'taken' money under Free Parking, and giving it to the player that lands on that spot.

Irrelevant. Regardless of the complexity of the game, I was exclusively referencing the complexity of the house rules. Free parking is a common house rule, sure. But most anyone can learn it in under 5 minutes. If I have to spend 3 weeks learning your house rules to play your Monopoly - more time than I'll spend actually playing the game - then maybe you should rethink your house rules.


No company can do or predict everything...and few people can. But that is the reason RPGs have a real person there to make calls and do things.

Having a social dynamic whereby rulings that produce a good gaming experience can be made is a good thing. What that structure looks like, and what such rulings will look like, will vary from group to group. But "Rulings" are also usually considered a different class of object than the "house rules" that I was discussing.


Um... quite the opposite in my case D. U., as my craving for complexity is much less than when I was younger.


Agreed. I used to be into character building pr0n and reading complicated rules pr0n, and then desperately trying to find anyone else willing to try the damn things.

Now I just want to play or run the game, as smoothly and easily as possible, with full groups of other players who want to play the game and enjoy themself doing so. Challenge can come from actual xhallenges, not from struggling to understanding complex rules.

I'm not sure if I'd have enjoyed 20 pages of near-indecipherable game math house rules in my youth or not, but, yeah, I certainly enjoy it less the older I get. :smallannoyed:

Kami2awa
2018-02-12, 03:31 AM
Rulebooks that are not well laid out. The book needs to be check-able quickly, and so requires a decent contents page, index, appropriate sections, and in the electronic age, hyperlinking.

Use of "This spell is just like Cure Light Wounds, however..." especially when the referenced spell is not on the same page or at least near it in the book (or in the worst case, in a completely different book). Is it really that hard to copy and paste the rules?

Use of fiction in rulebooks to convey important setting details (or in the worse case, actual rules).

In contrast with other posters, I don't like non-hp-based wound systems. They are often overcomplicated with too many factors to track (individual wounds, bleeding, etc) and become even more complicated for unusual situations like falling damage, fire or poison, or for non-human characters.

Character generation that takes too long, creating a barrier to actually playing the game (especially for new players).

Use of dice to track stats (ie the stat is the number uppermost on the dice) rather than writing them down. Guaranteed these will get knocked over or accidentally picked up and rolled during play.

Mordaedil
2018-02-12, 05:41 AM
Also, I find it strange that we're comparing D&D to Monopoly, when Monopoly is reknowned for being so complicated and aggregious that it's actually unplayable in its base state as it is a critical commentary on capitalism and not really a game. D&D is far simpler and less complex than that. Sure, you can try to make your campaign that difficult and complex, but if you do, I can almost guarantee nobody at the table are going to enjoy it.

I work as a tester for computer systems in a bank, and I find a lot of enjoyment in D&D for being as simple as it is, once you figure out the base mechanics and underlying structure. Complications like feats and such are of course not always as easy to interpret, and sometimes require ruling on the spot, but that is often another tool the DM just has.

I certainly don't think adults are more attracted to complicated subjects naturally. That seems like a childish way of thinking.

Knaight
2018-02-12, 05:45 AM
Also, I find it strange that we're comparing D&D to Monopoly, when Monopoly is reknowned for being so complicated and aggregious that it's actually unplayable in its base state as it is a critical commentary on capitalism and not really a game. D&D is far simpler and less complex than that. Sure, you can try to make your campaign that difficult and complex, but if you do, I can almost guarantee nobody at the table are going to enjoy it.

Monopoly is a pretty basic game - it's negative reputation is based more on being long, tedious, luck based, and heavy on player elimination. The entire game is simpler than the class mechanics for almost every class in any edition of D&D.

Max_Killjoy
2018-02-12, 07:40 AM
Complex systems often suffer from the additional problem of being very poorly presented in organization and layout. With a well-laid-out presentation, a system can be complex without being confusing. Keep in mind, also, that "complex" and "convoluted" are not precisely the same thing. I've seen some fairly simple systems that somehow managed to be very convoluted.

But what bothers me is simplicity being treated as a goal or "good" in and of itself. Sometimes that last 10% of the simplicity isn't worth everything sacrificed to obtain it.


(These discussions can be hard because each person's experience, and thus their personal scale, can be very different. Two people can look at the same system and have very different ideas about how complex it is, relative to other systems they've played, so there ends up being a lot of people talking past each other. If they sat down and looked at game systems they might agree, but one of them is coming at it saying "this is simple enough" and the other is coming at it from "this is complex enough".)

PhoenixPhyre
2018-02-12, 07:44 AM
But what bothers me is simplicity being treated as a goal or "good" in and of itself. Sometimes that last 10% of the simplicity isn't worth everything sacrificed to obtain it.


Make everything as simple as possible, and no simpler. Oversimplification (and it's cousin, forcing everything into the same mechanic even if it's really a disjoint concept) are a problem I see a lot. Of course, the flip side (complexity out of a desire for so-called realism) is also a problem. Mediums are happy. Except when they're possessed by angry ghosts.

Mordaedil
2018-02-12, 07:54 AM
Monopoly is a pretty basic game - it's negative reputation is based more on being long, tedious, luck based, and heavy on player elimination. The entire game is simpler than the class mechanics for almost every class in any edition of D&D.

That's a really rough sell, mate.

Cluedrew
2018-02-12, 08:37 AM
On Simplicity: All other things being equal, I will take the simple game over the more complex on. On the other hand a system that manages to leverage that complexity and get that much more out of it, yes please. Although that is actually a good deal harder than it looks in many cases, but some games do it.

And, a pet peeve: Capitalizing game master*: when it is in short form: GM, yes that is how you show it isn't a word but a collection of letters. But (at least where I'm from) you don't capitalize a something unless it is unique, generally a name or a title of a single individual. But there are many game masters, so I'm pretty sure it is not supposed to get this treatment.

* I'm going with Knaight's "unimportant things that annoy me" version.

Tanarii
2018-02-12, 10:10 AM
Monopoly is a pretty basic game - it's negative reputation is based more on being long, tedious, luck based, and heavy on player elimination. The entire game is simpler than the class mechanics for almost every class in any edition of D&D.
The thing that gives Monopoly its reputation as long and tedious is usually additional house rules, especially ones that enhance luck or lower player elimination. Played by the standard rules it's usually over in an hour.

That's still too long for most kids, compared to (say) a game of Life. But honestly, monopoly isn't a kids game at all. It's a game for ruthless adults who have good strategic thinking. Edit: or at least a decent grasp of the rules, values of properties based on probability they will be landed upon, and the distribution of values on 2d6.

CharonsHelper
2018-02-12, 11:02 AM
On Simplicity: All other things being equal, I will take the simple game over the more complex on. On the other hand a system that manages to leverage that complexity and get that much more out of it, yes please. Although that is actually a good deal harder than it looks in many cases, but some games do it.

My general rule is that depth=good / complexity=bad, but complexity is the currency used to purchase depth. So - a game designer needs to go bargain hunting for good deals as well as budget their complexity on the focus of the game system rather than spending complexity on extravagant bits which don't add much to the core - even if they're cool on their own.

At least that's the way I look at it when I'm writing.


And, a pet peeve: Capitalizing game master*: when it is in short form: GM, yes that is how you show it isn't a word but a collection of letters. But (at least where I'm from) you don't capitalize a something unless it is unique, generally a name or a title of a single individual. But there are many game masters, so I'm pretty sure it is not supposed to get this treatment.

Acronyms are customarily capitalized when you pronounce it as the letters.


Use all capitals if an abbreviation is pronounced as the individual letters: BBC, VAT, etc; if it is an acronym (pronounced as a word) spell out with initial capital, eg Nasa, Nato, unless it can be considered to have entered the language as an everyday word, such as awol, laser and, more recently, asbo, pin number and sim card. Note that pdf and plc are lowercase.

But yes - "game master" should probably be lower case. Unless you consider it to be a title?

Florian
2018-02-12, 11:29 AM
My general rule is that depth=good / complexity=bad, but complexity is the currency used to purchase depth. So - a game designer needs to go bargain hunting for good deals as well as budget their complexity on the focus of the game system rather than spending complexity on extravagant bits which don't add much to the core - even if they're cool on their own.

Well, ok then: My pet peeve are "game systems" with unified task resolution and everything being connected to the "core".

In theory, it´s an elegant solution. Having worked in software development, I know the value of design patterns, common frameworks, code snippets and an object-oriented approach to work.

But for RPG, I rather have discrete "blocks" or "modules" of rules that cover specific tasks/actions and that will only come up when used, no need to be fully integrated into "core".

PhoenixPhyre
2018-02-12, 11:31 AM
Well, ok then: My pet peeve are "game systems" with unified task resolution and everything being connected to the "core".

In theory, it´s an elegant solution. Having worked in software development, I know the value of design patterns, common frameworks, code snippets and an object-oriented approach to work.

But for RPG, I rather have discrete "blocks" or "modules" of rules that cover specific tasks/actions and that will only come up when used, no need to be fully integrated into "core".

I agree that having separate modules tends to make for easier play, as well as a more faithful representation of the fiction. Different things are different and should be treated differently. Game designers, like theoreticians more generally, have this urge to cram everything into their favorite mechanic, even if it doesn't fit very well.

CharonsHelper
2018-02-12, 11:43 AM
Well, ok then: My pet peeve are "game systems" with unified task resolution and everything being connected to the "core".

In theory, it´s an elegant solution. Having worked in software development, I know the value of design patterns, common frameworks, code snippets and an object-oriented approach to work.

But for RPG, I rather have discrete "blocks" or "modules" of rules that cover specific tasks/actions and that will only come up when used, no need to be fully integrated into "core".

I'm actually with you.

I do think that the different pieces should use the same logic. (Ex: roll over / roll under / success dice pools - shouldn't be mixed together) But the obsession with core mechanic gets on my nerves.

Heck - in my system attack rolls vary based upon the weapon being used. (Ex: assault rifle is 2d10 while pistol is 2d8) But while I don't have a single mechanic - everything is a TN roll-over mechanic.

1337 b4k4
2018-02-12, 12:01 PM
I'm actually with you.

I do think that the different pieces should use the same logic. (Ex: roll over / roll under / success dice pools - shouldn't be mixed together) But the obsession with core mechanic gets on my nerves.

Heck - in my system attack rolls vary based upon the weapon being used. (Ex: assault rifle is 2d10 while pistol is 2d8) But while I don't have a single mechanic - everything is a TN roll-over mechanic.

Honesty I don’t even mind mixing roll over/roll under where it makes sense. E.g ability checks. If I want a straight STR check, I could come up with a modifier system based on your str score and a target number and then a series of situational mods, or I can simply have you roll under your str after applying situational mods. The second is objectively simpler and less fiddly, but is viewed as more complex because now you have to remember that stat checks are roll under

Pex
2018-02-12, 12:50 PM
In order to use a character ability, the whole point of being that character, you need to kill yourself to do it. You lose hit points or take penalties to game statistics or lose the ability to do anything the following round or two or three. The game rules punish you for doing what you are supposed to be doing.

Max_Killjoy
2018-02-12, 12:56 PM
On the flip side of the "unified mechanic" discussion, I've seen systems that seem to be a random assortment of tacked-on mechanics that each work differently, contradict or just plain fall apart when they overlap, and require X times the mental overhead because they have nothing in common.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-02-12, 01:17 PM
I think it's important to distinguish a few things regarding mechanics. All names subject to change.

1) Randomization method (ie what do you roll). Percentile? d20? Dice pool? Bell curve (NdM)? Some mixture? Cards? Advantage/disadvantage?

2) Modifiers (ie what modifiers are added to/subtracted from the randomizer, if any). Ability scores? skill values? Circumstance modifiers? Do they stack? Not stack? Sometimes stack? Conditionally present? Always present?

3) Success determination (ie how do you decide what the randomizer result means). Roll under? contested roll? Fixed TN? Variable TN? degrees of success/failure?

My preferences:
1) Most things use the same randomization mechanic, possibly plus something like advantage/disadvantage. Occasional percentile rolls are fine, but if one thing uses 3d6, another uses 1d20, a third uses cards...no thanks.

2) Choose one and stick with it. I'm not fond of circumstantial, stacking modifiers. Each type of action resolution can use a different modifier set, but those should be relatively static IMO. It's why I like advantage/disadvantage (or adding extra dice). Rolling dice is funner than doing conditional math.

3) Broad categories of things should use the same determination method, but different categories can use different things. I'm fine with mixing Variable TN (AC/saves from a D&D perspective) with occasional contested rolls, but it should be a simple comparison (is X > Y? if yes, success). I'm not opposed to degrees of success/degrees of failure, but they should be narratively reasonable (fit with the fiction, not from some table).

1337 b4k4
2018-02-12, 03:10 PM
1) Most things use the same randomization mechanic, possibly plus something like advantage/disadvantage. Occasional percentile rolls are fine, but if one thing uses 3d6, another uses 1d20, a third uses cards...no thanks.


See but different die rolls get different types of results. Consider, D&D skills would be better as 3d6 rather than a d20 roll. The reason for this is skills are frequently one (or two) rolls at the most and are supposed to be trained things. The swinginess of a flat d20 roll means that we’ve invented all sorts of ways to “average” out D&D skills. We have take 10, skill challenges, massively escalating skill bonuses (with corresponding penalties for not having the skill). All of which are simply trying to address that any individual skill roll should fall into the average more often than not.

By comparison it’s fine for combat to be swingy d20 rolls because an individual combat session will have multiple rolls, giving you the bell curve results over time in a way that the players can feel at the table and in a way that single roll skill checks don’t allow.

Beyond that take old style D&D open doors checks. Everyone can make that check and succeed on a 1 or 2 in 6. If you have a high STR you can do that on a 3 or even a 4 as well. A moderately high STR character is 20% better at something they should be better at and the strongest are nearly 35% better. If on the other hand your door open check is a DC 10, your high STR characters need at least a +4 modifier for the same increase in effectiveness and your max modifier needs to be +7. So either only the strongest of the strong are better at opening doors or to accomplish the same result as having a different roll you have an “open doors” only special STR modifier.

In fact it is my opinion that the plethora of modifiers and bonuses and such that many modern games have is a direct result of this fear of different rolling mechanics. Yes you have to remember different mechanics, but honestly I don’t think that’s really any harder than remembering all the special modifiers instead

Florian
2018-02-12, 03:22 PM
On the flip side of the "unified mechanic" discussion, I've seen systems that seem to be a random assortment of tacked-on mechanics that each work differently, contradict or just plain fall apart when they overlap, and require X times the mental overhead because they have nothing in common.

That's more a by-product of the early "sim"-based approach.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-02-12, 03:25 PM
See but different die rolls get different types of results. Consider, D&D skills would be better as 3d6 rather than a d20 roll. The reason for this is skills are frequently one (or two) rolls at the most and are supposed to be trained things. The swinginess of a flat d20 roll means that we’ve invented all sorts of ways to “average” out D&D skills. We have take 10, skill challenges, massively escalating skill bonuses (with corresponding penalties for not having the skill). All of which are simply trying to address that any individual skill roll should fall into the average more often than not.

By comparison it’s fine for combat to be swingy d20 rolls because an individual combat session will have multiple rolls, giving you the bell curve results over time in a way that the players can feel at the table and in a way that single roll skill checks don’t allow.

Beyond that take old style D&D open doors checks. Everyone can make that check and succeed on a 1 or 2 in 6. If you have a high STR you can do that on a 3 or even a 4 as well. A moderately high STR character is 20% better at something they should be better at and the strongest are nearly 35% better. If on the other hand your door open check is a DC 10, your high STR characters need at least a +4 modifier for the same increase in effectiveness and your max modifier needs to be +7. So either only the strongest of the strong are better at opening doors or to accomplish the same result as having a different roll you have an “open doors” only special STR modifier.

In fact it is my opinion that the plethora of modifiers and bonuses and such that many modern games have is a direct result of this fear of different rolling mechanics. Yes you have to remember different mechanics, but honestly I don’t think that’s really any harder than remembering all the special modifiers instead

I have issues with trying to teach new players--training them to remember that it's always a d20 if I ask you to roll is painful enough. Saying "well, this is d20, that's 3d6, the other is ..." would be annoying.

The probability changes are better (in my opinion) if you restrict the range of things that actually get rolled for. If the range is small enough, all distributions are linear. Most things should succeed without a roll; some should be impossible to do (so no roll, just fail). Even things that can fail should only be rolled if the consequences are interesting. Rolling to walk up stairs (or climb normal trees, or, for a modern example, drive a car under non-combat situations) is obnoxious. Roll for things that are a) in serious doubt, b) interesting, and c) non-repeatable (without interesting consequences anyway). Use features (class features, feats, skill tricks, whatever) to really say "you're an expert in X."

If you need to have a more curved distribution, roll more separate checks, each one moving the narrative forward and changing the landscape. If you fail at climbing, you'll have to find another way up. But each success or failure should be small (more like hitting or missing, not like "roll to win").

The less we try to simulate a detailed model, the better the model actually fits the fiction.

Pex
2018-02-12, 04:10 PM
I have issues with trying to teach new players--training them to remember that it's always a d20 if I ask you to roll is painful enough. Saying "well, this is d20, that's 3d6, the other is ..." would be annoying.

The probability changes are better (in my opinion) if you restrict the range of things that actually get rolled for. If the range is small enough, all distributions are linear. Most things should succeed without a roll; some should be impossible to do (so no roll, just fail). Even things that can fail should only be rolled if the consequences are interesting. Rolling to walk up stairs (or climb normal trees, or, for a modern example, drive a car under non-combat situations) is obnoxious. Roll for things that are a) in serious doubt, b) interesting, and c) non-repeatable (without interesting consequences anyway). Use features (class features, feats, skill tricks, whatever) to really say "you're an expert in X."

If you need to have a more curved distribution, roll more separate checks, each one moving the narrative forward and changing the landscape. If you fail at climbing, you'll have to find another way up. But each success or failure should be small (more like hitting or missing, not like "roll to win").

The less we try to simulate a detailed model, the better the model actually fits the fiction.

As long as the game provides examples of things that should succeed without a roll and things that should be impossible instead of the DM having to make everything up leading to my character can only do things based on who is DM that day, no problem. :smallwink:

Quertus
2018-02-12, 04:38 PM
I have issues with trying to teach new players--training them to remember that it's always a d20 if I ask you to roll is painful enough. Saying "well, this is d20, that's 3d6, the other is ..." would be annoying.

I am so sorry that your players have trouble grasping this concept. I have taught multiple 7-year-olds to play 3e D&D competently. The unified d20 mechanic is a brilliant improvement over earlier editions, from a training PoV. It's why, even though I enjoy 2e more, I suggest new players learn 3e first.

So... I suppose it depends on the purpose of the system. A "Basic" D&D should/could use the d20 system, then a more "Advanced" version could replace the d20 with 3d6 for skill checks. :smallamused:

PhoenixPhyre
2018-02-12, 06:05 PM
As long as the game provides examples of things that should succeed without a roll and things that should be impossible instead of the DM having to make everything up leading to my character can only do things based on who is DM that day, no problem. :smallwink:

Noted. We've had this conversation before :smallsmile:


I am so sorry that your players have trouble grasping this concept. I have taught multiple 7-year-olds to play 3e D&D competently. The unified d20 mechanic is a brilliant improvement over earlier editions, from a training PoV. It's why, even though I enjoy 2e more, I suggest new players learn 3e first.

