Does it all make sense? Or is it a convoluted mess beyond logical explanation [Archive]

OldTrees1

2018-03-21, 01:12 AM

The GM will plot, make a setting and gleefully prepare things for his players. But does this all make sense? What are all those untouched dungeons laden with treasure doing there undisturbed?

Discovering the lifecycle of the different species of dungeon in your campaign setting will help answer why a particular breed of dungeon has not gone extinct by now.

A related question is: Why hasn't the raiding monstrous race been driven to extinction between their barren wasteland and the casualties they incur in raids?

One species of dungeon that is very easy to explain is the base of operations. The inhabitants have a vested interest in maintaining/defending the dungeon as well as using it to store useful items/resources. There is the question of can the organization die independently of the dungeon and if so then what happens to the dungeon. Aka if a past NPC group of adventures defeated the organization, did that NPC group need to have found the dungeon? If an organization plays it safe, then yes every base of operations would be investigated before the downfall of the organization. However less cautious organizations could very easily be disbanded by taking sufficiently heavy losses to vital areas while outside of their base of operations. In this latter case the dungeon may be left in the partially but not fully looted state common to the stereotype of a dungeon.

Why does the plot require the PC's? Is narrative causality unavoidable?

None of the plots in the setting need to require the PCs. However the story that happens around the PCs can be described as the plot of a story when viewed in retrospect.

As soon as PC's enter play something must happen or else the game will be boring. All those undisturbed graves and lootable dungeons have to be there for the PC's to have fun.

Since the DM has the ability to create the setting they want, and a subset of coherent settings will also be interesting, the DM has the ability to create an interesting setting. Having some extant species of dungeon, cultures, existential threats, or intrigue would be one of a number of ways to have a setting be interesting.

Why do the PC's get to be special? In D&D we have commoner classes instead of a being a fighter that NPC get's a guardsman class or scout instead of ranger.

Is the game made so that the players can be the snowflakes?

The PCs are only special in that the Players are playing them. There is no need for NPCs and PCs to be different in-game if you don't want them to be different. In some systems there is no need for Monsters and PCs to be different in-game.

Satinavian

2018-03-21, 01:42 AM

The GM will plot, make a setting and gleefully prepare things for his players. But does this all make sense? What are all those untouched dungeons laden with treasure doing there undisturbed?Untouched dungeons with treasure (which i rarely use) are either really remoteand unknown or very well hidden and only recent events have them made accessable/findable at all.

Why does the plot require the PC's? Is narrative causality unavoidable?Some happy coincidences to let the PC find the plot might happen. But the less contrieved the better. It helps if the PCs are already the kind of professionals people would seek out for plot-problem X anyway.

As soon as PC's enter play something must happen or else the game will be boring. All those undisturbed graves and lootable dungeons have to be there for the PC's to have fun.I rarely use lootable dungeons. Most graves are undisturbed and stay undisturbed as most PCs are not exctly graverobbers and most graves are not expected to contain valuables in the first place. Also i never use "something unrelated happens when the PC enter". Unrelated things can hapen, but will happen irregardless of the timetable of PC actions.

Why do the PC's get to be special? In D&D we have commoner classes instead of a being a fighter that NPC get's a guardsman class or scout instead of ranger.The PCs are not special for being PCs. D&D is not my go to system and i always hatet the idea of NPC classes.

Is the game made so that the players can be the snowflakes?Players choose their characters. If a snowflake could reasonably exist in the world, i don't see any problem with playing that snowflake.

How do you avoid this in your games? Or do you just roll with it?I do value versimilitude above most other things and manage to avoid narrative causality quite easily. Outside of the "plot finds PC"-thing at least. But even that only feels fishy due to it happeniung every adventure. Any single instance looks fine. It is actually quite easy to just not use narrative causality that much. You can replace those instances with other things. Either try to find a sensible, plausible way to get a similar effect or (more often) just ignore drama curve and pacing and whatever makes you want to include the narrative causality. You are not writing a book. An anticlimatic resolution to the main conflict is actually fine. You can skip boring uneventful stretches and fit the description detail and those two things are all the pacing tools you will really need.

I admit that i would have more difficulties if i were playing D&D which has so many instances inbuilt, where rules don't match game world expectations and results soon get stupid if aplied to anything beyond adenturer group scope.