So... I suppose it depends on the purpose of the system. A "Basic" D&D should/could use the d20 system, then a more "Advanced" version could replace the d20 with 3d6 for skill checks. :smallamused:

I think I wasn't clear enough. I basically agree here--having one mechanism (d20 + modifiers) over many is a great improvement. I don't want a bifurcated system, but if there is I'd rather put that elsewhere (among the different mechanical elements) instead of using different dice. I don't think that using different dice really adds anything.

I find that an obsession with statistics and theoretical probabilities is a detriment to a game system. The difference between a flat roll and the bell curve of 3d6 is small over the expected number of comparable rolls during a session. How many skill checks do you make that have the same modifiers (including circumstantial ones) and the same DC? Certainly not enough to invoke the law of large numbers. The ballpark number for that (where you can reliably tell a bell curve) is somewhere around 30--that's 30 observations drawn from the same distribution including modifiers. That means that, for me, the type of dice you roll all comes down to simplicity. If you're going to roll a bunch of them, do something simple (2dX at most). Shadowrun-style massive dice pools involve either automated dice rollers or lots of time spent counting dice.

I very much believe that trying to be "accurate" by having detailed rules is a trap in game-system design. Tighter rule-sets can't actually portray the underlying fiction that much better, and in exchange you make things complex and make the game about playing the rules, not the fiction. The more I play the more I appreciate lighter, more modular systems with fewer interacting parts. As someone said above, having "just like X, but..." means that you have to know both sets of rules. Flatten that exception hierarchy, please!

Edit: And Quertus, I realize this wasn't intentional, but that opening couple of sentences came across as really condescending and belittling. "I'm sorry your players are morons stupider than 7-year-olds."

Max_Killjoy
2018-02-12, 06:35 PM
As long as the game provides examples of things that should succeed without a roll and things that should be impossible instead of the DM having to make everything up leading to my character can only do things based on who is DM that day, no problem. :smallwink:

There's a pet peeve -- games that leave critical details unspoken either deliberately, or because the game's authors had so internalized their own assumptions that it didn't occur to them to that others have to start from a blank slate.

Max_Killjoy
2018-02-12, 06:37 PM
Edit: And Quertus, I realize this wasn't intentional, but that opening couple of sentences came across as really condescending and belittling. "I'm sorry your players are morons stupider than 7-year-olds."


Yeah, that was kinda my first impression too.

Cluedrew
2018-02-12, 07:35 PM
To be fair, if your players where dumber than 7-year olds, I would feel sorry for you too.

Although I have found that role-playing games, because of their narrative components and soft edges, are very much a matter of "headspace". How you think about often has more to do with whether it works or not than any actual mechanical understanding. And that I have never quite figured out how to communicate.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-02-12, 07:40 PM
To be fair, if your players where dumber than 7-year olds, I would feel sorry for you too.

Although I have found that role-playing games, because of their narrative components and soft edges, are very much a matter of "headspace". How you think about often has more to do with whether it works or not than any actual mechanical understanding. And that I have never quite figured out how to communicate.

I'll admit that a lot of my struggles (which, by the way are way better playing 5e D&D than 4e) have to do with the nature of the games I'm running in those cases--max 1 hr, after school, at most 1x/week, with teenagers. Most of the kids don't own their own rulebooks, so it's not like they're immersing themselves in the game outside of play time. With 5e, the motivated ones pick it up (although oddly they have the worst time telling the dice apart...) within a couple sessions. And no, there's little interest in any non-D&D games and I have serious investment in D&D (and no time to learn another game system).

This also feeds my need for simplicity--if a round of combat takes 15 minutes for people who know what they're doing, then that means that a single round of combat will occupy the vast majority of the time for a session. The fact that I have to remember all of it as the DM and have no experts to help me makes me very unwilling to deal with complexity for complexity's sake.

Quertus
2018-02-12, 07:47 PM
Edit: And Quertus, I realize this wasn't intentional, but that opening couple of sentences came across as really condescending and belittling. "I'm sorry your players are morons stupider than 7-year-olds."

Erm, I see how it can be read that way. :smallredface:

My experience is, give some intelligent 7-year-olds some one-on-one explanations, have them make a few sample rolls before the actual game, and they'll play the game much more competently than many of the college-educated adults I've played 2e D&D with.

Given that I've taught both editions to adults & kids alike, I see 3e as a great improvement from a teachability standpoint. But I still enjoy 2e more.

Thinking about it, I must admit, the fact that your players seem to have had more trouble than 7-year-olds must say something, but what it says is open to debate. It could say something about your players, my 7-year-olds, or our teaching methods. Or, if my groups are any indication, it could just be the fact that my 7-year-olds aren't likely to be drinking during the game. :smalltongue:

But whatever the cause, I've lived through players never gaining a clue how to play the game back in the 2e and earlier era, so my sympathy for anyone going through that is genuine.

Tanarii
2018-02-12, 09:37 PM
Ive tried teaching kids under 10 how to play dnd before. It doesnt go well. I suspect the problem is my teaching skills.

Strangly seberal times I've had mothers bring 8 or so year old children to official play games I'm running, and the kid who already know how to play teaches mom. 😂

Jay R
2018-02-12, 09:50 PM
I wrote a five-page response, trying to answer your every point. Then I tossed most of it, since there is a single issue on which our approaches differ, and which leads to most of our other differences. [Even this shorter reply is too long.]


Where we most likely differ, though, is that you want the character to match the setting, whereas I explicitly want the character to be "not from around here", and to explore the setting. So, for me, such mismatch is not only fine, but actually desirable.

"Not from around here" is fine. Many of my characters fit that mold. But I still need to know what it's like where he's from to develop his character.

Harry Potter, Bilbo Baggins, Lucy Pevensie, Alice, Neo, Superman, Captain Blood, Ford Prefect, and D'Artagnan are all "not from around here," and that's crucial to their stories. But where they are from is still a large part of who they are, what they can do, and how they explore the setting.


I like to have developed the character "as an island", uprooted and transplanted to this setting. Some people seem to like to have the character start as a blank slate, and develop a personality and a backstory in play.

These are two very different things. I have certainly developed characters as an island, uprooted and transplanted. But I developed them. Ornrandir’s first adventure was an ocean voyage to a new continent. But the fact that he was raised in an orphanage, didn’t even know he was an elf, knew nothing of elvish culture, and grew up as an outcast were important parts of who he was even when he was uprooted and transplanted.

This is nothing like an adult character who is a blank slate. I have no interest in, understanding of, or ability to play, such a character.


I suspect you find my desire to have my character find their place in the world as an emergent property developed in play as alien as I find the aforementioned players' development of a personality in play.

Mostly I just find it impossible. When I sit down to play, he has motivations, or I wouldn't have him do anything. Those can be:
1. just my personality, or
2. a "generic adventurer", or
3. an actual character that was conceived and developed in character generation.

Yes, of course the character will develop, grow, and change in play. But develop, grow, and change from what?

When Samwise Gamgee goes to Mordor, his personality grows, emerges and changes. But he's still clearly a hobbit gardener from the Shire. D'Artagnan grows and develops from the uninformed rural outsider who came to Paris, but who he is, how he changes, and who he becomes are all very much affected by the fact that he's a Gascon. Lucy Pevensie was uprooted and transplanted to Narnia in another universe. But her English culture, her relationship to her family, and even World War II, affect who she is, why she's there, and what she does.


And, if I try to take that character to someone else's game, ...

Here we really do disagree strongly. Unless these two DMs are running scenarios on the same world, or your character has universe-hopping abilities, this can't happen. The problem is that your character wasn't built for this game and this world.

Captain Blood doesn't stop being a pirate in the Caribbean to go have a single adventure in Narnia. That's a bad Caribbean pirate and a bad Narnia adventure.




It's hard to take the game seriously when, say, my weakling scribe is suddenly tossing planets because, oops, house rules. :smallannoyed:

Yup. That's certainly one of the reasons not to put your weakling scribe in a game he wasn't built for. [But frankly, tossing planets isn't any more unlikely than being able to leap from universe to universe at will.]


Give me compatible games, thanks. Let what my character is be what my character is, and let them and the world make sense, and their place in the world make sense, no matter whose game I'm in.

Make up your mind. Either the character's place in the world makes sense, or nothing changes no matter whose game you're in. It can't be both. A successful wyvern-hunter's place does not make sense in a game with no wyverns.

If my character was Frodo Baggins, I would want his connections to the Shire to be as real, and as important, as they are in [I]Lord of the Rings, even if he's adventuring hundreds of miles away. If I'm running a D'Artagnan, then his origins as a Gascon, and how out of place he is in Paris, should be center stage. Captain Blood, a pirate on the other side of the world from where he became a doctor in Ireland, should still be Irish, a doctor, and out of place in the Caribbean. That's (part of) what it means to have a character.

If I'm playing a wizard in Middle-Earth, he should be one of the Maiar (angels), with a staff, and with deep understanding of the universe. If I'm playing a Hogwarts wizard, he should have a wand, and not understand how the physics of the world works. A Discworld wizard should be very different from either of the above two.

Enjoy the kind of games you enjoy, and that's great. But since you want the worlds not to have the kind of uniqueness I yearn for, it's no surprise that our approaches to character design are different.

Knaight
2018-02-12, 10:02 PM
Here we really do disagree strongly. Unless these two DMs are running scenarios on the same world, or your character has universe-hopping abilities, this can't happen. The problem is that your character wasn't built for this game and this world.

Captain Blood doesn't stop being a pirate in the Caribbean to go have a single adventure in Narnia. That's a bad Caribbean pirate and a bad Narnia adventure.

[I should have listed people wanting to use the same character in different worlds as one of my pet peeves.]

I'd consider most of this inapplicable to the thread because it's largely a matter of play style and not system, but the expectation within a system that this is how it's played is definitely a pet peeve. The whole model of players having characters that have to start at the beginning character standards of a system*, which can progress** at any table and switch between them has its place in the hobby. Living Greyhawk, AL, etc. existing works for a lot of people.

It's just never going to happen anywhere near my table, and the few systems which encourage this as a default style of play*** all have that component as a major pet peeve. Similarly the whole idea of all settings by the rules being part of the same setting that facilitates this can similarly go away.

*Let's be honest here, they start at level 1. I've never seen this phenomenon outside D&D.
**Level up.
***Early D&D. As far as I know "early D&D" is a comprehensive list of these systems.

Tanarii
2018-02-12, 10:13 PM
***Early D&D. As far as I know "early D&D" is a comprehensive list of these systems.
Official play was huge in 4e and even bigger in 5e. The 5e PHB advertises it on the last page in a section titled "What Comes Next?"

Edit: if you mean systems that assume convention play and special clubs with many members playing multiple sessions of one big campaign will be the normal situation ... I'm totally with you.

Knaight
2018-02-12, 10:17 PM
Official play was huge in 4e and even bigger in 5e. The 5e PHB advertises it on the last page in a section titled "What Comes Next?"

Edit: if you mean systems that assume convention play and special clubs with many members playing multiple sessions of one big campaign will be the normal situation ... I'm totally with you.

The expectation that that exists in home games seems to have been dropped though, as has the whole idea of the big campaign with lots of GMs.

1337 b4k4
2018-02-13, 01:06 AM
I too would like HP to go away. It's a relic of battle occurring on the scale of a larger military formation representing an amalgamation of personnel remaining and troop cohesion, that does not belong on the "more detailed" scale of an RPG.


I would like a system where all damage on all things is resolved on a module-basis, and you die when the table says you die. Here's what I would do in my ideal system:

A creature's body would have a hit location table, used to determine where a non-called shot lands.

Then, for each location, there'd also be a damage table, used to determine what the shot does to the target. Damage would apply as modifier to the damage table increasing result severity, Armor would reduce damage, and Penetration would reduce armor. The damage table would range from "Minor Scratch" to "Creature Dies". Most results would impose temporary or permanent penalties on the target. I would keep most of the descriptions mechanical. There'd be a set of general tables for common body parts, and some creatures may have unique tables for special body parts of because of their special defensive qualities.

Isn't this basically an HP system where MAX(HP) is simply unknown? Other than the status effects (which you can add to an HP system) what would be the fundamental difference between a character suffering 10 "minor scratch results" followed by a "die" result and a character with 28HP taking 10x 2 DMG hits and a single 8 DMG hit? Don't get me wrong I'm all about experimenting with health mechanics, but to my mind any system that amounts to "take damage until you die" is indistinguishable from an HP system.

Florian
2018-02-13, 02:34 AM
Isn't this basically an HP system where MAX(HP) is simply unknown? Other than the status effects (which you can add to an HP system) what would be the fundamental difference between a character suffering 10 "minor scratch results" followed by a "die" result and a character with 28HP taking 10x 2 DMG hits and a single 8 DMG hit? Don't get me wrong I'm all about experimenting with health mechanics, but to my mind any system that amounts to "take damage until you die" is indistinguishable from an HP system.

It´s actually a description of the Warhammer/Dark Heresy works. Overcome armor, break thru wounds threshold, then use the critical hits tables to determine the actual effect of an attack (instead of the hp abstraction).

Jay R
2018-02-13, 09:04 AM
I too would like HP to go away. It's a relic of battle occurring on the scale of a larger military formation representing an amalgamation of personnel remaining and troop cohesion, that does not belong on the "more detailed" scale of an RPG.

One of the reasons a lot of people don't like playing the first level of D&D is that their character can be killed with a single strike.

Unfortunately, this is an automatic feature of any accurate, "more detailed" simulation of combat.

The major effect of hit points on higher levels is to have a combat system in which you can't be killed quickly. Many people want this aspect.

Quertus
2018-02-13, 10:47 AM
"Not from around here" is fine. Many of my characters fit that mold. But I still need to know what it's like where he's from to develop his character.

Harry Potter, Bilbo Baggins, Lucy Pevensie, Alice, Neo, Superman, Captain Blood, Ford Prefect, and D'Artagnan are all "not from around here," and that's crucial to their stories. But where they are from is still a large part of who they are, what they can do, and how they explore the setting.

These are two very different things. I have certainly developed characters as an island, uprooted and transplanted. But I developed them. Ornrandir’s first adventure was an ocean voyage to a new continent. But the fact that he was raised in an orphanage, didn’t even know he was an elf, knew nothing of elvish culture, and grew up as an outcast were important parts of who he was even when he was uprooted and transplanted.

This is nothing like an adult character who is a blank slate. I have no interest in, understanding of, or ability to play, such a character.

Yes, of course the character will develop, grow, and change in play. But develop, grow, and change from what?

When Samwise Gamgee goes to Mordor, his personality grows, emerges and changes. But he's still clearly a hobbit gardener from the Shire. D'Artagnan grows and develops from the uninformed rural outsider who came to Paris, but who he is, how he changes, and who he becomes are all very much affected by the fact that he's a Gascon. Lucy Pevensie was uprooted and transplanted to Narnia in another universe. But her English culture, her relationship to her family, and even World War II, affect who she is, why she's there, and what she does.

If my character was Frodo Baggins, I would want his connections to the Shire to be as real, and as important, as they are in Lord of the Rings, even if he's adventuring hundreds of miles away. If I'm running a D'Artagnan, then his origins as a Gascon, and how out of place he is in Paris, should be center stage. Captain Blood, a pirate on the other side of the world from where he became a doctor in Ireland, should still be Irish, a doctor, and out of place in the Caribbean. That's (part of) what it means to have a character.

If I'm playing a wizard in Middle-Earth, he should be one of the Maiar (angels), with a staff, and with deep understanding of the universe. If I'm playing a Hogwarts wizard, he should have a wand, and not understand how the physics of the world works. A Discworld wizard should be very different from either of the above two.

I know I didn't express myself as clearly as I'd like, but through all the above, I believe that we're in 100% agreement. I care about and need to develop the history and personality, the character of the character. (Incidentally, this is why about half of my characters are actually a god come down to play at being mortal, so that I don't have to actually come up with a "real" personality and history, and, instead, am simply playing one of my previous ascended characters. Much more expedient that way.)


Here we really do disagree strongly. Unless these two DMs are running scenarios on the same world, or your character has universe-hopping abilities, this can't happen. The problem is that your character wasn't built for this game and this world.

Captain Blood doesn't stop being a pirate in the Caribbean to go have a single adventure in Narnia. That's a bad Caribbean pirate and a bad Narnia adventure.

being able to leap from universe to universe at will.]

I mean, I prefer to play at high level so that my character does have the ability to leap from world to world at will, but that certainly isn't a requirement. There's always alien abduction, strange relics, portals to fall through, or just getting "Samurai Jacked". One of my characters has a habit of sometimes waking up in a new world when they sleep, for unknown reasons. Another has a habit of dying, and waking up in a different world. Some just travel, and don't even realize that they're on different worlds. Quertus, my signature character for whom this account is named, is one of my most aware characters, and has traveled to dozens of different copies of Toril, let alone hundreds of other worlds.


A successful wyvern-hunter's place does not make sense in a game with no wyverns.

"Who is the X-hunter when he's not hunting X?" is a perfectly valid question to ask.


But since you want the worlds not to have the kind of uniqueness I yearn for, it's no surprise that our approaches to character design are different.

Exploration is my favorite "aesthetic". I love unique worlds. But I enjoy exploring them as someone "not from around here".


[I should have listed people wanting to use the same character in different worlds as one of my pet peeves.]


I'd consider most of this inapplicable to the thread because it's largely a matter of play style and not system, but the expectation within a system that this is how it's played is definitely a pet peeve. The whole model of players having characters that have to start at the beginning character standards of a system*, which can progress** at any table and switch between them has its place in the hobby. Living Greyhawk, AL, etc. existing works for a lot of people.

It's just never going to happen anywhere near my table, and the few systems which encourage this as a default style of play*** all have that component as a major pet peeve. Similarly the whole idea of all settings by the rules being part of the same setting that facilitates this can similarly go away.

Everyone had their blind spots. No GM will ever create as varied content as 20 GMs; no single GM will ever let me explore the various facets of a character as well as 20 GMs.

I'll stick with the "one character, 20 GMs" model, thanks.


One of the reasons a lot of people don't like playing the first level of D&D is that their character can be killed with a single strike.

Unfortunately, this is an automatic feature of any accurate, "more detailed" simulation of combat.

The major effect of hit points on higher levels is to have a combat system in which you can't be killed quickly. Many people want this aspect.

Most people want this in video games, too. I'm baffled that HP aren't in higher demand in RPGs, where you're supposed to be more attached to the character, don't have a save option, and have to spend time actually creating a new character. :smallconfused:

Max_Killjoy
2018-02-13, 10:57 AM
Someone "not from around here" is still from somewhere.

Even a single world is still an entire world and has a lot of "not around here" for every instance of "here".

I really don't see the need for characters to routinely be gods playing at mortal, or from an alien world or dimension, or whatever.

Quertus
2018-02-13, 11:03 AM
Someone "not from around here" is still from somewhere.

Even a single world is still an entire world and has a lot of "not around here" for every instance of "here".

I really don't see the need for characters to routinely be gods playing at mortal, or from an alien world or dimension, or whatever.

Oh, you're conflating two different ideas. Sorry for not being clear.