Mechalich

2018-03-21, 01:53 AM

The GM will plot, make a setting and gleefully prepare things for his players. But does this all make sense? What are all those untouched dungeons laden with treasure doing there undisturbed?

There are several possibly answers to this question depending upon setting design. Certain types of 'dungeon' will have a greater degree of verisimilitude than others. For instance an orc encampment that engaged in regular raids across the countryside is much more plausible than a massive undersea city filled with hundreds of aboleth that no one has ever heard or before. The players may or may not care. D&D is, in general, a very low verisimilitude game, since its about plunging a pre-selected group of characters through arbitrary combat-puzzles and not about in-depth worldbuilding. All existing D&D settings are immensely implausible (Dark Sun is orders of magnitude more plausible than the others and still absolutely ridiculous).

That said, it is still very possible to construct a high verisimilitude Adventure Friendly World (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AdventureFriendlyWorld) it just takes planning. Most such worlds are built on top of a recent societal collapse.

Why does the plot require the PC's? Is narrative causality unavoidable?

The only kind of plot that 'requires' anyone is the world-ending type. If the setting is produced such that without outside intervention the world is going to blow up when the clock hits zero, then someone has to step in, and in this case that's the PCs. This is actually a very railroad heavy setup however. In most cases it's better to develop ongoing trends and if outside intervention does not cause conditions to change those trends will continue until stuff happens.

As soon as PC's enter play something must happen or else the game will be boring. All those undisturbed graves and lootable dungeons have to be there for the PC's to have fun.

If the game is about disturbing graves and looting dungeons then yes, those need to be there. A game named Dungeons and Dragons needs both those things in abundance. A game about something else does not. This is why choosing your system carefully matters. You whatever story you want your game to tell you should pick a system that is designed to make those things happen, or in the case of generic systems wrestle the system into an appropriate shape.

Why do the PC's get to be special? In D&D we have commoner classes instead of a being a fighter that NPC get's a guardsman class or scout instead of ranger.

Is the game made so that the players can be the snowflakes?

It is not necessary that the PCs be special. It is possible to run an RPG about ordinary people doing ordinary things. This, however, is generally considered to be boring. Escapism is a major factor in RPGs so people want to be different from their everyday experience and there is also a wish-fulfillment element with most people wishing to play roles that are seemingly more significant than the one they are stuck in during everyday life. This doesn't necessarily make them 'special' or 'snowflakes' it just means they are moved up a few points in the hierarchy of power and have access to force multipliers to influence whatever they are trying to influence compared to the rest of the population.

The NPC classes of D&D and similar games are actually highly unusual in that they produce a divide between PCs and NPCs with ostensibly similar roles in society - most notably in the Warrior/Fighter case. In most cases PCs and NPCs are built using the same systems it's just that the PCs have more 'oomph' via additional points, a special power set (like being a Vampire) or something else.

How do you avoid this in your games? Or do you just roll with it?

Personally I take a highly-bifurcated approach. I like highly detailed settings with as much verisimilitude as I can manage and prefer to ground stories in such places. At the same time I recognize that many players are uninterested in immersion, couldn't care less about actions having consequences, and just want to feed the evil priest to the naga. That's why we have utterly crazy settings like Planescape where you can just go wild and not care.

Florian

2018-03-21, 02:21 AM

How do you avoid this in your games?

I mainly use the dying earth / fall of rome / Points of Light approach. Spells and Magic Items are the lost "high tech" of a bygone age, lost to catastrophe, the modern times are just a shadow of former glory, occupying the ruins of the old world. The safe approach is to research that stuff agonizingly slowly again, or you go out into the wilderness and delve around ancient ruins a bit and see what you can drag out of them.

(It´s also very convenient to avoid some topics. Basically, a "Tippyverse" imploded by over-stretching the use of magic, with bridges conveniently made by wall of stone crumbling to dust, permanent teleport circles collapsing into spheres of annihilation and such. Reasonably people in the setting know what to avoid and why)

Darth Ultron

2018-03-21, 07:29 AM

It makes sense to me.

In-Universe, I 100% go with the idea that Everything is Created.

Why is X? Because someone MADE it that way. The Powers (Gods and others, including ''fate'') make everything. Though the exact ''plan'' or ''goal'' is hidden from the mortal folk.

So ''dungeons'' have some purpose or reason...but all that is know for sure is the powers make sure they get built and make sure they are around for a while. And it's not like a God comes down and digs a dungeon by hand; it's more like they send the king a dream about how cool a dungeon would be.

The PCs are special....but not unique. Like one in 1000 people has the 'touch' or such: the ability to ''change the world". The PCs are that type of person.

The vague, basic idea that I have always used as part of the Grand Design is that there is a ''deadlock'' between the Powers. Everyone's sides is ''just about equal'', so no one can dominate. So what each side needs is more People of Power to tip the balance in their favor. And as all the existing power is already sorted out; there is only one place to get new/more power from: The Prime mortal words. So the idea is a lot of what everyone does is to get their side(or themselves) more power. So this goes back to the special mortals, like the PCs; they have the ability to ascend...maybe...so they need to be ''cared for'' like a plant in a garden.

And, of course, all sides are in conflict....and not everything goes according to anyone's plan.

Frozen_Feet

2018-03-21, 07:40 AM

The GM will plot, make a setting and gleefully prepare things for his players. But does this all make sense?

Depends entirely on how much effort the setting builder wants to spend to make it all make sensr.

What are all those untouched dungeons laden with treasure doing there undisturbed?

Depends on what those dungeons are. The main example in my current campaign was a sealed tomb left intact out of respect. It was looted by, I think, fourth and fifth player groups. Out of twelve. Most actually found out the tomb had already been disturbed.

Why does the plot require the PC's? Is narrative causality unavoidable?

"The plot" is what the PCs do. No less. No more. There is just causality, no special qualifiers like narrative.

As soon as PC's enter play something must happen or else the game will be boring.

Uh, you realize that something can just be the PCs doing stuff? They aren't supposed to be gormless lackwits who cannot take iniative to save their lives.

All those undisturbed graves and lootable dungeons have to be there for the PC's to have fun.

Nah. They're there for the players to have fun. Their actual characters die of disease, drown, get eaten by vampires, or find out the previous PC group already took all the loot. Such "fun".

Why do the PC's get to be special? In D&D we have commoner classes instead of a being a fighter that NPC get's a guardsman class or scout instead of ranger.

The PCs are only special in the sense that they're wealthier and better equipped than average. It's just a game conceit, I'd have no trouble letting my players play cripples in a ditch if they expressed the desire. Beyond that, specialness needs to be proven and earned by in-game action.

Is the game made so that the players can be the snowflakes?

You know what's funny about snowflakes? They look all nice and unique when floating down from the sky, but when they hit the ground they become an indinstinct white mass and it takes a huge damn pile to do anything usefull with them.

How do you avoid this in your games? Or do you just roll with it?

I decided somewhere along the line that I don't hold games to guide people through plots, but to see how their characters react to various fictional situations. Or to see if they can pass some challenge. If, not when.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-21, 07:44 AM

I mainly use the dying earth / fall of rome / Points of Light approach. Spells and Magic Items are the lost "high tech" of a bygone age, lost to catastrophe, the modern times are just a shadow of former glory, occupying the ruins of the old world. The safe approach is to research that stuff agonizingly slowly again, or you go out into the wilderness and delve around ancient ruins a bit and see what you can drag out of them.

(It´s also very convenient to avoid some topics. Basically, a "Tippyverse" imploded by over-stretching the use of magic, with bridges conveniently made by wall of stone crumbling to dust, permanent teleport circles collapsing into spheres of annihilation and such. Reasonably people in the setting know what to avoid and why)

Same. D&D (specifically) fits very well with a "periodic collapse/rebuilding" cycle. Clears out the ossifications that make adventuring hard (or pointless), explains why there are ruins out there that aren't picked clean, explains why the high magic hasn't broken things yet (it has, but then it broke).

"Class levels" aren't a reified thing--they're just a bundle of adventuring-specific abilities and associated thematics that exist for the purpose of the game, not the in-universe fiction. In-game, NPCs may have all, some or none of those abilities, as dictated by their background and needs. Power levels (roughly corresponding to the tiers of 5e) exist, but as caps. Most people can't progress (due to intrinsic soul-capacity) beyond tier 1 (roughly level 4); some have higher potential. My PCs are special because they have uncertain potential. I have a group that, in canon, retired from adventuring at level 10. This represents their cap--it's not that they somehow decided not to get stronger, they can't get stronger. If that campaign had continued in a canon way for longer, their cap would have been higher. There are other adventuring parties out there--some higher level (T2), some lower level (T1).