I enjoy playing "not from around here". There's a lot to that, and I'll happily go into detail on any questions you have, but... I prefer them to be from a "here" that I understand. And, IME, no GM who actually cares about their world will ever be satisfied with my understanding of their "here" any more than I am, so my characters, if at all possible, are never from the GM's world. EDIT: That wasn't as clear as I'd like, either. I prefer to learn about the GM's world in game, rather than beforehand. But, even when I try to learn beforehand, it never works out to both my & the GM's satisfaction. So, much better times all around for me to not even try, to not butcher the GM's world concept, and to enjoy Exploring the world.

The whole "actually a god thing" is a different, but related, issue. I want to understand my character. Even in games with "simple" character creation, I want to spend days if not weeks building the history and background and personality of my character. But you* want to play right now. Fine, I'll make up a fake history for a fake character, and actually be playing one of my ascended deities who is just pretending to be this mortal construct that they've made up. That way, I'm still playing a character, not a character sheet, but I'm playing the game right now, so we're all happy. EDIT: And, of course, "Existing Character" is the simplest instantiation of "character I've already made", but this runs into the issue of "But I was on Toril #3488, not Toril #616. I guess I must have fallen through a portal or something."

Clearer?

* "you" in general, not you in particular.

Max_Killjoy
2018-02-13, 11:07 AM
Everyone had their blind spots. No GM will ever create as varied content as 20 GMs; no single GM will ever let me explore the various facets of a character as well as 20 GMs.

I'll stick with the "one character, 20 GMs" model, thanks.


And what if a GM tells you "your character doesn't work in this setting, and in this setting there are no other worlds for your character to be from"? That is, what if there's no way to get from your character's "here" to the "here" of the actual campaign?




Most people want this in video games, too. I'm baffled that HP aren't in higher demand in RPGs, where you're supposed to be more attached to the character, don't have a save option, and have to spend time actually creating a new character. :smallconfused:


D&D-like big-scaling HP aren't in more demand for all the reasons repeatedly discussed here, which amount to "they're wonky and conflated as hell, and no one can agree on what they actually represent, and they only represent any one thing part of the time".

There are better ways to represent characters who are hard to kill besides running up a massive total of Heisenberg Points that an opponent has to wade through (unless they don't in some special case-by-cases instances).

Knaight
2018-02-13, 11:13 AM
I mean, I prefer to play at high level so that my character does have the ability to leap from world to world at will, but that certainly isn't a requirement. There's always alien abduction, strange relics, portals to fall through, or just getting "Samurai Jacked". One of my characters has a habit of sometimes waking up in a new world when they sleep, for unknown reasons. Another has a habit of dying, and waking up in a different world. Some just travel, and don't even realize that they're on different worlds. Quertus, my signature character for whom this account is named, is one of my most aware characters, and has traveled to dozens of different copies of Toril, let alone hundreds of other worlds.
This is all contingent on the worlds still somehow being part of the same setting, and there's absolutely not always alien abduction, strange relics, portals to fall through, etc. These world hopping characters are making a lot of demands of individual settings.


"Who is the X-hunter when he's not hunting X?" is a perfectly valid question to ask.
"Who is the X hunter when he's not hunting X" quickly becomes a much less reasonable question when X doesn't exist, unless they're supposed to be some level of crank or con man.



Everyone had their blind spots. No GM will ever create as varied content as 20 GMs; no single GM will ever let me explore the various facets of a character as well as 20 GMs.

I'll stick with the "one character, 20 GMs" model, thanks.
The thing about that model is that if you're maintaining the import standards I detailed (expecting to keep extant character things) and not just making the same character as a starting character elsewhere you're asking GMs to hand over partial creative control to some rando they've never met. That's a lot to ask. I wouldn't hand over partial creative control to a different version of myself running a different campaign, because there's no reason to think they'd be compatible, let alone someone I'd never even met.

Quertus
2018-02-13, 11:14 AM
And what if a GM tells you "your character doesn't work in this setting, and in this setting there are no other worlds for your character to be from"? That is, what if there's no way to get from your character's "here" to the "here" of the actual campaign?

Well, that one's easy: that's probably not a setting I'll have any interest in in the first place. :smalltongue:

Let me know when there's a more interesting game to play.

Because, yes, games like this is where I've learned that "from around here" with a GM that actually cares about their setting is a recipe for disaster. And that GMs that create such closed worlds - that think in terms of excluding things that they don't like - also rarely create content that interests me. See also "Railroading".


D&D-like big-scaling HP aren't in more demand for all the reasons repeatedly discussed here, which amount to "they're wonky and conflated as hell, and no one can agree on what they actually represent, and they only represent any one thing part of the time".

There are better ways to represent characters who are hard to kill besides running up a massive total of Heisenberg Points that an opponent has to wade through (unless they don't in some special case-by-cases instances).

I mean, I haven't actually done the math, but I think there's more complaints about SoD effects that just ignore HP and allow you to (maybe) one-shot someone than there are about HP, even on these boards. Thus, my confusion remains, unabated.

Knaight
2018-02-13, 11:14 AM
D&D-like big-scaling HP aren't in more demand for all the reasons repeatedly discussed here, which amount to "they're wonky and conflated as hell, and no one can agree on what they actually represent, and they only represent any one thing part of the time".

Minimally scaling HP works pretty well though. It's also fairly common outside D&D.


And that GMs that create such closed worlds - that think in terms of excluding things that they don't like - also rarely create content that interests me. See also "Railroading".
True. Only WotC has the right to decide what setting elements belong in campaigns, only they can decide to include what they like and exclude what they dislike. They have inherited the mantle from TSR, and in so doing became the one true curator. Any mere GM who has the temerity to make a setting they're interested in without adhering to the mandates of the great sages at WotC is obviously going to railroad their players and make boring works. After all, who's ever heard of a good fantasy setting that doesn't contain elves and dwarves?

Quertus
2018-02-13, 11:24 AM
This is all contingent on the worlds still somehow being part of the same setting, and there's absolutely not always alien abduction, strange relics, portals to fall through, etc. These world hopping characters are making a lot of demands of individual settings.

Having a way to get from place to place has never been a problem in any world I'd enjoy Exploring.


"Who is the X hunter when he's not hunting X" quickly becomes a much less reasonable question when X doesn't exist, unless they're supposed to be some level of crank or con man.

Having everyone believe that my Exorcist is a kook would be a hoot.


The thing about that model is that if you're maintaining the import standards I detailed (expecting to keep extant character things) and not just making the same character as a starting character elsewhere you're asking GMs to hand over partial creative control to some rando they've never met. That's a lot to ask.

No, I'm asking the GM to hand over COMPLETE creative control of the character to the player. They get the whole world, the player gets the character. I don't think that's a lot to ask.

Still, I feel like there's some alien (to me) sentiment that I'm missing here. Care to help me Explore? I don't even know enough to ask you questions besides, "what am I missing?".

EDIT: As to "creating the same character (as a starting character) in another world"... there's a lot of things for me to comment on here. As much as I care about background and backstory, actual played history is... "richer". If I'm not interested in giving up on even the lesser of the two, why would I want to give up the "good parts" of the character, their actual lived-though adventures? This mindset is equally baffling to me. I create characters for a reason, to explore certain facets of human psychology / the human experience. Quertus, my signature character for whom this account was named, was created because I was baffled that people could play the same RPG / War Game for years (or decades!) and still "not see the elephant", still not "get it". I built Quertus to help me explore that aspect of humanity. And I've gotten to play him enough that... hmmm... how to explain? That I know how it feels to be Quertus in a great variety of situations. Imagine an activity book that I get to stamp for every type of "encounter" I hit with a character. Or a huge picture that I get to color a section in with an experience. Having 20 Quertus' in 20 worlds would just have 20 mostly-blank pictures, but having 1 Quertus in 20 worlds gives a much more complete picture of what it means to be Quertus.


I wouldn't hand over partial creative control to a different version of myself running a different campaign, because there's no reason to think they'd be compatible, let alone someone I'd never even met.

Now, I've seen people running someone else's campaign. It was generally a disaster. That having been said, I've also been someone running someone else's adventure. There's one adventure I loved, stole (with GM's permission), and have run repeatedly. It's been loads of fun. :smallbiggrin:

EDIT:
True. Only WotC has the right to decide what setting elements belong in campaigns, only they can decide to include what they like and exclude what they dislike. They have inherited the mantle from TSR, and in so doing became the one true curator. Any mere GM who has the temerity to make a setting they're interested in without adhering to the mandates of the great sages at WotC is obviously going to railroad their players and make boring works. After all, who's ever heard of a good fantasy setting that doesn't contain elves and dwarves?

IME, I've found that closed minds tend to create closed worlds, and that such closed minds tend to create tight rails, and otherwise create games that aren't worth my time to play of a style that I'll enjoy.

Max_Killjoy
2018-02-13, 11:39 AM
Because, yes, games like this is where I've learned that "from around here" with a GM that actually cares about their setting is a recipe for disaster.


This is an artifact of your experiences only, then.

There's nothing that makes "I care about my setting" and "make a character who isn't an alien to this setting" inherently result in disaster.




And that GMs that create such closed worlds - that think in terms of excluding things that they don't like - also rarely create content that interests me. See also "Railroading".


This has nothing to do with railroading.

A GM asking that you not make an elf or dwarf in a hard-science-fiction near-future game, or not make a robot in a low fantasy alternate history game, is not railroading.

A GM telling you that the setting for this next campaign has no interdimentional travel, no worldhopping, and no "incarnated gods" is not railroading.

A GM telling you that the fantasy setting for their next campaign has no elves, dwarves, or halflings is not railroading.


This notion that all games, all campaigns, all worlds, are connected and share a set of core assumptions and requirement... is a shambling zombie, a thing that only lived when the entire RPG hobby rested on one man's preferences and assumptions... it went on life support the moment they published and others started running their own games using "his" system, and it died instant that other systems and settings were introduced.




I mean, I haven't actually done the math, but I think there's more complaints about SoD effects that just ignore HP and allow you to (maybe) one-shot someone than there are about HP, even on these boards. Thus, my confusion remains, unabated.


SoD gets complaints in part BECAUSE of its bizarro relationship with high-scaling HP.

CharonsHelper
2018-02-13, 11:48 AM
IME, I've found that closed minds tend to create closed worlds, and that such closed minds tend to create tight rails, and otherwise create games that aren't worth my time to play of a style that I'll enjoy.

That is broadening the definition of 'railroading' to the point of meaninglessness.

Quertus
2018-02-13, 12:00 PM
Then your experiences don't match those of most gamers. There's nothing that makes "I care about my setting" and "make a character who isn't an alien" inherently result in disaster.

So, the root of the problem is, I view the world sideways from the way humans see it. A GM who cares about his setting will always find that my character doesn't seem to fit, because what they explain and what they think they are explaining and what I see don't match. There are parts of human social interaction where most humans struggle, and I just "see the obvious" and think humans are idiots. There are other areas where I struggle, and humans are baffled that I can't "see the obvious" (and, doubtless, often think that I'm an idiot). VERY FEW humans are capable of putting aside their assumptions of what is obvious, and explaining all the little steps from "A" to "B". So my character will always have opinions and attitudes that make them feel alien, no matter how well the setting is explained to me.

IME, GMs who "care about their setting" don't like aliens from their setting. Better, IME, to be an alien from outside their setting. Much less hard feelings that way.


This has nothing to do with railroading.

A GM asking that you not make an elf or dwarf in a hard-science-fiction near-future game, or not make a robot in a low fantasy alternate history game, is not railroading.

A GM telling you that the setting for this next campaign has no interdimentional travel, no worldhopping, and no "incarnated gods" is not railroading.

A GM telling you that the fantasy setting for their next campaign has no elves, dwarves, or halflings is not railroading.


This notion that all games, all campaigns, all worlds, are connected and share a set of core assumptions and requirement... is a shambling zombie, a thing that only lived when the entire RPG hobby rested on one man's preferences and assumptions... it went on life support the moment they published and others started running their own games using "his" system, and it died instant that other systems and settings were introduced.

Ah, no, that's... hmmm... a bit off-target.

I fully accept the concept that a system has constraints. But most systems I play have multiple worlds, multiple distinct campaigns, and otherwise multiple places to be from. A character from one D&D world can, canonically, travel to other D&D worlds, through a variety of mechanisms.

Of course, A D&D character can, also canonically, travel to many non-D&D worlds, many of which are not sword-and-sorcery fantasy, so... TSR blurred the lines much more than I expect them to be blurred. So, long live the undead!

Now, personally, I happen to prefer like RIFTS-like games where "not from around here" can be really alien, but... that's not what I'm talking about. So talk of running elves on space ships or Robots with Quertus wizards is, while fun, not what I mean when I talk about running an existing character elsewhere. That level of exploration is... difficult to roleplay to my standards.

-----

Now, as to railroading... my experience is, GMs who close off otherwise open settings (like, say, D&D) tend to correspond strongly to GMs who close off reasonable options, and GMs who railroad, and many other things that make me say, "big red flag that I won't enjoy this game".

Never mind that, having to learn about the world well enough to make a character from the world cuts down on the Exploration that is my greatest source of enjoyment in a game.


SoD gets complaints in part BECAUSE of its bizarro relationship with high-scaling HP.

Hmmm, I suppose that could make sense.

EDIT:
That is broadening the definition of 'railroading' to the point of meaninglessness.

I assume this is just you misunderstanding me because I wasn't clear. What I was trying to say was, IME, the type of PERSONALITY that would close worlds is the same type of PERSONALITY that would shut down reasonable options, and the same type of PERSONALITY that would Railroad.

I tend to define "RAILROADING" as what DU calls, IIRC, "bad jerk GM" - one who would shoot down something that would reasonably work just because it doesn't match their "One True Path".

If I actually got my message across the first time, and you understood me, and now I've misunderstood you, please, explain how my definition of railroading is broad and meaningless.

Florian
2018-02-13, 12:11 PM
No, sorry. I don't play D&D, I play a setting using the D&D rules to do so.

Max_Killjoy
2018-02-13, 12:19 PM
D&D is not a setting.

D&D is a system.

The players (GM and otherwise) can choose to do whatever they want setting wise, including disregarding the "many worlds" aspect of the published settings from TSR and WOTC.

This whole thing with players assuming that if it's in a D&D book then it's automatically OK in any campaign at any table anywhere, that "I can bring my character from any table and play them at any other table" is a universal truth, and that the GM is being "a jerk" or "railroading" if they say "this setting has no crossworlds connections and no gnomes or halflings"... is one of the reasons I finally gave up on the entire D&D-like/d20 thing -- games, products, settings, subcommunity of gamers, and all.

Knaight
2018-02-13, 12:26 PM
This notion that all games, all campaigns, all worlds, are connected and share a set of core assumptions and requirement... is a shambling zombie, a thing that only lived when the entire RPG hobby rested on one man's preferences and assumptions... it went on life support the moment they published and others started running their own games using "his" system, and it died instant that other systems and settings were introduced.
Preach it. It's also worth observing that this divide neatly segments RPGs into two periods. One of them is maybe six months long, the other about forty years. That six month period shouldn't be dictating what RPGs are.


IME, GMs who "care about their setting" don't like aliens from their setting. Better, IME, to be an alien from outside their setting. Much less hard feelings that way.
You're using a bizarre definition of setting here. If you're playing in their game, then you have a PC in their setting, which means you either have a PC from their setting or you're trying to unilaterally declare that their setting isn't actually their setting, but just part of someone else's much bigger setting who can override their setting design.

That notion can die. I have no problem with opt-in mega settings involving a bunch of GMs, module writers, etc. and various restrictions for those who've opted in. Trying to dictate that every game be like that though? That's just unreasonable.


I fully accept the concept that a system has constraints. But most systems I play have multiple worlds, multiple distinct campaigns, and otherwise multiple places to be from. A character from one D&D world can, canonically, travel to other D&D worlds, through a variety of mechanisms.
That's what WotC's default setting says, sure. I point you to my previous comment about how the great sages of WotC naturally have and deserve the mantle of the only people who deserve to create settings, which they inherited from TSR.


Of course, A D&D character can, also canonically, travel to many non-D&D worlds, many of which are not sword-and-sorcery fantasy, so... TSR blurred the lines much more than I expect them to be blurred. So, long live the undead!
The level of presumptuousness of D&D writers trying to write rules for how to play games other than D&D into their D&D settings is almost impressive. They can say whatever they want, nobody else has to listen to them.


Now, as to railroading... my experience is, GMs who close off otherwise open settings (like, say, D&D) tend to correspond strongly to GMs who close off reasonable options, and GMs who railroad, and many other things that make me say, "big red flag that I won't enjoy this game".
Players trying to dictate my settings to me, in my experience, are universally problem players.


I tend to define "RAILROADING" as what DU calls, IIRC, "bad jerk GM" - one who would shoot down something that would reasonably work just because it doesn't match their "One True Path".
By that definition they still have nothing to do with each other.

Max_Killjoy
2018-02-13, 12:41 PM
So, the root of the problem is, I view the world sideways from the way humans see it. A GM who cares about his setting will always find that my character doesn't seem to fit, because what they explain and what they think they are explaining and what I see don't match. There are parts of human social interaction where most humans struggle, and I just "see the obvious" and think humans are idiots. There are other areas where I struggle, and humans are baffled that I can't "see the obvious" (and, doubtless, often think that I'm an idiot). VERY FEW humans are capable of putting aside their assumptions of what is obvious, and explaining all the little steps from "A" to "B". So my character will always have opinions and attitudes that make them feel alien, no matter how well the setting is explained to me.


That doesn't require the character to be from some other world outside the setting -- any more than you are from some other world.




IME, GMs who "care about their setting" don't like aliens from their setting. Better, IME, to be an alien from outside their setting. Much less hard feelings that way.


There is no "outside the setting".

If the setting includes contact with or travel to and from other worlds, dimensions, realities, fictions, or games, then those are by definition part of the setting.

If the players of a campaign (GM or otherwise) decide that the setting for that campaign does not connect in any way with the settings of other campaigns (published or otherwise), that anything happening doesn't exist and doesn't matter for the purposes of that campaign.

1337 b4k4
2018-02-13, 12:50 PM
D&D is not a setting.

D&D is a system.


While I am strongly in the “it’s your table and your game, play how you want” camp, D&D is absolutely a setting. Its various rules assume and describe a particular world (which has varied over the years e.g. we no longer really have knights errant and wizards in towers in the middle of nowhere). The existence of various gods, of tangible alignment, of certain races and monsters and even of the relationships between those races. Those are all spelled out in the actual rules and that makes D&D a setting and a system. In fact this is what I allude to when I argue that D&D is not a generic fantasy system but rather a system for playing D&D style fantasy.

Quertus
2018-02-13, 12:56 PM
, and that the GM is being "a jerk" or "railroading" if they say "this setting has no crossworlds connections and no gnomes or halflings"

Conflating ideas again. IME, the type of personality likely to create such a setting is the type of personality likely to railroad. They aren't a jerk and railroading because they create closed worlds, they create closed worlds, and they railroad, because they're a jerk. That's the casual direction.