In meta reasons, they're special because these are the people we're following. If we followed someone else, they'd be the special ones. It is a game, after all. Other people are doing other things, we just don't focus the camera on them because play time is limited and it's the party's story we're discovering. They're the NPCs for other peoples' stories.

Pleh

2018-03-21, 07:53 AM

RazorChain

2018-03-21, 02:34 PM

Players choose their characters. If a snowflake could reasonably exist in the world, i don't see any problem with playing that snowflake.
I do value versimilitude above most other things and manage to avoid narrative causality quite easily. Outside of the "plot finds PC"-thing at least. But even that only feels fishy due to it happeniung every adventure. Any single instance looks fine. It is actually quite easy to just not use narrative causality that much. You can replace those instances with other things. Either try to find a sensible, plausible way to get a similar effect or (more often) just ignore drama curve and pacing and whatever makes you want to include the narrative causality. You are not writing a book. An anticlimatic resolution to the main conflict is actually fine. You can skip boring uneventful stretches and fit the description detail and those two things are all the pacing tools you will really need.

I admit that i would have more difficulties if i were playing D&D which has so many instances inbuilt, where rules don't match game world expectations and results soon get stupid if aplied to anything beyond adenturer group scope.

Some system push snowflakiness, for example D&D with their classes because "normal" NPC's are built differently than the PC', I personally don't like this. Not because the snowflakiness but just the fact that the system treats the PC's differently.

The are two ways I have found to aid me in the "Plot finds the PC's". The first is character driven campaigns; character goals, motivations and background are the bases for the adventure. This makes the campaign personal for the PC's, the plots revolve about them and their issues and it becomes a personal journey. This means that the PC's are on a crash course with "destiny" already just by the virtue on what they chose to play. If the PC is nemesis of Johnny McEvil then the player has chosen to play THE guy who is going to oppose McEvil.

Another way is just to start simple and play out the consequences where the PC's rock the boat or disturb the status quo.

I've often thought about the fact that the PC's win on the account of them being the heroes, the game is balanced in their favor. In it's most simplistic form it's the PC's win or they die and the game is over. This has lead me to introduce more kind of failures into my games, the question is not if the PC's die but if they fail. To take that further is the fact that there can be success in failure and vice versa. The antagonist may profit on the heroes success.

RazorChain

2018-03-21, 02:45 PM

I definitely just roll with it. The only consistency that is essential is what is directly in view of the plot (which is only really viewed through the main characters). I love expansive world building, but it can* get in the way of building an interactive environment. A sufficiently vibrant and active world really DOESN'T need PCs to help it along its path.

This makes for an interesting book, but not as interesting an RPG. The RPG just plays out better when it really DOES revolve around the heroes so I tend to shift my efforts to creating the content that relates directly to the players and only laying out an engaging backdrop to lure the heroes to take some form of action. From there, the backdrop can spawn the necessary elements on an as-needed basis.

Sloppy? Sure, but I have other priorities in my life to attend to, as well, so the sloppy game creation that functions is superior to the expansive sandbox that never actually gets finished.

*Note that "can" =/= "always does."

Some system, notably Prime Time Adventures and Theatrix put the game in the format of a film or series where this is exactly the case. If you are playing John McClane you are going be facing terrorists on the virtue of pure coincidence, trouble will find you. Things will happen because the PC's are the protagonists or because the PC's are the protagonists then things will happen to them. The plot needs to happen for the sake of fun. The content get's created for the sake of the heroes is the easiest solution on that I can agree and often gets tailor made so to maximize the fun of the players. A rogue specializing in lockpicking has signaled that he WANTS to pick locks, so why not throw some locked doors his way?

If you take a look of long running campaigns then the heroes journey will be the 12 tasks of Hercules.....ten or fifteen times over.

Pelle

2018-03-21, 03:15 PM

Some system push snowflakiness, for example D&D with their classes because "normal" NPC's are built differently than the PC', I personally don't like this. Not because the snowflakiness but just the fact that the system treats the PC's differently.

To me, having the same build rules for PCs and NPCs doesn't make any sense, because the rules have different purposes. PC advancement rules (classes, levels, xp etc) are just there to make it a functioning game, and to be an interface with the world. The rules themselves should not govern how the world works. Classes don't exist in the setting. The spell Fireball is not an entity in the world, but the rules for Fireball are handy to use whenever someone wants to magically conjure a ball of fire.

For NPCs, making an NPC of a certain class level is never the goal. The goal is to end up with the stats and abilities I envision the NPC to have. Jumping through the hoops of first building it with PC advancement rules should not be necessary. If it's fast and easy though, it can still be useful as a short hand for type of abilities and power level.

For the rest, yes, it's difficult to have an action packed game without some degree of contrivence. I try my best to make it make sense, though.

Max_Killjoy

2018-03-22, 08:58 AM

To me, having the same build rules for PCs and NPCs doesn't make any sense, because the rules have different purposes. PC advancement rules (classes, levels, xp etc) are just there to make it a functioning game, and to be an interface with the world. The rules themselves should not govern how the world works. Classes don't exist in the setting. The spell Fireball is not an entity in the world, but the rules for Fireball are handy to use whenever someone wants to magically conjure a ball of fire.

For NPCs, making an NPC of a certain class level is never the goal. The goal is to end up with the stats and abilities I envision the NPC to have. Jumping through the hoops of first building it with PC advancement rules should not be necessary. If it's fast and easy though, it can still be useful as a short hand for type of abilities and power level.

If none of those things "exist in the world", then I don't see any reason have them in the rules at all. The rules should reflect how the world (setting, secondary reality, "fiction", whatever term you prefer). The rules should reflect and mesh with what the world is actually like, and thus mesh with what's going on instead of requiring constant translating between the "reality" and the "mechanics".

To me, it's not a functional game if I'm constantly kicked out of what's going on "in fiction" to deal with dissonant rules.

Classes and levels as an "interface" work about as well as driving a car by singing different songs to turn left, accelerate, brake, etc. The steering wheel works because (if designed and built correctly) your actions and the cars actions and the feedback from the road and so on become a fairly seamless and intuitive interface. The harder you push the gas, the more the car accelerates... the harder you push the brake, the more the car decelerates.

I want rules that work like a car, not like a wacky invention that requires a knob to be turned exactly two turns counterclockwise and the red button pushed halfway down... just to turn on. And the latter is exactly what classes and levels feel like.

If there are rules for creating characters of a certain capability or with certain abilities, those rules should apply to any character regardless of whether they're a PC or NPC -- those rules are how a character is modeled/mapped, how they are translated into the rules.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-22, 10:02 AM

Max--as a note, the steering wheel is tremendously unintuitive if you've never seen one before. It maps horribly poorly to the actual turning motion of the car. That's why the first cars didn't have them--they used a tiller system instead.

Mapping the actual in-universe mechanics onto something that's actually playable by humans requires abstractions and models that don't accurately reflect what's going on. Having made many models for physical things in the past, most models don't intuitively map onto the real physics. Because the real physics is too stinking hard to deal with, so we simplify and get creative. The important part is if the behavior and predictions are right.

Einstein modeled solid matter as being a bunch of balls connected by a lattice of springs. From this he was able to calculate the thermal properties of solids much better than had been done before. From a "does it map" standpoint, it's a crap model. It leaves out 90% of what's really going on, doesn't accurately portray most of the rest. But from a "does it work" perspective, it's amazingly good. And that's what matters for a model.

Are classes and levels the right model? Depends both on what you're modeling and what you want out of it. For some purposes (an accurate simulation, for example), they're absolutely not the correct model. For other purposes (heroic fantasy gaming) they can work a lot better. For some people.

From a game perspective, PCs and NPCs are asymmetric in purpose. While this is not true from an in-universe perspective (necessarily, it can be but isn't always), if you want to have a game like D&D it must be true. It's inherent in being a PC or an NPC. As a result, what the player of those characters needs to have to portray them in their role is different.

NPCs frequently only exist on-camera for a single scene, or have only a single role in the on-camera events. This makes 99% of what goes into making a PC (or any other long-term, frequently recurring, detailed character) is absolutely wasted and irrelevant for an NPC. You can generate it, but it won't be used anywhere and is a waste of time and effort (thus impeding making more meaningful content as you only have so much prep time). They have those features (skills, personalities, etc), but you don't have to write them down anywhere and can generate them as needed to support their role in the world rather than having to build them on a pattern that's balanced for PCs who are on camera the whole time.