Now, I have encountered a very few closed worlds that were created that way For A Good Reason (TM). Awesome. But that means that I can't bring an existing character that I know I'll enjoy. Instead, now I need to kill a lot of my Exploration joy by pestering the GM for details about the world, customs, etc, get a PHD in their world, only to still build an alien. Or, in average, 20 aliens, until I create a character that I'll enjoy. But, because it still feels alien, it'll grate on the GMs nerves. As if going through 19 failed characters that I didn't enjoy didn't already do so.

No, that just doesn't sound like fun.


There is no "outside the setting".

If the setting includes contact with or travel to and from other worlds, dimensions, realities, fictions, or games, then those are by definition part of the setting.

If the players of a campaign (GM or otherwise) decide that the setting for that campaign does not connect in any way with the settings of other campaigns (published or otherwise), that anything happening doesn't exist and doesn't matter for the purposes of that campaign.

IME, most people consider the Forgotten Realms to be a different setting than Ravenloft or Krynn. Darn overused words.

Cosi
2018-02-13, 12:58 PM
A GM asking that you not make an elf or dwarf in a hard-science-fiction near-future game, or not make a robot in a low fantasy alternate history game, is not railroading.

A GM telling you that the setting for this next campaign has no interdimentional travel, no worldhopping, and no "incarnated gods" is not railroading.

A GM telling you that the fantasy setting for their next campaign has no elves, dwarves, or halflings is not railroading.

I agree with the broad sentiment here. Not every game needs to include everything the system it is played with supports. Indeed, most will exclude the vast majority of things the system supports without ever intentionally setting out to do so. When was the last time you encountered a Wayfarer Guide or fought a Loxo? I would hazard that the answer to both of those questions is likely "never", and further that this was probably not even a result of any direct exclusion. The game system is large, and the stories we tell in it dramatically more limited.

But I disagree with the emphasis being put on the DM's decision here. I mean, how is "one guy decides what goes in the game" good just because it happens to be a different guy for different games? While the game should exclude things that fit outside the genre of the story being told, the decision of what that story is (and therefore what to include and what to exclude) is one that should be made by the group.

If you what the right to absolutely control what happens in the story, you should not invite others to contribute to its telling.

Max_Killjoy
2018-02-13, 12:58 PM
While I am strongly in the “it’s your table and your game, play how you want” camp, D&D is absolutely a setting. Its various rules assume and describe a particular world (which has varied over the years e.g. we no longer really have knights errant and wizards in towers in the middle of nowhere). The existence of various gods, of tangible alignment, of certain races and monsters and even of the relationships between those races. Those are all spelled out in the actual rules and that makes D&D a setting and a system. In fact this is what I allude to when I argue that D&D is not a generic fantasy system but rather a system for playing D&D style fantasy.


D&D fits certain settings far more aptly than others. Its rules makes a lot of assumptions about the setting that aren't always the assumptions that the "fluff" text would seem to indicate. It is very much better suited to play a specific D&D-style fantasy than any other sort of fantasy, generic or otherwise.

However, it is still a system. No GM is required to use all the races or restrict his world to the published races. No GM is every required to include all the listed magic items, monsters, spells, or classes, either -- or to restrict their campaign to the published races.


In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the published settings for D&D are largely a poor fit for the actual system, and using them together will result in a lot of dissonance. Even the creators of those settings seem to understand this even if they won't say it out loud -- note multiple instances of the "big names" behind Forgotten Realms asking everyone to pretty please play nice and please please not burn down, revolutionize, or Tippify their baby.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-02-13, 01:01 PM
While I am strongly in the “it’s your table and your game, play how you want” camp, D&D is absolutely a setting. Its various rules assume and describe a particular world (which has varied over the years e.g. we no longer really have knights errant and wizards in towers in the middle of nowhere). The existence of various gods, of tangible alignment, of certain races and monsters and even of the relationships between those races. Those are all spelled out in the actual rules and that makes D&D a setting and a system. In fact this is what I allude to when I argue that D&D is not a generic fantasy system but rather a system for playing D&D style fantasy.

It's more than a system, less than a setting. D&D presumes a few things--

* a broad style of play (heroic people doing heroic things)
* a broad era (roughly medieval-esque technology, but more a cartoon version than a historical one)

But it doesn't presume that all those things in the books are in the setting at hand. Modern editions specifically disclaim that presumption. Everything presented is an option that a setting-designer (or DM) may include or not at his whim. Some pieces go together (if there are no dragons then draconic sorcerers have to change) but nothing in the core assumes the presence of particular gods, races, alignments, etc.

That is, it presumes a restricted range of settings but not a single setting. I play 5e D&D in a distinctly non-stock setting. But it's still D&D--in fact I play with very few house-rules or even variant rules. The only visible one is that I have removed the fixed racial alignments for everyone (gods included).

PhoenixPhyre
2018-02-13, 01:06 PM
In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the published settings for D&D are largely a poor fit for the actual system, and using them together will result in a lot of dissonance. Even the creators of those settings seem to understand this even if they won't say it out loud -- note multiple instances of the "big names" behind Forgotten Realms asking everyone to pretty please play nice and please please not burn down, revolutionize, or Tippify their baby.

This particular case is one of cross-edition dissonance--the "big name" settings have all gone through multiple editions where the ruleset varied tremendously. Not just mechanically, but in basic assumptions about the nature of the game. Thus, baked-in assumptions from 2e cause dissonance in 3e cause head-scratching in 4e and somewhat (but not really) work in 5e.

Last time they tried to fix this (4e's Spellplague) was an utter, unmitigated sales disaster of tremendous proportions.

I think it would be better (in principle) to treat each edition of D&D as a separate game entirely. What holds for OD&D doesn't hold for AD&D, doesn't hold for 3e, doesn't hold for 4e, and doesn't hold for 5e. They're separate games marketed under the same umbrella with points of similarity but deep philosophical divides.

Max_Killjoy
2018-02-13, 01:09 PM
Conflating ideas again. IME, the type of personality likely to create such a setting is the type of personality likely to railroad. They aren't a jerk and railroading because they create closed worlds, they create closed worlds, and they railroad, because they're a jerk. That's the casual direction.


Again, purely your experience.

The vast majority of gamers have not reported running across the problem, with one exception -- the aforementioned assumptions by certain players of universal applicability of all published material to all gaming tables, such that they take offense when a GM tells them that no, they can't bring in their level 12 snowflake with multiple PrCs from wildly divergent incompatible settings who is "half" five different races and blessed by Fate and blah blah blah blah blah.





IME, most people consider the Forgotten Realms to be a different setting than Ravenloft or Krynn. Darn overused words.


If characters and information can travel between them, then they are not isolated settings. Perhaps subsettings, or settings part of an "oversetting".

Max_Killjoy
2018-02-13, 01:15 PM
I agree with the broad sentiment here. Not every game needs to include everything the system it is played with supports. Indeed, most will exclude the vast majority of things the system supports without ever intentionally setting out to do so. When was the last time you encountered a Wayfarer Guide or fought a Loxo? I would hazard that the answer to both of those questions is likely "never", and further that this was probably not even a result of any direct exclusion. The game system is large, and the stories we tell in it dramatically more limited.

But I disagree with the emphasis being put on the DM's decision here. I mean, how is "one guy decides what goes in the game" good just because it happens to be a different guy for different games? While the game should exclude things that fit outside the genre of the story being told, the decision of what that story is (and therefore what to include and what to exclude) is one that should be made by the group.

If you what the right to absolutely control what happens in the story, you should not invite others to contribute to its telling.


I would encourage all GMs to work with players, and I have no objection to "shared creation" of settings. I'm using "GM decides" here because it gets old to type out a bunch of qualifiers and details every time.

The point is just as valid if the players all sit down beforehand and contribute to what they'd like to see and not see in the setting, and all but one of them agree that they'd like to do a fantasy setting without the standard EDHG demihumans, and without the "standard model D&D cosmology" and try something else, and that one player demands that he still gets to play the same gnome rogue/mage they always play even if it means dragging it in from another world and breaking the "no other worlds" thing the rest of the players agreed to.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-02-13, 01:20 PM
If characters and information can travel between them, then they are not isolated settings. Perhaps subsettings, or settings part of an "oversetting".

At least in modern editions, there is no expectation that one DM's "Forgotten Realms" is the same (or accessible even) as another's.

To quote from the 5e DMG:



Every DM is the creator of his or her own campaign world.

...

Even if you're using an established world such as the Forgotten Realms, your campaign takes place in a sort of mirror universe of the official setting where Forgotten Realms novels, game products, and digital games are assumed to take place. The world is yours to change as you see fit and yours to modify as you explore the consequences of the players' actions.

"Well, canon says" is absolutely not a rule. The only canon in D&D (by official pronouncement) is what the setting-designer decides it to be. Everything else is a guideline or an example that a setting designer can plug in if desired.

Max_Killjoy
2018-02-13, 01:26 PM
At least in modern editions, there is no expectation that one DM's "Forgotten Realms" is the same (or accessible even) as another's.

To quote from the 5e DMG:



"Well, canon says" is absolutely not a rule. The only canon in D&D (by official pronouncement) is what the setting-designer decides it to be. Everything else is a guideline or an example that a setting designer can plug in if desired.



So 5e, at least, has abandoned wholesale the idea of a giant shared over-campaign that all campaigns are part of, and the idea of a single shared Forgotten Realms (or whatever published setting) for all tables.

Good for them.

But IMO that doesn't invalidate the broader point that for a particular table (GM's decision, group decision, whatever), their setting is either connected to those other settings as part of a bigger overall "setting", or it's not -- it's an isolated standalone universe.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-02-13, 01:30 PM
So 5e, at least, has abandoned wholesale the idea of a giant shared over-campaign that all campaigns are part of, and the idea of a single shared Forgotten Realms (or whatever published setting) for all tables.

Good for them.

But IMO that doesn't invalidate the broader point that for a particular table (GM's decision, group decision, whatever), their setting is either connected to those other settings as part of a bigger overall "setting", or it's not -- it's an isolated standalone universe.

I was supporting your point, not opposing it. There's no expectation that there's interconnections.

georgie_leech
2018-02-13, 01:47 PM
If I actually got my message across the first time, and you understood me, and now I've misunderstood you, please, explain how my definition of railroading is broad and meaningless.

Regardless of whether you personally would find such a character interesting, would you accept Mario as a character in your games? Not someone that acts like Mario, but the actual mustachioed quasi-plumber that defeats his enemies by jumping on them and powers up by eating mushrooms? Would this game accept, at the same time, Khorne as a character? And also Thomas the Train Engine? Along with Barack Obama and MYOCDON'TSTEAL the anthropomorphic hedgehog? Again, not if you would enjoy playing these characters, but if your games, where you are the GM, would accept all of them playing at once at the same time.

Jay R
2018-02-13, 01:48 PM
One of the many problems with taking a character to a new DM's table is that you don't necessarily know everything about your own equipment. Some curses don't show up immediately.

Back in original D&D, I heard about one player who had moved his character from my world to a new DM's world. Neither the player nor the new DM knew that his sword was cursed, and would refuse to attack any evil priest.

Similarly, a potion of confusion that the player thought was a potion of flight had now become a potion of flight.

[On the other hand, the wish he had but didn't know about disappeared.]

Rhedyn
2018-02-13, 01:54 PM
It tends to behoove a GM to say "yes" whenever they can.

You want to play a robot in a fantasy setting? Would a magic golem work?

You want to play an elf in my transhumanism setting? Would an elf-shaped flesh sleeve work?

Like your character has to make sense and I've found that the GMs who make it work are generally both more creative and have more motivated players.

Florian
2018-02-13, 01:59 PM
Overall, the notion that "settings are universal" seems to be strongly connected with an aversion against house rules and unknown rulings. I find it funny. Doesn't the DMG section begin with "make it your own"? (I partly blame organized play for this)

PopeLinus1
2018-02-13, 02:02 PM
One of my pet peeves is when a player will try to do something horribly impossible-

Wizrd: “I pick up the chariot”

And you sigh, and ask them to role

Wizard: “I roll a natural 20”

And you pull your hair out trying to find a way to shut them down without being a annoying DM

Knaight
2018-02-13, 02:04 PM
But I disagree with the emphasis being put on the DM's decision here. I mean, how is "one guy decides what goes in the game" good just because it happens to be a different guy for different games? While the game should exclude things that fit outside the genre of the story being told, the decision of what that story is (and therefore what to include and what to exclude) is one that should be made by the group.

If you what the right to absolutely control what happens in the story, you should not invite others to contribute to its telling.

Again, the contents of the setting and the actions of the PCs are being conflated here - having creative control of one doesn't imply creative control of the other, something that is generally understood well when it comes to DMs encroaching on how PCs are played.

I say this as someone who routinely starts a game by asking what genre my players feel like playing in.

georgie_leech
2018-02-13, 02:10 PM
One of my pet peeves is when a player will try to do something horribly impossible-

Wizrd: “I pick up the chariot”

And you sigh, and ask them to role

Wizard: “I roll a natural 20”

And you pull your hair out trying to find a way to shut them down without being a annoying DM

"No, you can't do that. Skill Checks automatically succeeding on a Nat 20 isn't a house rule that I use." If that is a house rule you use, don't let people roll for things like that. If you use that house rule and you called for that roll, deal with the consequences of your choices and let it happen

awa
2018-02-13, 02:21 PM
Yeah if he can’t succeed on a nat 20 simply don’t waste his time with a roll.

That said depending on time period and design their totally were chariots an average man could lift.
In this case it might be a problem of misunderstanding what’s in front of him, whenever one of my players tries to do something stupid or impossible I double check that were both picturing the same thing.

Cluedrew
2018-02-13, 03:09 PM
But yes - "game master" should probably be lower case. Unless you consider it to be a title?Title as in "doctor" so a position label, not a personal title (like "the Conqueror"). There are probably some formal rules about that, I don't know what they are but game master seems solidly enough in the first group I have never bothered to check. And yes I do say "gee-em" so it would be written "GM".

Max_Killjoy
2018-02-13, 03:15 PM
I was supporting your point, not opposing it. There's no expectation that there's interconnections.


I went back and forth half a dozen times on how I read that and how I thought you were reading my comment you were replying to and...

CharonsHelper
2018-02-13, 03:23 PM
Title as in "doctor" so a position label, not a personal title (like "the Conqueror"). There are probably some formal rules about that, I don't know what they are but game master seems solidly enough in the first group I have never bothered to check. And yes I do say "gee-em" so it would be written "GM".

I would think it would also be like "dad" - capitalized when used in place of their name.

So - "My gamemaster lets me transport between worlds" is correct, but so is "Hello Gamemaster, might I transfer my character from another world?" In addition - when used as a title - "Last week Gamemaster Dave let me transfer my mecha pilot to his sword & sorcery style world.".

PhoenixPhyre
2018-02-13, 03:28 PM
I went back and forth half a dozen times on how I read that and how I thought you were reading my comment you were replying to and...

My bad. I was writing between classes and with bad allergies so I wasn't all that clear. But yes, we're in agreement here.

Quertus
2018-02-13, 06:35 PM
Again, purely your experience.

Definitely my experience, yes, and I keep saying "IME". However, there is some logic to it. Just like the kind of GM who would knee-jerk "core only, for balance" tends to be indicative of certain personality traits, going to the trouble to change the system and lock off the world without a good reason is also indicative of certain personality traits. It's really not that big of a leap from "changing reality because reasons" to "changing reality to negate character actions", is it? Because it makes sense to me, and has certainly been related in my experience.


The vast majority of gamers have not reported running across the problem, with one exception -- the aforementioned assumptions by certain players of universal applicability of all published material to all gaming tables, such that they take offense when a GM tells them that no, they can't bring in their level 12 snowflake with multiple PrCs from wildly divergent incompatible settings who is "half" five different races and blessed by Fate and blah blah blah blah blah.

Again, you're conflating ideas. I have no problem with "no elves" or even "all elves" as a requirement for a D&D game (or, obviously, with a stated level range), if there's a good reason for such. Not all characters work with all games, all parties, or all GMs. That's all fine.

But existing characters are known quantities. It's easier (for me, at least) to judge how well an existing character will mesh with a group than to make that judgement with a new character. Thus, on top of other reasons, even purely for "fitting in" reasons, I'll aim for existing character for the win.

So, about the opposite of where you went with this.

Now, a GM who cannot articulate his reasons for imposing limitations is an issue. Because the GM is the eyes and ears of the character. A GM who can't explain things is an ongoing issue, and probably not going to be worth my time fun for me to game under. But, as long as they can explain what they want out of the party, and why, I'll pick the existing character I think will best match that.

-----

Also, if the GM says "we're playing an all-elf game, being an elf", and the player brings a troll, that's on the player. But if the GM says, "bring a D&D character", and the player brings a troll (valid in at least 3e), and the GM is upset because they wanted an elf, then it's on the GM for not being specific enough.


Regardless of whether you personally would find such a character interesting, would you accept Mario as a character in your games? Not someone that acts like Mario, but the actual mustachioed quasi-plumber that defeats his enemies by jumping on them and powers up by eating mushrooms? Would this game accept, at the same time, Khorne as a character? And also Thomas the Train Engine? Along with Barack Obama and MYOCDON'TSTEAL the anthropomorphic hedgehog? Again, not if you would enjoy playing these characters, but if your games, where you are the GM, would accept all of them playing at once at the same time.

Well, now, that's several different questions.

Would I accept any one of those characters individually in a game where their personality would work well with the party? I'm a very lenient GM - I'd probably give it a try, although I usually run without rails (or drugs), so I'd warn at least Thomas's (and Mario's) player that it might not be such a good plan :smallwink:

Would I accept a party of such diverse characters? Um... Well, a party with such disparate backgrounds sounds like RIFTS to me, so... Why not?

Would I accept these particular characters together in a party? Um... I, personally think that this is a bad plan. I can't imagine the start conditions / character creation rules I could have set that would possibly produce a scenario where all of these were valid characters. However, if they were all legal for... Um... A multiversal talk show, maybe?, then, sure.

So, usually, even if I said "Mutants and Masterminds, 150 points, RIFTS-esque, bring new or existing - yes, even published known names like Mario", I'd usually have a caveat about the adventure, even if it was "for a political sandbox" or "as guests on a talk show". So long as the character meets my criteria in good faith, it's on me if the criteria were chosen poorly.

But, that having been said, this line of thought is irrelevant to playing, say, an existing D&D character under a different GM.


One of the many problems with taking a character to a new DM's table is that you don't necessarily know everything about your own equipment. Some curses don't show up immediately.

Yeah, that is an issue. I always felt that there should be an officially supported, GM only "character secrets" foo. I'd say "website", but, well, back in my day, we didn't have websites.

Max_Killjoy
2018-02-13, 06:59 PM
Again, you're conflating ideas.


I'm not conflating anything.

I am responding to precisely what you're putting on the page.




It's really not that big of a leap from "changing reality because reasons" to "changing reality to negate character actions", is it?


It's worlds away, see below.

Knaight
2018-02-13, 07:04 PM
Definitely my experience, yes, and I keep saying "IME". However, there is some logic to it. Just like the kind of GM who would knee-jerk "core only, for balance" tends to be indicative of certain personality traits, going to the trouble to change the system and lock off the world without a good reason is also indicative of certain personality traits. It's really not that big of a leap from "changing reality because reasons" to "changing reality to negate character actions", is it? Because it makes sense to me, and has certainly been related in my experience.

The framing here is quite telling. Just running with the default is inherently justified, but you have to have good reason to do anything else, and apparently not wanting to grant influence over the game to some rando who's not even at the table isn't good enough. These GMs aren't "Changing reality because reasons". There's no "reality" there until they build it, and they're building settings that they consider fun and interesting. Why, exactly should those settings happen to be basically identical to TSR/WotC's output? Why encourage the derivative and disappointing Tolkien clone, with added D&D baggage?

To a large extent this criteria is also a matter of how well someone can elucidate thematic concepts, theorize about settings, and just generally BS their way through it. I can produce a decent argument in favor of even a really stupid setting, because I've built up a lot of practice BSing my way through literature courses* and defending the existence of RPGs that aren't basically D&D. Meanwhile a GM without that background can make a good setting, but because they're not necessarily practiced in BSing their way through literature courses or defending their setting against the interrogation of why it isn't just Forgotten Greyhawlarion they'll be dismissed as railroading.

*This is what happens when I'm supposed to pretend to take New Criticism as the be all end all of literary theory.

Cluedrew
2018-02-13, 07:21 PM
So - "My gamemaster lets me transport between worlds" is correct, but so is "Hello Gamemaster, might I transfer my character from another world?" In addition - when used as a title - "Last week Gamemaster Dave let me transfer my mecha pilot to his sword & sorcery style world.".Valid, maybe I should have added "when inappropriate" or "all the time" to the original comment.

On Transplanting Characters: ... Not something I have done very often, and when I have I have called out "alt-universe version". Why? Because hacking out a character out of the setting, from all their relationships, from what they have, what they know about the world around them, is quite a bit of the character. So in my mind, you are not quite starting with a blank slate, but you are rubbing out large portions of that slate anyways.

Max_Killjoy
2018-02-13, 08:08 PM
The framing here is quite telling. Just running with the default is inherently justified, but you have to have good reason to do anything else, and apparently not wanting to grant influence over the game to some rando who's not even at the table isn't good enough. These GMs aren't "Changing reality because reasons". There's no "reality" there until they build it, and they're building settings that they consider fun and interesting. Why, exactly should those settings happen to be basically identical to TSR/WotC's output? Why encourage the derivative and disappointing Tolkien clone, with added D&D baggage?


Very important point.

The GM who makes their own setting is not changing (secondary, fictional, whatever) reality -- there's no reality until they put "pen to paper".

LordCdrMilitant
2018-02-13, 11:50 PM
As far as transplanting characters goes, I played in a game where my Ordo Malleus Inquisitor Lord went on a trip to modern day Earth with a tiefling warlock, mad scientist, godling, and a few others from different settings to save the universe. It was fun.

However, there's a time and place for things, and try to play within the spirit of the world I've written. And sometimes I will make restrictions on what you can and can't play: I don't ever allow Quarantine World or Daemon World, the Exorcised background, or the Malefic Daemonology power tree. If your plan was to summon daemons and be a closet heretic, save it for when we play Black Crusade.

1337 b4k4
2018-02-14, 12:52 AM
However, it is still a system. No GM is required to use all the races or restrict his world to the published races. No GM is every required to include all the listed magic items, monsters, spells, or classes, either -- or to restrict their campaign to the published races.


Sure, I agree it's a system, but I also think it's also a setting. From my perspective, if I say "We're going to play D&D", you have a pretty good idea of what to expect, even without me specifying whether we're playing in Greyhawk or FR or even Ravenloft. A good 50-80% of what you need to know about the world you're about to be journeying through is encapsulated in just saying we're playing D&D. This as opposed to if I said "We're going to play GURPS/Fate/FUDGE". And it's very much a sliding scale, with pure (or as close to pure as you can get) systems like GURPS and Fate at one end, and pure settings (as in actual setting books) at the other end. D&D falls somewhere in the middle. It's a system, and one that can be (and has been) heavily modified to support a wide variety of different settings, but it has a lot of setting built in, and the more to stray from that built in setting, the more the system itself starts to break down as well

NovenFromTheSun
2018-02-14, 06:06 AM
Regardless of whether you personally would find such a character interesting, would you accept Mario as a character in your games? Not someone that acts like Mario, but the actual mustachioed quasi-plumber that defeats his enemies by jumping on them and powers up by eating mushrooms? Would this game accept, at the same time, Khorne as a character? And also Thomas the Train Engine? Along with Barack Obama and MYOCDON'TSTEAL the anthropomorphic hedgehog? Again, not if you would enjoy playing these characters, but if your games, where you are the GM, would accept all of them playing at once at the same time.

...I mean, it's not for every campaign, but running that at least once sounds like it'd be amazing!

Max_Killjoy
2018-02-14, 07:11 AM
As far as transplanting characters goes, I played in a game where my Ordo Malleus Inquisitor Lord went on a trip to modern day Earth with a tiefling warlock, mad scientist, godling, and a few others from different settings to save the universe. It was fun.

However, there's a time and place for things, and try to play within the spirit of the world I've written. And sometimes I will make restrictions on what you can and can't play: I don't ever allow Quarantine World or Daemon World, the Exorcised background, or the Malefic Daemonology power tree. If your plan was to summon daemons and be a closet heretic, save it for when we play Black Crusade.

And with the former, sounds like that was the entire intent of the campaign, to bring in all sorts of different characters.

That strikes me as a different from trying to impose a character where they don't fit.

Tanarii
2018-02-14, 10:23 AM
I remember the idea that you would bring a character from one friends game to another being rather common in the 80s. For multiple systems, but primarily for D&D obviously, since it was the bull in the china shop. You might have to modify them in the process, especially up or down in levels. But it wasn't exactly a rare occurrence for a bunch of friend to go find a DM explicitly so they could play existing characters.

Even more common was bringing the non-mechanical portion on a character from game to game, even from system to system. Everyone had a primary character that they would make in multiple games. Same personality, same basic character concept, they'd just adapt the rules of the game to remake that character. Mad Morrigan might always be a sneaky stabby character, Frank the Tank always a short heavy weapon warrior, usually a dwarf. Etc.

These were common at both my high school gaming organizations, and at my college ones, especially the latter. So it clearly wasn't just a one local aberration from the norm.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-02-14, 10:40 AM
I remember the idea that you would bring a character from one friends game to another being rather common in the 80s. For multiple systems, but primarily for D&D obviously, since it was the bull in the china shop. You might have to modify them in the process, especially up or down in levels. But it wasn't exactly a rare occurrence for a bunch of friend to go find a DM explicitly so they could play existing characters.

Even more common was bringing the non-mechanical portion on a character from game to game, even from system to system. Everyone had a primary character that they would make in multiple games. Same personality, same basic character concept, they'd just adapt the rules of the game to remake that character. Mad Morrigan might always be a sneaky stabby character, Frank the Tank always a short heavy weapon warrior, usually a dwarf. Etc.

These were common at both my high school gaming organizations, and at my college ones, especially the latter. So it clearly wasn't just a one local aberration from the norm.

Honestly I wouldn't have any problem with carrying a character concept between games (or "cloning" a character that you had used earlier). It may be "bob the barbarian," (with the same personality and rough-strokes backstory) but it's adapted for setting, campaign, and power level.

I have a difficulty with expecting that exact character, including all the experiences, history, etc. moving smoothly between games. Most of all--why is that person actually taking part in these adventures?

I have an even bigger difficulty with the "god slumming with mortals" idea--it breaks the setting (can gods do that? Not in any established setting I'm aware of), it breaks the campaign (why isn't the god just fixing things?) and it breaks the inter-party relationships (it feels horribly condescending--"I'll let you lesser creatures try, and then I'll step in and fix what you break").

I have one player whose character thinks he's a far realms godlike being incarnated. Is he? Or is he crazy? Either way, it's flavor only. Just about everybody thinks he's just crazy. That's as far as I'd be willing to go on that angle.

Tanarii
2018-02-14, 10:45 AM
Oh yeah I'm with you on that. Remember, this was high school and college kids in the 80s. We were interested in bringing over our awesome stats (edit: and gear), not our awesome memories of things that had happened. :smallamused:

Edit2: it's also worth mentioning that continuity was only ever given lip service. It wasn't until well into 2e era that I started encountering groups that were big on what I'd call story, world, campaign, or character continuity.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-02-14, 11:01 AM
Oh yeah I'm with you on that. Remember, this was high school and college kids in the 80s. We were interested in bringing over our awesome stats (edit: and gear), not our awesome memories of things that had happened. :smallamused:

Edit2: it's also worth mentioning that continuity was only ever given lip service. It wasn't until well into 2e era that I started encountering groups that were big on what I'd call story, world, campaign, or character continuity.

Yeah, game style and audience matter. If it's "kick down the door, kill the monsters and take their loot" (to use a stereotype), then characters that fit the world don't matter. Because the world isn't realized.

I much prefer a world that has some depth because otherwise I have to use rails. Contra Quertus, it's because I care about the world that I can allow freedom. Otherwise, I have no way of knowing what's on the other side of those hills, at least not consistently. I of course reserve the right to be selective about which adventure pieces become canon for future games, but once a game's in play the PCs can change it however they're able.

Heck, I had a group overthrow a government and institute fantasy communism. From that (and other groups running in that same world) I learned how much my presentation of this hide-bound society (flawed, but I thought it was relatively balanced) came across as being tyrannical and facistic.

georgie_leech
2018-02-14, 11:04 AM
...I mean, it's not for every campaign, but running that at least once sounds like it'd be amazing! Oh for sure, there is something to be said for complete insanity as a gaming experience now and then. But it would be a bit much to expect that every time, and to claim that a DM saying they're not interested in that sort of campaign right now is also likely to be the railroady type? Yeah, not so much.




Well, now, that's several different questions.

Would I accept any one of those characters individually in a game where their personality would work well with the party? I'm a very lenient GM - I'd probably give it a try, although I usually run without rails (or drugs), so I'd warn at least Thomas's (and Mario's) player that it might not be such a good plan :smallwink:

Would I accept a party of such diverse characters? Um... Well, a party with such disparate backgrounds sounds like RIFTS to me, so... Why not?

Would I accept these particular characters together in a party? Um... I, personally think that this is a bad plan. I can't imagine the start conditions / character creation rules I could have set that would possibly produce a scenario where all of these were valid characters. However, if they were all legal for... Um... A multiversal talk show, maybe?, then, sure.

So, usually, even if I said "Mutants and Masterminds, 150 points, RIFTS-esque, bring new or existing - yes, even published known names like Mario", I'd usually have a caveat about the adventure, even if it was "for a political sandbox" or "as guests on a talk show". So long as the character meets my criteria in good faith, it's on me if the criteria were chosen poorly.

But, that having been said, this line of thought is irrelevant to playing, say, an existing D&D character under a different GM.

It's all intended as the same question actually. Would you allow all of these characters together in every
game, or are there games and scenarios where that wouldn't be appropriate? Say if you were not intending to run a Rifts-esque or interdimensional talk show game, but everyone just happened to bring these characters that they've played with previous GMs.

Pex
2018-02-14, 01:10 PM
Oh yeah I'm with you on that. Remember, this was high school and college kids in the 80s. We were interested in bringing over our awesome stats (edit: and gear), not our awesome memories of things that had happened. :smallamused:

Edit2: it's also worth mentioning that continuity was only ever given lip service. It wasn't until well into 2e era that I started encountering groups that were big on what I'd call story, world, campaign, or character continuity.

Porting characters was the culture in 2E. Didn't matter if your new DM doesn't know your previous DM let alone that game. Players brought their old character into the new game. The 2E DMG even discussed the matter, telling DMs to be careful with magic items the character has so as not to disrupt the game. The idea of creating a new character for a new campaign while not unheard of was not common. It wasn't conscious thought to create a new character for a campaign at the level the party was. It happened, but the more prevalent thought was every new character had to start at 1st level. Ergo, players would bring in their old character of an already appropriate level.

3E changed that. Porting characters was never discussed in the DMG. Wealth by level was a guide to creating characters above 1st to start play. Gaming culture evolved to new campaign, new character. Bringing in an old character wouldn't be an option. At best a player recreated his character statistics if they were that important to him, but generally players created new characters.

Max_Killjoy
2018-02-14, 01:23 PM
Sure, I agree it's a system, but I also think it's also a setting. From my perspective, if I say "We're going to play D&D", you have a pretty good idea of what to expect, even without me specifying whether we're playing in Greyhawk or FR or even Ravenloft. A good 50-80% of what you need to know about the world you're about to be journeying through is encapsulated in just saying we're playing D&D. This as opposed to if I said "We're going to play GURPS/Fate/FUDGE". And it's very much a sliding scale, with pure (or as close to pure as you can get) systems like GURPS and Fate at one end, and pure settings (as in actual setting books) at the other end. D&D falls somewhere in the middle. It's a system, and one that can be (and has been) heavily modified to support a wide variety of different settings, but it has a lot of setting built in, and the more to stray from that built in setting, the more the system itself starts to break down as well



From my perspective, it's a system with a lot of very unhelpful assumptions baked in. But I also think some of the "oh we'll be playing a game like this" is player assumption rather than inherent to the system.

My favorite system overall is still HERO 5th ed, despite a few flaws, and I take a lot of my approach from that angle -- so to me, the divide between the system as a toolkit, and the actual setting, has no real ambiguity.

Quertus
2018-02-14, 01:49 PM
So... in trying to understand, not how, buy why Jay R and I differ, when so very much of our "why" is actually identical, I seem to have derailed this thread. Sorry. :smallredface:

But Exploration is my greatest enjoyment in a game, and it's little different on a forum (it comes in second to learning, of which, arguably, it is merely a subset). So I'mma try to clarify a few things, and see if I can de-obfuscate all this confusion.

If someone says, "build a 7th level 3e D&D character for a Forgotten Realms game", I will most likely bring an existing rules-legal 7th level 3e D&D character... from a different world. Because world-travel is explicitly a thing in 3e D&D Forgotten Realms, and I would like to explore their idea of the Forgotten Realms rather than find that the Forgotten Realms as I understand it doesn't match their view of the Forgotten Realms, thereby making my character an in-setting alien that grates on the GM's nerves*.

What I care about is the character of the character, their history and backstory and adventures that they've been through. I want to explore the character of the character about as much as I want to explore the world. Exploring "a whole bunch of similar characters, who may even have the same name and broad-strokes backstory" is... rather antithetical to that. I'd much rather paint one picture than throw a few brush strokes on 100 sheets of paper / canvases. The latter not only has no appeal to me, but is actively detrimental to me exploring the depths of a single character.

* and because I need to "take a 20" to create a character that I'll enjoy.


To a large extent this criteria is also a matter of how well someone can elucidate thematic concepts, theorize about settings, and just generally BS their way through it. I can produce a decent argument in favor of even a really stupid setting, because I've built up a lot of practice BSing my way through literature courses* and defending the existence of RPGs that aren't basically D&D. Meanwhile a GM without that background can make a good setting, but because they're not necessarily practiced in BSing their way through literature courses or defending their setting against the interrogation of why it isn't just Forgotten Greyhawlarion they'll be dismissed as railroading.

A GM with an awesome setting that they cannot talk about is of no value for my Exploration. This should be obvious.

A GM who can actually BS with the consistency of an actual thought-through world? Think very carefully about all the GM horror stories, the fact that most official D&D worlds aren't actually consistent, and the forum posters who get called out for failed attempts at BS. But a GM who could pass my interrogation by BSing? Yes, I suppose that might possibly produce a world that was fun to "Explore"...

Now, usually, I'll catch the GM BSing, and they'll fail for BS. Similarly, I'll usually keep poking at a GM who has trouble explaining themselves (I'm sure that comes as quite the surprise), and either we'll come to an understanding about communication, or they'll fail for lack of communication, not for assumption of future railroading behavior.

But, sure, it's entirely possible for my experiences to give both false positives and false negatives. Note that I didn't say "every GM", but (something like) "high correlation between".


On Transplanting Characters: ... Not something I have done very often, and when I have I have called out "alt-universe version". Why? Because hacking out a character out of the setting, from all their relationships, from what they have, what they know about the world around them, is quite a bit of the character. So in my mind, you are not quite starting with a blank slate, but you are rubbing out large portions of that slate anyways.

I want to paint a picture. Why keep painting on the same canvas when I could instead just grab a new canvas and start painting something like the picture that I already started? I can just have a pile of half-finished pictures, and that's just as good, right?


I remember the idea that you would bring a character from one friends game to another being rather common in the 80s. For multiple systems, but primarily for D&D obviously, since it was the bull in the china shop. You might have to modify them in the process, especially up or down in levels. But it wasn't exactly a rare occurrence for a bunch of friend to go find a DM explicitly so they could play existing characters.

Even more common was bringing the non-mechanical portion on a character from game to game, even from system to system. Everyone had a primary character that they would make in multiple games. Same personality, same basic character concept, they'd just adapt the rules of the game to remake that character. Mad Morrigan might always be a sneaky stabby character, Frank the Tank always a short heavy weapon warrior, usually a dwarf. Etc.

These were common at both my high school gaming organizations, and at my college ones, especially the latter. So it clearly wasn't just a one local aberration from the norm.


Oh yeah I'm with you on that. Remember, this was high school and college kids in the 80s. We were interested in bringing over our awesome stats (edit: and gear), not our awesome memories of things that had happened. :smallamused:

Edit2: it's also worth mentioning that continuity was only ever given lip service. It wasn't until well into 2e era that I started encountering groups that were big on what I'd call story, world, campaign, or character continuity.

Well, at least someone else remembers it being common. I guess that's something.

I play characters to explore the human psyche. The "awesome memories" and my knowledge of how it felt, how it affected the character, etc, is kinda the point. So, while my behavior might be similar to what you've seen, my underlying reasons are completely different.

Whereas Jay R and I seem to have almost identical reasons, but completely different methods.

EDIT:
Porting characters was the culture in 2E. Didn't matter if your new DM doesn't know your previous DM let alone that game. Players brought their old character into the new game. The 2E DMG even discussed the matter, telling DMs to be careful with magic items the character has so as not to disrupt the game. The idea of creating a new character for a new campaign while not unheard of was not common. It wasn't conscious thought to create a new character for a campaign at the level the party was. It happened, but the more prevalent thought was every new character had to start at 1st level. Ergo, players would bring in their old character of an already appropriate level.

Yay, more proof that I'm not insane! Well, that I am insane, but that my insanity isn't the cause of this particular memory. :smalltongue:


3E changed that. Porting characters was never discussed in the DMG. Wealth by level was a guide to creating characters above 1st to start play. Gaming culture evolved to new campaign, new character. Bringing in an old character wouldn't be an option. At best a player recreated his character statistics if they were that important to him, but generally players created new characters.

My tables took that the opposite way. WBL gave a "Rules as Intended" "this is what to expect from ported characters". It actually facilitated porting characters from one game to another without disrupting the game.


Contra Quertus, it's because I care about the world that I can allow freedom.

Can you explain that bit?


Honestly I wouldn't have any problem with carrying a character concept between games (or "cloning" a character that you had used earlier). It may be "bob the barbarian," (with the same personality and rough-strokes backstory) but it's adapted for setting, campaign, and power level.

I've seen that behavior. I'm not a fan.

I prefer players who try to pick a character who has the appropriate personality, motivation, and power level for the group/setting/game/GM. Of course, I'm biased, as I'm one of those players. :smallwink:


I have a difficulty with expecting that exact character, including all the experiences, history, etc. moving smoothly between games.

Why? Is, say, Batman, played by the same actor, but under a different director, somehow no longer the same character?


Most of all--why is that person actually taking part in these adventures?

Because the player has carefully selected them as the most appropriate character to take part in these adventures, perhaps?


I have an even bigger difficulty with the "god slumming with mortals" idea--it breaks the setting (can gods do that? Not in any established setting I'm aware of), it breaks the campaign (why isn't the god just fixing things?) and it breaks the inter-party relationships (it feels horribly condescending--"I'll let you lesser creatures try, and then I'll step in and fix what you break").

If it ever comes out that one of my characters that is actually a deity is a deity, then they have failed.

If the deity actually brought their divine power to bear, then they'd have to contend with other deities, and it'd get messy.

I'm playing a stat block that is appropriate for the game, but the driving personality is actually one of my deities.

Because it is so much easier (for me, at least) to come up with a stat block than with an interesting personality for me to explore.


Oh for sure, there is something to be said for complete insanity as a gaming experience now and then. But it would be a bit much to expect that every time, and to claim that a DM saying they're not interested in that sort of campaign right now is also likely to be the railroady type? Yeah, not so much.

Again, if you ask me to bring a 7th level 3e D&D character, what does it matter if my rules-legal 3e D&D character was created whole-cloth for this game, or is one that I've run at another table before?

But railroading GMs tend to think in terms of cutting off rules legal valid options. Thus, those who cut off rules legal valid options... tend to be railroading GMs. Yeah, so much. Funny how that works.


It's all intended as the same question actually. Would you allow all of these characters together in every
game, or are there games and scenarios where that wouldn't be appropriate? Say if you were not intending to run a Rifts-esque or interdimensional talk show game, but everyone just happened to bring these characters that they've played with previous GMs.

If I ask for a 7th level 3e D&D character, and you somehow manage to make a rules-legal Thomas the Tank Engine? Go for it! And no, I don't care if you have run Thomas at someone else's table before, so long as he meets the criteria I've set for characters.

But, no, every game has rules for valid characters (be those rules statistics, personality, race, whatever), and I seriously doubt anyone could possible play all of those characters you listed in every game I've ever run or ever will run.

georgie_leech
2018-02-14, 01:54 PM
Yes, that Batman that won't kill you, but doesn't have to save you, is not in fact the same Batman that wields the awesome power of the Bat Credit Card. But more to the point, what distinguishes the criteria you set from others? Why does "your character can't be the mortal avatar of a gid slumming around with mortals" trip flags?

PhoenixPhyre
2018-02-14, 02:25 PM
If you make an incarnated god where that doesn't ever come into play, then you wasted your time thinking of them as an incarnated god. It's completely null.

And there are lots of D&D legal worlds where an incarnated god is an impossibility--even the FR doesn't deal well with that. The gods are inherently special. By demanding that, you're saying that the setting doesn't matter at all, that your needs are more important than the in-universe reality. That you want an unreal character, an impossibility. That's special snowflake/"look at me I'm special" territory. That would be a huge red flag for me.

Florian
2018-02-14, 02:38 PM
Oh yeah I'm with you on that. Remember, this was high school and college kids in the 80s.

Remember it, too. Than Pharaoh happened, than Dragonlance, than White Wolf. Gaming and the expectations for the game itself changed a lot since then. Nowadays, I'm glad that players are invested in their character as well as the setting (and plot, if there's one) and want to be a part of it from the get-go, no "strangers from somewhere".

Tanarii
2018-02-14, 02:44 PM
Remember it, too. Than Pharaoh happened, than Dragonlance, than White Wolf. Gaming and the expectations for the game itself changed a lot since then. Nowadays, I'm glad that players are invested in their character as well as the setting (and plot, if there's one) and want to be a part of it from the get-go, no "strangers from somewhere".That's not my RPG experience, but then until recently I've mostly DM'd (and occasionally played) D&D official play since 4e came out. Often in game stores, but also as part of a large-scale email distro list where people run official play games out of their houses in my city.

Now I run an open table 5e game in three different gaming stores, similar to AL. Characters generally start off as pretty blank slate, and are defined by what the player does with them during play. The advantage is they do get to have continuity since I'm only one DM running the game. Disadvantage is they can't bring AL characters to the table, they have to start new in my campaign.

Edit: What I'm saying is Players do get invested in their characters in official play, but generally not setting or "plot" (connected events) because adventures tend to be stand-alone. Although the 5e adventure paths have changed that somewhat, from what I hear. But DDEX is far more common for AL groups to run rather than adventure paths IMX.

Quertus
2018-02-14, 02:48 PM
If you make an incarnated god where that doesn't ever come into play, then you wasted your time thinking of them as an incarnated god. It's completely null.

By being "not from around here", I explicitly want all of my backstory to never come into play. But it's what defines the character - who they are and why they are who they are. Would you really say that that's completely null? Because, for me, it's everything.


Nowadays, I'm glad that players are invested in their character as well as the setting (and plot, if there's one) and want to be a part of it from the get-go, no "strangers from somewhere".

Would you be glad that players are invested in their character and the setting, as opposed to invested in their character and exploring the setting, and, if so, why? Exploration is my greatest joy in gaming; it is thus of value to me to be able to identify GMs who will best give me what I desire vs those who consider it detrimental to the game.

Lapak
2018-02-14, 03:39 PM
I guess what’s throwing me off about your approach to this, Quertus, is that you seem deeply invested in consistency when it comes to the world you are exploring but are asking the GM to accept a deep and serious INconsistency when it comes to just your character.

Now, part of why I don’t like running in published settings is because it builds the kinds of expectations you talk about, which become pain points when different people at the table have a conflicting vision of the setting. But it’s at least as grating (for many people) to have a character essentially drop out of the sky with no knowledge of their surroundings but fully capable of speaking the language, following social mores enough not to get into trouble, etc.

If I had you at my table, I’d probably be okay with you being from ‘away’ provided you were willing to do some of the heavy lifting - that is, I’d likely say something like: “no godlings or alternate dimensions, people around here are races A-Z but I’m willing to work with you on something else, you’re from off the edge of the known map and arrived recently. But you have to answer:
- how did you get here?
- how is it that you speak the language?
- what is the culture and society like where you are from?
- if your immediate goal isn’t ‘to get home’, what is it?”

And I’d need to settle that with you before play starts.

Pex
2018-02-14, 03:47 PM
If someone says, "build a 7th level 3e D&D character for a Forgotten Realms game", I will most likely bring an existing rules-legal 7th level 3e D&D character... from a different world. Because world-travel is explicitly a thing in 3e D&D Forgotten Realms, and I would like to explore their idea of the Forgotten Realms rather than find that the Forgotten Realms as I understand it doesn't match their view of the Forgotten Realms, thereby making my character an in-setting alien that grates on the GM's nerves*.



I view this as wanting to be a special snowflake everyone must notice me. I see no reason to do this otherwise. It may be your fun, but it's drawing in extra special attention to disrupt verisimilitude. You could have kept your character intent yet work with the gameworld. It is likely the campaign would take place on the Sword Coast - Neverwinter, Silvery Moon, Waterdeep, Baldur's Gate, the wilderness in between. Therefore, have your character be from Mulhorand with the Far Traveler background from Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide. The Good Guys PCs and NPCs are worshiping Tyr, Torm, Ilmater, Lathander, Chauntea, Tymora. You're worshiping Ra or Osiris or Isis.

Cosi
2018-02-14, 03:49 PM
I would encourage all GMs to work with players, and I have no objection to "shared creation" of settings. I'm using "GM decides" here because it gets old to type out a bunch of qualifiers and details every time.

But those qualifiers make the statement's meaning profoundly different. Being told "you can't do that, the DM said no" is railroading or at least something vaguely similar. Being told "you can't do that, we (a group that includes you) agreed that people can't do that" isn't.


Why, exactly should those settings happen to be basically identical to TSR/WotC's output? Why encourage the derivative and disappointing Tolkien clone, with added D&D baggage?

So, I generally agree that different games can include different stuff and that is okay.

But at the same time there are expectations about what a game that is advertised as "D&D" will be. Like, if you show up to a D&D game, you're not being unreasonable if you expect that you will roll a d20 to determine if you succeed or fail at challenges, or that you will have a class that you gain levels in, or any number of other mechanical things (particularly if it was advertised as "a 3.5 game" or "a 4e game" or whatever). Is it really unreasonable to expect that there are some setting elements that are similarly general? People certainly seem to think (from any of the dozens of Fighter threads) that "be able to play a mundane martial type" is something that they should be able to expect to be allowed when they sit down to play D&D. If you sit down to play a game of Shadowrun, you should be able to expect that you will be playing in a cyberpunk dystopia with magic and advanced technology.

I don't think "how much should you be able to assume when someone tells you that the game they are setting up is Exalted" is an unreasonable question to ask, or that "nothing" is a reasonable answer to it.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-02-14, 03:53 PM
By being "not from around here", I explicitly want all of my backstory to never come into play. But it's what defines the character - who they are and why they are who they are. Would you really say that that's completely null? Because, for me, it's everything.


For me, a character is defined by what they do at the table. Nothing else really matters, or even is fixed in stone. The only backstory that I've ever found to matter (beyond special snowflake syndrome) is

* One or two personality quirks (talks real fast, blinks a lot, sees omens everywhere)
* An ideal (what the character believes in)
* A bond (why are they adventuring? Who are they connected to?)
* a flaw (something that gets them in trouble.
* a general outlook on life and society (a loose sense of alignment in the non-technical sense)

I care who the character is at play start. Not where they came from, not what they've experienced, but who they are. I also care that they can change. You seem to tie your characters down so tightly that they can't change--you've stereotyped them and boxed them up neatly. That's not a real person--that's a caricature.

You demand consistency from others, and then demand that they relax that consistency to let your special snowflake ascended god who's just playing at being mortal in. That bugs me. A lot. Because it's living a lie. An ascended god is completely different in nature than a mortal--the one can't just "play" at being the other. The difference in outlook, capabilities, history etc. should matter. If it never comes up in play or influences play, then it's not real. If it does, then you're breaking the game for other people. It's like playing a normal T3 game, except one person decides they want to play as an ancient dragon. Yeah, that's not going to fly. Even if they nerf themselves and "play down" to the level of the party. Because the characters have to be wondering "why is this person even here? Why aren't they solving the issues instead of making us take risks? They're just toying with us." It comes across as seriously condescending and belittling.

I go by the motto that the only truths in a campaign are those that are created at the table. None of the setting pieces, nothing in the DM notes, nothing in a character's backstory that doesn't come out at the table is really real in-universe. Once it's been stated, then it's concrete fact. Until then, it's only possibly true.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-02-14, 03:57 PM
I don't think "how much should you be able to assume when someone tells you that the game they are setting up is Exalted" is an unreasonable question to ask, or that "nothing" is a reasonable answer to it.

That's a huge jump there from the quote (exactly the same) to "no expectations at all."

You can expect certain things from any "conforming" D&D setting. But you explicitly (by the books!) can't assume the existence of specific mechanical elements (such as inter-planar travel, the existence of particular spells/feats/PrCs/races/etc).

This is especially true when you want to splat dive and use elements that are specific to other settings (a FR PrC in an Eberron game, for example). All of those pieces are there at the setting-designer's option. They're not required or expected by default--saying "we're using races X, Y, and Z and classes A, B, and C from books Q, R, and S" isn't a restriction of agency as long as you know about it going in to the game. You agreed to those rules by playing. Whining about it later is just bad sportsmanship.

Max_Killjoy
2018-02-14, 04:08 PM
I guess what’s throwing me off about your approach to this, Quertus, is that you seem deeply invested in consistency when it comes to the world you are exploring but are asking the GM to accept a deep and serious INconsistency when it comes to just your character.

Now, part of why I don’t like running in published settings is because it builds the kinds of expectations you talk about, which become pain points when different people at the table have a conflicting vision of the setting. But it’s at least as grating (for many people) to have a character essentially drop out of the sky with no knowledge of their surroundings but fully capable of speaking the language, following social mores enough not to get into trouble, etc.

If I had you at my table, I’d probably be okay with you being from ‘away’ provided you were willing to do some of the heavy lifting - that is, I’d likely say something like: “no godlings or alternate dimensions, people around here are races A-Z but I’m willing to work with you on something else, you’re from off the edge of the known map and arrived recently. But you have to answer:
- how did you get here?
- how is it that you speak the language?
- what is the culture and society like where you are from?
- if your immediate goal isn’t ‘to get home’, what is it?”

And I’d need to settle that with you before play starts.


I view this as wanting to be a special snowflake everyone must notice me. I see no reason to do this otherwise. It may be your fun, but it's drawing in extra special attention to disrupt verisimilitude. You could have kept your character intent yet work with the gameworld. It is likely the campaign would take place on the Sword Coast - Neverwinter, Silvery Moon, Waterdeep, Baldur's Gate, the wilderness in between. Therefore, have your character be from Mulhorand with the Far Traveler background from Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide. The Good Guys PCs and NPCs are worshiping Tyr, Torm, Ilmater, Lathander, Chauntea, Tymora. You're worshiping Ra or Osiris or Isis.


Indeed, most settings are quite large and diverse enough that your character can be "not from around here" for big definitions of "here" without all the "dropped in from another reality" stuff.

Quertus
2018-02-14, 11:20 PM
I guess what’s throwing me off about your approach to this, Quertus, is that you seem deeply invested in consistency when it comes to the world you are exploring but are asking the GM to accept a deep and serious INconsistency when it comes to just your character.

D&D has so many ways to travel between worlds, it's not having such characters that would be the inconsistency.

Both Warhammer and Mutants and Masterminds make it even easier than D&D. And RIFTS is kinda based on this concept. So, IIRC, 4 of the past 5 systems I've played, it's almost an expectation, unless the GM specifically forbids it.


Now, part of why I don’t like running in published settings is because it builds the kinds of expectations you talk about, which become pain points when different people at the table have a conflicting vision of the setting. But it’s at least as grating (for many people) to have a character essentially drop out of the sky with no knowledge of their surroundings but fully capable of speaking the language, following social mores enough not to get into trouble, etc.

Speak the language? Well...

D&D? Common. Done.

Warhammer? High Gaelic or whatnot. Done.

M&M? There's rules for languages. Done.

RIFTS? I'm pretty sure that there were rules for languages in that game, too.

But I've also played characters - and adventured beside characters - who didn't speak the language. Great times!

Now, understanding social... mores... is a bit more of a head scratcher. I've seen and played two options. One way, the character doesn't know the rules, and gets in trouble. Of course, this often happens to whole parties as they travel. The other is, the GM says something like, "sure, you can play Quertus, but let's get his initial 'troubles' with the local mage guild out of the way one-on-one before the game". This prevents the character from being a spotlight hog in ways that wouldn't be fun for the rest of the group.


If I had you at my table, I’d probably be okay with you being from ‘away’ provided you were willing to do some of the heavy lifting - that is, I’d likely say something like: “no godlings or alternate dimensions, people around here are races A-Z but I’m willing to work with you on something else, you’re from off the edge of the known map and arrived recently. But you have to answer:
- how did you get here?
- how is it that you speak the language?
- what is the culture and society like where you are from?
- if your immediate goal isn’t ‘to get home’, what is it?”

And I’d need to settle that with you before play starts.

That would be cool, except that it runs into the "and here's my 15th 'not from around here' character, as I struggle to build a character I'll enjoy playing. Now, if you ran a series if one-shots in this setting, until I had a character that I liked, worked well with the group, etc, and then started the real game, yes, that would be bloody awesome! I just hate imposing that much, though.


I view this as wanting to be a special snowflake everyone must notice me. I see no reason to do this otherwise.

As covered above, it's so I can play an existing character I know I'll enjoy playing (and will work with the group, the scenario, etc), rather than a new one I don't, or 19 new ones I don't enjoy followed by one that I do.


It may be your fun, but it's drawing in extra special attention to disrupt verisimilitude.

Covered above, it's not disruptive to that v-word in most any system I play.


You could have kept your character intent yet work with the gameworld. It is likely the campaign would take place on the Sword Coast - Neverwinter, Silvery Moon, Waterdeep, Baldur's Gate, the wilderness in between. Therefore, have your character be from Mulhorand with the Far Traveler background from Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide. The Good Guys PCs and NPCs are worshiping Tyr, Torm, Ilmater, Lathander, Chauntea, Tymora. You're worshiping Ra or Osiris or Isis.

That sounds more like a special snowflake to me, personally. Not that I mind special snowflakes as much as most people, mind, but I'd rather someone play the character for, you know, the character, rather than to be different.


For me, a character is defined by what they do at the table. Nothing else really matters, or even is fixed in stone. The only backstory that I've ever found to matter (beyond special snowflake syndrome) is

* One or two personality quirks (talks real fast, blinks a lot, sees omens everywhere)
* An ideal (what the character believes in)
* A bond (why are they adventuring? Who are they connected to?)
* a flaw (something that gets them in trouble.
* a general outlook on life and society (a loose sense of alignment in the non-technical sense)

Here, I suspect, we're too different in our outlook to have a meaningful discussion. I personally believe that my personality and choices are based on a lot more than that list, and that, if I were uploaded and flattened to that list, I would not be recognizably me in any meaningful way.


I care who the character is at play start. Not where they came from, not what they've experienced, but who they are. I also care that they can change. You seem to tie your characters down so tightly that they can't change--you've stereotyped them and boxed them up neatly. That's not a real person--that's a caricature.

Um... I clearly haven't communicated well, if that's your takeaway.

Now, yes, the concept behind Quertus, my signature character for whom this account is named, was based on people who Never learn, never change, and so I rigged the game to make him as static as possible... So, sure, I can see how you'd get that impression.

But I spend a lot of time developing my character's personalities, and, when pressured to run something quickly, I usually just run a deity playing an appropriate meat puppet just so that I don't run caricatures instead of characters.


You demand consistency from others, and then demand that they relax that consistency to let your special snowflake ascended god who's just playing at being mortal in. That bugs me. A lot. Because it's living a lie. An ascended god is completely different in nature than a mortal--the one can't just "play" at being the other. The difference in outlook, capabilities, history etc. should matter. If it never comes up in play or influences play, then it's not real. If it does, then you're breaking the game for other people. It's like playing a normal T3 game, except one person decides they want to play as an ancient dragon. Yeah, that's not going to fly. Even if they nerf themselves and "play down" to the level of the party. Because the characters have to be wondering "why is this person even here? Why aren't they solving the issues instead of making us take risks? They're just toying with us." It comes across as seriously condescending and belittling.

Actually, my "ascended deity" characters are usually, um, much plainer and more boring and less "special snowflakes" than my real characters - in part because the deity specifically doesn't want to draw attention to themselves.

And a dragon in a 3e game? Horribly underpowered for its ECL. The T3 characters would totally steal the spotlight. :smalltongue:


I go by the motto that the only truths in a campaign are those that are created at the table. None of the setting pieces, nothing in the DM notes, nothing in a character's backstory that doesn't come out at the table is really real in-universe. Once it's been stated, then it's concrete fact. Until then, it's only possibly true.

What's my line? "And, on this point, I suspect we differ too much to have meaningful discourse."


Indeed, most settings are quite large and diverse enough that your character can be "not from around here" for big definitions of "here" without all the "dropped in from another reality" stuff.

True. As I covered above, "not from around here" is just an added bonus for "existing character". If I had 19 more ranks in "create character", and didn't have to take a 20 to get a character I'd enjoy, and I didn't have to worry about grating on the GMs nerves by being an in-world alien, then, yes, being from some other part of the campaign world would totally buy me the "not from around here" aspect that I also happen to enjoy.

Pex
2018-02-14, 11:55 PM
Be careful when you edit multiple quotes. You are attributing to me in many places what others have written.

Xuc Xac
2018-02-15, 12:01 AM
Speak the language? Well...

D&D? Common. Done.

Warhammer? High Gaelic or whatnot. Done.

M&M? There's rules for languages. Done.

RIFTS? I'm pretty sure that there were rules for languages in that game, too.


Oh, you speak Common? Which one? Just because you speak Common where you're from, that doesn't mean you'll speak the same language as the "Common" where you're going. I can think of three different languages off the top of my head from the real world that are all called "Common".

If you actually speak the local language, how did you learn it? They speak High Gaelic where you're from too? If you learned it after your arrival, how long have you been "here"? In all that time, you've only learned the language and haven't picked up anything else so you're still a total stranger? How could you learn a language with twenty different words for "goblin" and still be surprised when a goblin pops up?

LordCdrMilitant
2018-02-15, 12:19 AM
Oh, you speak Common? Which one? Just because you speak Common where you're from, that doesn't mean you'll speak the same language as the "Common" where you're going. I can think of three different languages off the top of my head from the real world that are all called "Common".

If you actually speak the local language, how did you learn it? They speak High Gaelic where you're from too? If you learned it after your arrival, how long have you been "here"? In all that time, you've only learned the language and haven't picked up anything else so you're still a total stranger? How could you learn a language with twenty different words for "goblin" and still be surprised when a goblin pops up?

High Gothic is standardized by the Imperium of Man. People like Inquisitors, Rogue Traders, Sisters of Battle, Guard/Navy Officers etc. speak High Gothic. Guardsmen are likely given basic instruction so they can read their Departmento Munitorium-issue inspirational literature and to ensure effective coordination between regiments.
Low Gothic has a wide variety of dialects, varying drastically by worlds. It's generally assumed to be mish-mashes of real-world languages. Gangers, low ranking nobles, and people unlikely to meet people from other worlds primarily speak Low Gothic, and while there are several dominant variants, even within them there is massive variation. Someone from Praetoria may not be able to converse with someone from Valhalla.
Binary is the language of machines, and is spoken exclusively by adepts of the Machine Cult. Like High Gothic, it is also standardized galactically.


If you can speak High Gothic, you can speak with almost anyone with power in the Imperium, but you may not be able to converse with the lower classes and you will definitely always sound excessively pretentious. High Gothic is canonically fake latin. Astra Militarum, Adepta Sororitas, Navis Nobilite are in High Gothic, and Imperial Guard, Sisters of Battle, and Navigator Houses are the names of those organizations in a common dialect of Low Gothic.

Lapak
2018-02-15, 12:27 AM
D&D has so many ways to travel between worlds, it's not having such characters that would be the inconsistency.For first level characters? Explaining how you got plane shifted or whatever is still simpler than just being from the region? It really does feel like you're reaching pretty far to justify this. If it's what you need to enjoy playing, fine, but trying to claim it's just as expected as having a character from within the setting seems disingenuous.

Now, understanding social... mores... is a bit more of a head scratcher. I've seen and played two options. One way, the character doesn't know the rules, and gets in trouble. Of course, this often happens to whole parties as they travel. The other is, the GM says something like, "sure, you can play Quertus, but let's get his initial 'troubles' with the local mage guild out of the way one-on-one before the game". This prevents the character from being a spotlight hog in ways that wouldn't be fun for the rest of the group.

That would be cool, except that it runs into the "and here's my 15th 'not from around here' character, as I struggle to build a character I'll enjoy playing. Now, if you ran a series if one-shots in this setting, until I had a character that I liked, worked well with the group, etc, and then started the real game, yes, that would be bloody awesome! I just hate imposing that much, though.Here again: you've said several times that it's partly to avoid annoying the GM with inconsistencies and partly to avoid being annoyed yourself, but you seem pretty willing to put substantial burdens on the GM. If you're picky about what kind of character you get to play, just say that and don't couch it in concern for the rest of the table.

But I spend a lot of time developing my character's personalities, and, when pressured to run something quickly, I usually just run a deity playing an appropriate meat puppet just so that I don't run caricatures instead of characters.You said a few times that people are too far apart from your mindset to have a useful conversation; this makes me suspect it may be true between you and I as well. This is not the shortest path to 'non-caricature' in any way I can see.

georgie_leech
2018-02-15, 12:44 AM
You said a few times that people are too far apart from your mindset to have a useful conversation; this makes me suspect it may be true between you and I as well. This is not the shortest path to 'non-caricature' in any way I can see.

It does bear a certain resemblance to how someone far beyond the reality of game world is making decisions from on high in a way the completely sidesteps the decision-making progress in-universe. I mean I've got nothing against self inserts in principle, but this seems a little on the nose for my tastes. :smallamused:

Quertus
2018-02-15, 01:19 AM
Be careful when you edit multiple quotes. You are attributing to me in many places what others have written.

Whoops, sorry! I think I fixed it. :smallredface:


Oh, you speak Common? Which one? Just because you speak Common where you're from, that doesn't mean you'll speak the same language as the "Common" where you're going.

If all the plane shifting characters, spell jamming characters, and plane-hopping demons, let alone multi-world deities haven't standardized "common" between worlds, that's a hit to that v-word. Just saying.

And the fact that these creatures that, in cannon, travel to multiple worlds, have stats, with just one instance of "common" listed? This doesn't strike you as indicating that "common" is universal?


For first level characters? Explaining how you got plane shifted or whatever is still simpler than just being from the region? It really does feel like you're reaching pretty far to justify this. If it's what you need to enjoy playing, fine, but trying to claim it's just as expected as having a character from within the setting seems disingenuous.
Here again: you've said several times that it's partly to avoid annoying the GM with inconsistencies and partly to avoid being annoyed yourself, but you seem pretty willing to put substantial burdens on the GM. If you're picky about what kind of character you get to play, just say that and don't couch it in concern for the rest of the table.
You said a few times that people are too far apart from your mindset to have a useful conversation; this makes me suspect it may be true between you and I as well. This is not the shortest path to 'non-caricature' in any way I can see.

So confused. In what way do you perceive my desire to have a GM put zero effort into explaining the world beforehand, zero effort into integrating my background into the story / my backstory into the world, and zero effort into custom tailoring things for me to be putting any burden, let alone a substantial one, on the GM? :smallconfused:

And, yes, having an actual played-through character, rather than just a few broad strokes, makes the character much more a known quantity, much more predictable. Thus, I am much better able to determine whether the character will fit or not, in addition to knowing whether or not I'll enjoy the character.

Now, if you happen to be playing in the same region of the same world that the character is in / from, then, sure, I don't have to be "not from around here" to play an existing character / the existing character that I believe would be the best match, but a) what are the odds of that, and b) what are the odds that the GM won't be upset at - what were the words again - handing creative control of their world to assume random weirdo they've never met? "Why, yes, there is a bakery here, and, ever since I rescued the baker from a fire, I get free bread every day, because that's what happened in this world under my old GM".

Personally, I think my way, of just being "not from around here" is better.


It does bear a certain resemblance to how someone far beyond the reality of game world is making decisions from on high in a way the completely sidesteps the decision-making progress in-universe. I mean I've got nothing against self inserts in principle, but this seems a little on the nose for my tastes. :smallamused:

If I read you correctly, then yes, I get no small amount of amusement out of a similar line of thought. :smallwink:

1337 b4k4
2018-02-15, 01:24 AM
From my perspective, it's a system with a lot of very unhelpful assumptions baked in.[quote]

I guess that's one way to look at it.

[quote]
My favorite system overall is still HERO 5th ed, despite a few flaws, and I take a lot of my approach from that angle -- so to me, the divide between the system as a toolkit, and the actual setting, has no real ambiguity.

So what about games like Apocalypse World, Stars Without Number, Eclipse Phase, World Wide Wrestling, VTM or Traveller? All of those also fall at various points along the "system as a setting scale". Do you also view those games as systems with "a lot of very unhelpful assumptions baked in"? If not, how is D&D different for you? And for that matter, does D&D's "helpfulness" with its assumptions change between the editions for you, or does the fact that D&D has any setting baked in at all automatically make it unhelpful?

Florian
2018-02-15, 01:54 AM
That's not my RPG experience, but then until recently I've mostly DM'd (and occasionally played) D&D official play since 4e came out. Often in game stores, but also as part of a large-scale email distro list where people run official play games out of their houses in my city.

Open tables, gaming at a FLGS or at conventions are practically a non-issue where I live. Organized play, like RPGA or PFS, is also very uncommon. The huge gamut of groups are closed home tables that play the big campaigns that are available.


Would you be glad that players are invested in their character and the setting, as opposed to invested in their character and exploring the setting, and, if so, why? Exploration is my greatest joy in gaming; it is thus of value to me to be able to identify GMs who will best give me what I desire vs those who consider it detrimental to the game.

It´s a difference in mindset. Players already invested and knowledgeable about the setting don't just play their characters for themselves, they try to play them for the enjoyment of the others. Depending on the system, you can also share a lot of narrative and creative power with your players, as they will want to improve the setting. Using L5R or d20 Rokugan as an example, people into this kind of game know what they're about, already know what their characters are able and unable to do (and why) and willingly go for it. Having a "foreign godling" along for the ride might be a good way to explore that setting, but it will be grating for the other players and puts a burden on the gm to explain stuff that is already common and basic knowledge for the gaming group.


So what about games like Apocalypse World, Stars Without Number, Eclipse Phase, World Wide Wrestling, VTM or Traveller? All of those also fall at various points along the "system as a setting scale". Do you also view those games as systems with "a lot of very unhelpful assumptions baked in"? If not, how is D&D different for you? And for that matter, does D&D's "helpfulness" with its assumptions change between the editions for you, or does the fact that D&D has any setting baked in at all automatically make it unhelpful?

It´s not so much the in-build setting that's an issue, but rather that some editions of D&D tried to sell themselves as more generic systems that you can use to play and setting or style with, while what they actually delivered were rules for playing Greyhawk.
Looking at the old Alternity game by TSR is interesting, the core rules are only half the thing, it needed the setting rules to be finished. There's a stark contrast between Stardrive and Dark Matter.

Mordaedil
2018-02-15, 02:25 AM
If all the plane shifting characters, spell jamming characters, and plane-hopping demons, let alone multi-world deities haven't standardized "common" between worlds, that's a hit to that v-word. Just saying.

And the fact that these creatures that, in cannon, travel to multiple worlds, have stats, with just one instance of "common" listed? This doesn't strike you as indicating that "common" is universal?
This is how the real world operates right now though. Most people these days can speak English where I live, but not everybody can, and I imagine many countries don't bother learning English that extremely well because it's not something that occurs to them to apply much in their day-to-day reality. In a setting with, as you put it, plane-shifting, plane-hopping, spell jamming, yes, there's going to be various cultures and while some of them might agree on a certain dialect to speak, it might not actually be "common", which is the tongue of the material plane. Instead, they might heavily emphasis Abyssal or Infernal (maybe a real world parallell to French and German) or maybe Celestial and Draconic (Spanish and Chinese) because these languages are more commonly used in trade, especially when it comes to exchange of magical supplies between dragons and angels.

All of a sudden, common, the tongue spoken by material plane farmers, isn't going to carry you very far.

Quertus
2018-02-15, 05:16 AM
It´s a difference in mindset. Players already invested and knowledgeable about the setting don't just play their characters for themselves, they try to play them for the enjoyment of the others. Depending on the system, you can also share a lot of narrative and creative power with your players, as they will want to improve the setting. Using L5R or d20 Rokugan as an example, people into this kind of game know what they're about, already know what their characters are able and unable to do (and why) and willingly go for it. Having a "foreign godling" along for the ride might be a good way to explore that setting, but it will be grating for the other players and puts a burden on the gm to explain stuff that is already common and basic knowledge for the gaming group.

Lemme try to tease this apart.

Some GMs have an unspoken "no noobs" policy, whereby those who don't know the ins and outs of the setting, and have to have things explained to them, will be grating. Yeah, I've met those GMs. And are you then saying that "cares about the setting" is a decent indicator of this anti-noob, anti-exploration mindset?

Some players are egocentric, and play only for themselves; others are abnegation, and play for the group. Yes, both exist - and good and bad versions of both exist. For example, players and GMs who would sacrifice the character of the character for "the needs of the story" are antithetical to my style. But a player who can metagame enough to consider making better choices for the fun of the group is an asset. But I see this as being invested in the group - I don't see how this behavior really had anything to do with connection to the setting.

Some GMs want to give players narrative control. ... Depending on what you mean by that, my response will range from, "OK, sure", to, "not my cup of tea".

Some players will want to improve the setting. ... If you mean what I think you mean by this, with players changing and creating content for the world, I think I'll pass. I came here to play a character, and to change the world in character. If I'd wanted to build a world, I'd have built a world. Further, the idea that the world isn't static, but keeps changing during play, tends to produce an inconsistent mess that isn't worth my time to Explore.

Some players don't just play a (statistically appropriate) character, they play the character playing a (statistically appropriate) character. Yup, that's me.

Out of all this, the only actionable item I see is, "if the GM cares about their setting, they are unlikely to want a player exploring it".

EDIT: and, maybe, "if the GM cares about the setting, they are more likely to be, to use the hatred GNS labels, a Narrativist GM (which is probably my least favorite style)."

Is that really supposed to be my takeaway?


This is how the real world operates right now though. Most people these days can speak English where I live, but not everybody can, and I imagine many countries don't bother learning English that extremely well because it's not something that occurs to them to apply much in their day-to-day reality. In a setting with, as you put it, plane-shifting, plane-hopping, spell jamming, yes, there's going to be various cultures and while some of them might agree on a certain dialect to speak, it might not actually be "common", which is the tongue of the material plane. Instead, they might heavily emphasis Abyssal or Infernal (maybe a real world parallell to French and German) or maybe Celestial and Draconic (Spanish and Chinese) because these languages are more commonly used in trade, especially when it comes to exchange of magical supplies between dragons and angels.

All of a sudden, common, the tongue spoken by material plane farmers, isn't going to carry you very far.

Well, sure. But if the GM didn't specify, "bring a character who can speak Celestial or Draconic", then gets upset that player didn't take one of those languages for their PC, that's on them, regardless of how many previous GMs the character has had.

Cluedrew
2018-02-15, 09:09 AM
Well, this thread has become (for me at least) "let's talk about another alien thing Quertus does that I don't understand." Although, like other alien things he does, I'm not sure if it is good or bad its just confusing. Actually I can think of some situations it would defiantly be bad, but in world hopping D&D... maybe?


I want to paint a picture. Why keep painting on the same canvas when I could instead just grab a new canvas and start painting something like the picture that I already started? I can just have a pile of half-finished pictures, and that's just as good, right?So this picture is your character that you would like to continue painting, I get that. I see the canvas though as the campaign. So to me it feels more like "repeating the same picture over and over again" rather than continuing the same one. And I do have characters that extend through multiple stories, but those stories are all connected to each other, with other characters (and the important relations formed in early stories) remaining. If you leave those and other community based parts of the character behind, is it really the same character?

Max_Killjoy
2018-02-15, 10:02 AM
So what about games like Apocalypse World, Stars Without Number, Eclipse Phase, World Wide Wrestling, VTM or Traveller? All of those also fall at various points along the "system as a setting scale". Do you also view those games as systems with "a lot of very unhelpful assumptions baked in"? If not, how is D&D different for you? And for that matter, does D&D's "helpfulness" with its assumptions change between the editions for you, or does the fact that D&D has any setting baked in at all automatically make it unhelpful?


There is a difference between a system making assumptions about the settings it will be used to run campaigns with, and the assertion that a system IS a setting.

Take oWoD Vampire for example. Vampire made certain assumptions about the setting, but the system itself wasn't a setting. I could easily use that to run a campaign that doesn't use WW's assumed metaplot and setting, and ignore all their published worldbuilding beyond "there are vampires". A bit of tweaking could easily scrub most of their metaphysical and metaplot assumptions entirely out of the system and match the system up with a better setting.

The fact that there are multiple published and countless homebrew settings all being used in campaigns with some version of D&D as the system should make this an open and shut case, but evidently not.

Max_Killjoy
2018-02-15, 10:11 AM
If all the plane shifting characters, spell jamming characters, and plane-hopping demons, let alone multi-world deities haven't standardized "common" between worlds, that's a hit to that v-word. Just saying.


Not really. Those activities represent a tiny tiny minority of what's going on in those worlds. Claiming they should have created a common language is like claiming that the 19th-century British explorers should have resulted in a common language across all of Sub-Saharan Africa.

(Not to mention the unfounded assumption that every GM's world/setting will be connected to the TSR/WotC "multiverse").





And the fact that these creatures that, in cannon, travel to multiple worlds, have stats, with just one instance of "common" listed? This doesn't strike you as indicating that "common" is universal?


Not really. "Common" is just shorthand for whatever "old Latin" or "trade tongue" or "lingua franca" or "commercial English" is used by the learned and the well-traveled in that setting.

Quertus
2018-02-15, 10:31 AM
So this picture is your character that you would like to continue painting, I get that. I see the canvas though as the campaign. So to me it feels more like "repeating the same picture over and over again" rather than continuing the same one. And I do have characters that extend through multiple stories, but those stories are all connected to each other, with other characters (and the important relations formed in early stories) remaining. If you leave those and other community based parts of the character behind, is it really the same character?

I have gotten new jobs / traveled to new towns, and left my old community behind. Am I really the same person?

Tanarii
2018-02-15, 10:48 AM
Open tables, gaming at a FLGS or at conventions are practically a non-issue where I live. Organized play, like RPGA or PFS, is also very uncommon. The huge gamut of groups are closed home tables that play the big campaigns that are available.Okay then. Well ... I'll keep in mind our fairly vast gulf between our RPG experiences in all future discussions about what roleplaying and roleplaying games "means". :smallbiggrin: :smallwink:


For first level characters? Explaining how you got plane shifted or whatever is still simpler than just being from the region? It really does feel like you're reaching pretty far to justify this. If it's what you need to enjoy playing, fine, but trying to claim it's just as expected as having a character from within the setting seems disingenuous.At no point did I get the impression that the discussion on porting existing characters from another table was about first level characters.

In fact, doing a brand new character as a "not from around here" planar or across the world traveler definitely smacks far more of trying to do something different for the sake of different, or to workaround DM "here's the local race & class choices" for the setting. Similar to 5e SCAG's Far Traveller background, which exists so you can explain bringing in distant Forgotten Realms races to the local Sword Coast play area.

With the obvious exception of games like Rifts or D&D's Spelljammer or Planescape, which practically beg you to do have "not from around here" with brand spanking new characters. As well as port in characters from any previous games within the same system.

exelsisxax
2018-02-15, 10:49 AM
I have gotten new jobs / traveled to new towns, and left my old community behind. Am I really the same person?

No, you aren't. You are you, but you right now is not the same as you 10 years ago.

Quertus
2018-02-15, 12:17 PM
No, you aren't. You are you, but you right now is not the same as you 10 years ago.

That's an interesting position. So, if the campaign has a 10-year down time, do you feel that your character is no longer the same character? Is the character now lacking continuity, and you may as well just build a new character?

exelsisxax
2018-02-15, 02:28 PM
That's an interesting position. So, if the campaign has a 10-year down time, do you feel that your character is no longer the same character? Is the character now lacking continuity, and you may as well just build a new character?

I don't understand how you have failed to understand me.

You are not who you were 10 years ago. This is a bare fact, not an opinion. Similarly, any being that exists in a non-immutable state(i.e. removed from time's passage) for an extended period of time will, after that duration, not be the same as they were before the span of time. If the span of time is 10 years, there could easily be large and significant changes in the personality, beliefs, moods, and body of that person.

Basically, people change.

So yes, if you're playing Steve one-sword before a 10-year timeskip you should certainly not have your character totally unchanged and unaffected by a decade passing. Steve remains steve, but maybe he's got 3 swords now and also loves cheese with wine. Steve is different, but barring some magic shenanigans like mind switch steve is still steve.

Cluedrew
2018-02-15, 03:39 PM
I have gotten new jobs / traveled to new towns, and left my old community behind. Am I really the same person?Although exelsisxax said a lot of the things I want to say, although I will confess that by the common definition the answer is yes, but that is not the one I'm talking about. It is more a snapshot view of a person, the culmination of everything up to this point. At the next point it might be different. People do change and to me the idea of repeated piling on the types of events that can trigger large changes in a person seems to go against the idea of exploring such minute points of a character that you can't fit it into a single campaign.

I mean I do have a character that I have brought across campaigns, but I re-interpreted it every time to see how it would fit into this new world. And not plane hopping, if it had been born and been raised here. And really, it was more of a re-used concept than a reused character in my mind.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-02-15, 05:43 PM
I'll try to add a pet peeve that's on topic--

I dislike systems that encourage/expect/require you to plan out your character's mechanical development from character creation. 3e D&D is a prime offender--if you don't, you'll be way less effective and be locked out of flavorful options later (due to prerequisites and feat chains).

This goes along with my top peeve--trap options. I HATE trap options. Systems that throw them in intentionally "to promote system mastery" should all burn in eternal fire...Ok, maybe that was a little much. But I hate those. I'd rather have options that all work rather than some that work, some that are meh, and some that are just stupidly stupid (but don't look it). This is true even if overall the second system has more working options.

Take two cases:

System | total options | "good" options
A | 100 | 20
B | 10 | 10

Ceteris paribus, I'd take system B in a heartbeat and not look back. Even though system A has twice as many good options. But I have to wade through 80 crap options to get there. And that's a waste of my time and only causes heartbreak and snobbery.

FreddyNoNose
2018-02-15, 06:04 PM
Inspired by my previous thread and a conversation I had I was wondering what pet peves you guys have when it comes to the mechanics or setting of tabletop games.

One of my pet peeves is how systems sometimes assumes certain styles of play without telling you like how in certain editions of D&D the to-hit and ac of monsters accelerates past you unless you focus on the right magical items. This annoys me because the first campaign tends to end in frustration because the monster was hitting the fighter on a three because you focused on giving interesting magic items to them so the fighter still had 21 ac.

Another is when systems are based on your party being part of an organization with few or no rules on how that organization works. For example in Dark Heresy you are part of what's essentially the FBI with a private army but outside of it being the source of your adventures the game gives very little info on how to work in this system so the GM has to figure out how to determine things that should already be covered like requesting equipment temporarily or getting in touch with other assets. This means as a person who likes mechanics for things like that over figuring it out on the spot ends up writing a significant amount of rules to make up for it.

I hear what you are saying. There was a GM who was running a cowboys/wild west RPG. As players, we were forced to play in a wild west game. Can you believe that? It was forced on us.

flond
2018-02-15, 07:28 PM
I hear what you are saying. There was a GM who was running a cowboys/wild west RPG. As players, we were forced to play in a wild west game. Can you believe that? It was forced on us.

I do believe this is less. "Our GM told us we were playing a wild west rpg oh no" and more "I don't like how this wild west rpg soon loses any use for guns and becomes all about use lariet"

ImNotTrevor
2018-02-15, 07:55 PM
[
So what about games like Apocalypse World,
The full extent of setting expectation is:
1. It's post apocalypse. Probably.
2. There is a thing called the Psychic Maelstrom and it's weird. What it is and how it works? Your problem.

(One time the PM was a literal giant psychic hurricane. Another time it was basically the leftovers of an alien wifi network from an invasion. Another time it was the remaining shockwaves of eldritch energy left behind by the passing gaze of a Great Old One. And each functioned a little differently. The book encourages you to go crazy.)



Stars Without Number

SWN does come with its own general setting and history. It's not impossible to divorce from it, though. But once you have a History Of The World section, the system comes with a setting.



Eclipse Phase, World Wide Wrestling, VTM or Traveller? All of those also fall at various points along the "system as a setting scale". Do you also view those games as systems with "a lot of very unhelpful assumptions baked in"? If not, how is D&D different for you? And for that matter, does D&D's "helpfulness" with its assumptions change between the editions for you, or does the fact that D&D has any setting baked in at all automatically make it unhelpful?

I don't know much about those others but it seems to be sliding upward.

What I think is unhelpful about D&D is that it comes with prebuilt setting expectations but markets itself as if it doesn't. Like most problems with D&D, that's what it comes down to:
It claims to be a thing, but it is not that thing in many cases. But if it owned its setting weirdnesses in a more forward way than mentioning Greyhawk occassionally ? No problems.



Now on to my pet peeve:
Apocalypse World 2e's Threatmap system is objectively worse than 1e's Fronts and it peeves me that I need to use two books to get the optimal setup going.

As someone who once had to flip between 8 D&D books on a regular basis.... that feels like a petty complaint. But it still peeves me.

Florian
2018-02-16, 03:25 AM
@Quertus:

Roughly speaking, settings have the same sliding scale (no rules - rules light - rules heavy) as the rules system you use to play them. Some cases even include the "hard rule" clause that "setting rules" overwrite "system rules" when necessary. This is especially true when "setting rules" include mechanical elements that directly tie the character to the respective in-game reality. It´s also common that the system rules are based solely on the game world and only ever reflect and model what's part of the world.

So that's not so much a thing of being "anti noob" or "noob friendly", but rather the necessity of at least knowing the rudiments of two sets of rules, where possibly the "setting rules" are more important than the "system rules".

Mordaedil
2018-02-16, 06:15 AM
That's an interesting position. So, if the campaign has a 10-year down time, do you feel that your character is no longer the same character? Is the character now lacking continuity, and you may as well just build a new character?

After 10 years, basically no atoms in your body is the same as it was then, as you shed skin all of the time. So you are not even physically the same person ten years in between.

Cluedrew
2018-02-16, 09:08 AM
Apocalypse World 2e's Threatmap system is objectively worse than 1e's Fronts and it peeves me that I need to use two books to get the optimal setup going.You know I don't know a lot about Apocalypse World 2e (I know one move it added (I think) from 1e) to actually comment on this, but it reminds me of one of my... tabletop criticism pet peeves.

Over use of the word objective.

The worst cases are when people just stick it in front of a statement that... really it has nothing to do with objectivity. Or if it does, according so some standard that was never clarified. "This is objectively a bad mechanic." OK according to balance, ease of use, accuracy, scaling... your taste?

And even if it is used properly it actually kind of weakens the argument because the final goal of most role-playing games is to have fun. Which is very defiantly a subjective thing, you need the subject to have any hope of getting a result. Yes you can generalize across subjects, but none of these things will be universal (see Quertus being bigger on trans-campaign characters than anyone else it this thread) so none of them are entirely of the object. Objective things are like rules, dates and numbers, none of which can really cover the actual quality of a system or rule.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-02-16, 09:50 AM
You know I don't know a lot about Apocalypse World 2e (I know one move it added (I think) from 1e) to actually comment on this, but it reminds me of one of my... tabletop criticism pet peeves.

Over use of the word objective.

The worst cases are when people just stick it in front of a statement that... really it has nothing to do with objectivity. Or if it does, according so some standard that was never clarified. "This is objectively a bad mechanic." OK according to balance, ease of use, accuracy, scaling... your taste?

And even if it is used properly it actually kind of weakens the argument because the final goal of most role-playing games is to have fun. Which is very defiantly a subjective thing, you need the subject to have any hope of getting a result. Yes you can generalize across subjects, but none of these things will be universal (see Quertus being bigger on trans-campaign characters than anyone else it this thread) so none of them are entirely of the object. Objective things are like rules, dates and numbers, none of which can really cover the actual quality of a system or rule.

That's very true. We often reach for "hard" rules where soft ones might work better. Unspoken behind those "hard" rules are a whole set of value judgements and carefully-selected metrics. How we measure something (and what we're measuring) is often more important than the actual result.

Tanarii
2018-02-16, 11:25 AM
You know I don't know a lot about Apocalypse World 2e (I know one move it added (I think) from 1e) to actually comment on this, but it reminds me of one of my... tabletop criticism pet peeves.

Over use of the word objective.My TRPG forum arguments pet peeve:
Using "logical" instead of "this way of thinking or doing things I personally prefer".

Actually, I hear that one a lot IRL too. I work with a lot of Engineers and Computer Geeks, and they often mistake their personal preferences as to a way of thinking or doing things as "logical". I almost never read or hear the word applied to actual logic, where the thing being claimed as "logical" actually logically follows from the premise.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-02-16, 11:32 AM
My TRPG forum arguments pet peeve:
Using "logical" instead of "this way of thinking or doing things I personally prefer".

Actually, I hear that one a lot IRL too. I work with a lot of Engineers and Computer Geeks, and they often mistake their personal preferences as to a way of thinking or doing things as "logical". I almost never read or hear the word applied to actual logic, where the thing being claimed as "logical" actually logically follows from the premise.

Or the premises are built to justify the end result (arguing backward). Or just flat out unstated, but the premises are doing all the work. Those are some of the "hidden value judgements" that I was talking about above.

Max_Killjoy
2018-02-16, 11:32 AM
My TRPG forum arguments pet peeve:
Using "logical" instead of "this way of thinking or doing things I personally prefer".

Actually, I hear that one a lot IRL too. I work with a lot of Engineers and Computer Geeks, and they often mistake their personal preferences as to a way of thinking or doing things as "logical". I almost never read or hear the word applied to actual logic, where the thing being claimed as "logical" actually logically follows from the premise.

Or the flip side "You're being irrational" or "your reasoning is asinine"... certain people in "my circle" are notorious for using that as a dismissive way of saying "I disagree with your conclusions" or "I think your subjective priorities are wrong compared to my subjective priorities".

These people have that lovely habit of using "logic" to argue positions that are plainly false based on observable facts, and doing their damnedest to demand and then distort/misrepresent other people's "premises"... to the point that it probably explains why I cringe away every time someone says "what are your premises?"

PhoenixPhyre
2018-02-16, 11:36 AM
Or the flip side "You're being irrational" or "your reasoning is asinine"... certain people in "my circle" are notorious for using that as a dismissive way of saying "I disagree with your conclusions" or "I think your subjective priorities are wrong compared to my subjective priorities".

This may be strange for a science-trained person to say, but...
I think that we (western culture generally) over fetishize (in a cargo-cult manner) logic and "rationality." Blame it on Spock.

People want "follows from certain premises" to mean "correct" and want that to be the only way of saying that something is right or wrong. Humans aren't rational creatures--we have reason, but we also have subjective judgements. Both are necessary, neither one more so than the other. Both must work together to find truth and utility.

Tanarii
2018-02-16, 11:41 AM
Or the flip side "You're being irrational" or "your reasoning is asinine"... certain people in "my circle" are notorious for using that as a dismissive way of saying "I disagree with your conclusions" or "I think your subjective priorities are wrong compared to my subjective priorities".Or "Intellectually Dishonest". Like the term "Bad DM", It also says more about the person using it than the person they're directing it at.

Pex
2018-02-16, 01:17 PM
Or the flip side "You're being irrational" or "your reasoning is asinine"... certain people in "my circle" are notorious for using that as a dismissive way of saying "I disagree with your conclusions" or "I think your subjective priorities are wrong compared to my subjective priorities".

These people have that lovely habit of using "logic" to argue positions that are plainly false based on observable facts, and doing their damnedest to demand and then distort/misrepresent other people's "premises"... to the point that it probably explains why I cringe away every time someone says "what are your premises?"

I don't like when people say someone is "closed minded". That's a meaningless term. Someone who is closed minded is only guilty of disagreeing with the person who said he was closed minded. If the person was open minded then obviously he would agree with the person who accused him of being closed minded.

ImNotTrevor
2018-02-16, 06:34 PM
You know I don't know a lot about Apocalypse World 2e (I know one move it added (I think) from 1e) to actually comment on this, but it reminds me of one of my... tabletop criticism pet peeves.

Over use of the word objective.

The worst cases are when people just stick it in front of a statement that... really it has nothing to do with objectivity. Or if it does, according so some standard that was never clarified. "This is objectively a bad mechanic." OK according to balance, ease of use, accuracy, scaling... your taste?

And even if it is used properly it actually kind of weakens the argument because the final goal of most role-playing games is to have fun. Which is very defiantly a subjective thing, you need the subject to have any hope of getting a result. Yes you can generalize across subjects, but none of these things will be universal (see Quertus being bigger on trans-campaign characters than anyone else it this thread) so none of them are entirely of the object. Objective things are like rules, dates and numbers, none of which can really cover the actual quality of a system or rule.

Yes, forgive me. That's a way of exaggerating that I find amusing. Specifically, making an obviously subjective argument and using "objectively."

Such as today, when a player was deciding which song title to use as a pun for a FATE stunt where one of several gods living in her head can just pilot her body to success once per game.
Of the options, the song "Jesus take the wheel" was, in my words, "objectively the best choice."


Though the Threat Map is a lot less convenient for everything except physical, geographical location. It is harder to subdivide larger fronts into individual threats to be managed just because you have less space. (Fronts could be several pages. The threat map is one page, unless you want to juggle two near-identical pages and remember which threats are on which map.

Now, a fusion between those two could work really well! But the Fronts system is more robust. Since AW wants to have lots of threats running around, having more room for them is important, and their positions relative to the players are not actually all that important, mechanically.

Basically, it's discordant where Fronts are harmonious with stated intentions of the system.

But that's just, like, my opinion, man.

Earthwalker
2018-02-19, 09:06 AM
A collection of my pet peeves come up in Shadowrun and how it handles character creation and skills.
The build points at character creation are valued different from in play (pet peeve number 1). I mean why do this it’s just stupid.
Second all people (we are told) are assumed to be proficient with skills they don’t have ranks in, they have skill0 at say computing or car driving. Yet the mechanics of this are if you don’t have the skill you roll attribute -2 (pet peeve number two)
So starting the game we have two character both wanting to be the same general concept.

One starts with
Pistols 4
Car 1
Computer 1


Guy two has
Pistols 6.

Now let’s spend Karma (shadowruns XP) to balance them out

We want them at
Pistols 6
Car 1
Computer 1

So that costs guy one 22 karma (increase pistols from 4 to 5, then from 5 to 6)
It costs guy two 2 Karma (two new skills at 1)

EldritchWeaver
2018-02-19, 09:20 AM
IME, GMs who "care about their setting" don't like aliens from their setting. Better, IME, to be an alien from outside their setting. Much less hard feelings that way.


If it ever comes out that one of my characters that is actually a deity is a deity, then they have failed.

If the deity actually brought their divine power to bear, then they'd have to contend with other deities, and it'd get messy.

I'm playing a stat block that is appropriate for the game, but the driving personality is actually one of my deities.

Because it is so much easier (for me, at least) to come up with a stat block than with an interesting personality for me to explore.

If you would play at my table, you could actually get someone who is foreign to the setting's world. He could have the same personality as your Quertus. But what you can't have is playing a god pretending to be a mortal. That would result in getting the character killed. Not because I am mean, evil GM. But because there is a power play at stake, with the PCs direct involvement and gods are forbidden to interfere directly. Alone the presence of your character would influence the outcome and cause the automatic loss of one side. So you die as punishment.


But those qualifiers make the statement's meaning profoundly different. Being told "you can't do that, the DM said no" is railroading or at least something vaguely similar. Being told "you can't do that, we (a group that includes you) agreed that people can't do that" isn't.

Why can't a group railroad and one person be completely fair?

Max_Killjoy
2018-02-19, 09:24 AM
That was one of the things I desperately wanted to fix about the oWoD system... the complete disconnect between character creation and the expenditure of experience once the game started.

Knaight
2018-02-19, 09:40 AM
A collection of my pet peeves come up in Shadowrun and how it handles character creation and skills.
The build points at character creation are valued different from in play (pet peeve number 1). I mean why do this it’s just stupid.
Second all people (we are told) are assumed to be proficient with skills they don’t have ranks in, they have skill0 at say computing or car driving. Yet the mechanics of this are if you don’t have the skill you roll attribute -2 (pet peeve number two)

These also apply to Hollow Earth Expedition. Like I've said, I love that system, but the character generation rules involve first doing basic generation then spending a bit of XP on additional customization. This lets you have two nigh identical starting characters, one of whom just has all the skills, talents, attributes, etc. of the other and then a little more on top of that. It's trivially easy to minimize costs and avoid this issue, but it's also a bit annoying.

Pet peeve number two doesn't bug me at all, but it's there. On the other hand, really easy tasks are going to be at a low enough difficulty to make anyways, and when it comes to actually difficult tasks people can screw up the culturally expected skills just fine. I've seen enough hilariously bad driving* and computer use to find the Shadowrun approach reasonable.

*California and Texas plates show up a lot in Colorado. Come winter they're mostly found in ditches.

Cosi
2018-02-19, 11:46 AM
Why can't a group railroad and one person be completely fair?

I'm not going to dispute that you could have a DM who had total authority and nonetheless made fair decisions. Obviously that's possible. But that doesn't make it "not railroading" then that DM makes a decision that is unfair.

Railroading is bad precisely because it privileges one persons vision for the game disproportionately over others. By having the group decide, you remove that failure case.

Florian
2018-02-19, 12:10 PM
I'm not going to dispute that you could have a DM who had total authority and nonetheless made fair decisions. Obviously that's possible. But that doesn't make it "not railroading" then that DM makes a decision that is unfair.

Railroading is bad precisely because it privileges one persons vision for the game disproportionately over others. By having the group decide, you remove that failure case.

You don´t have a clue what railroading really is, so you misuse the word.

But ok, shift the disproportionate account of workload that the gm has to handle over to the group and we talk.

Cosi
2018-02-19, 01:08 PM
But ok, shift the disproportionate account of workload that the gm has to handle over to the group and we talk.

This has always been a bad excuse.

If the DM gets more say because they did more work, the player who dumpster dived to get a min-maxed character deserves more say for the extra work they did.

Do people believe this?