Another side effect is that you end up reifying classes and levels as actual, in-universe things by forcing everything to follow this pattern. You get master blacksmiths who, despite never having martial training, can fight off armies of guards. You get all nobles being super-powerful. PC/NPC transparency conflicts badly with the other assumptions made to create the game. It's also tons of extra work.

In a different system, that might not be true. But then you lose other parts that (to me at least) are important in what I'm looking for. Every game system has its pathologies. Every game system (except possibly FATAL) has its bright spots.

Edit: and if you're complaining about character build time, a MM3 character (or a GURPS or any other point-buy, especially those that have user-constructed abilities) are exponentially worse in that regard. You've got so many things to consider, so many options to build from, and the number of interlocking things to track is huge. A new character in 5e D&D has between 5 and 12 choices to make (all from limited lists) at 1st level. Each level after that they have 1-5 choices, max. And few of those are interlocking, interdependent trees of options like a point-buy character would be.

Pelle

2018-03-22, 10:15 AM

I mostly agree with this Max, with regards to that rules should match the setting reality. But I think my attitude is different than yours when they don't.

To me the rules are not the setting reality, they are a model of the setting reality. And with any model there areas where it don't work as good.
If I find myself in a situation where the rules don't match the setting or don't make sense, which is inevitable, I'll rather accept that the rules don't model this situation well and ignore them. The alternative is to accept silly settings, or not play the game.

I understand you don't like class/level based systems, but still. A class is just a bundle of abilities. For gamist purposes, the characters you play can only have those abilities together. You may not like that design choice, but there is no reason why that should also determine what abilities other characters can have. It is just a choice of which characters in the setting are valid as PCs for what this game is about. The abilites you end up with should model the setting reality as best as possible when used, of course.

kamikasei

2018-03-22, 10:45 AM

As soon as PC's enter play something must happen or else the game will be boring... Why do the PC's get to be special?... Is the game made so that the players can be the snowflakes?
Are the PCs the most interesting people to tell a story about? If not, then why aren't you telling a story about those other people instead?

Is this the most interesting thing that's happened to them? If not, then why aren't you telling that story instead?

Those are questions from writing fiction rather than running games, but the basic idea is the same. Chargen doesn't use Rawls' Veil of Ignorance. You make characters who are interesting in some way that appeals to you and who are motivated to get involved in adventures most people wouldn't. You are, generally (all of this varies depending on setting, system, and group) above-average within the setting because that allows for more interesting stories. The things you do are there to be done because they're difficult and no one who's capable of them has yet come along.

If literally anyone could have walked into the dungeon at any time and walked out with sackfuls of treasure to make them fabulously rich, then yes, that would seem silly and contrived. How often do you see a scenario like that in a game? More often you see an unknown reward on the other side of a bunch of risk that's more than enough to put most people off.

A story that's built around the main characters, so that nothing happens except in reaction to them, like the cast on the Truman Show waiting for Truman to arrive before they start to move, is probably a bad story. You should be able to answer a few questions: why hasn't this already happened? What happens if the players don't intervene? Nothing about an RPG makes answering these questions impossible, or even much more difficult (aside from the difficulty inherent in having co-authors who add their contributions in ignorance of what you've already drafted).

Stories where the players are special in some way beyond their actions - they're the prophesied saviours who are the only ones who can strike down the dark lord, they inherited the magic weapons that are key to defeating the monsters, the villain is secretly their mother - are a separate question, and a matter of taste.

Max_Killjoy

2018-03-22, 11:15 AM

Max--as a note, the steering wheel is tremendously unintuitive if you've never seen one before. It maps horribly poorly to the actual turning motion of the car. That's why the first cars didn't have them--they used a tiller system instead.

Turn wheel or push tiller to one side to turn that way, the further you move it the more the steerable wheels move and the sharper the turn -- seems pretty intuitive to me. Having driven a non-car vehicle that uses a tiller-like control, the steering wheel does seem to provide a better "feel" of the interaction between the wheels and the surface beneath.

Mapping the actual in-universe mechanics onto something that's actually playable by humans requires abstractions and models that don't accurately reflect what's going on. Having made many models for physical things in the past, most models don't intuitively map onto the real physics. Because the real physics is too stinking hard to deal with, so we simplify and get creative. The important part is if the behavior and predictions are right.

Einstein modeled solid matter as being a bunch of balls connected by a lattice of springs. From this he was able to calculate the thermal properties of solids much better than had been done before. From a "does it map" standpoint, it's a crap model. It leaves out 90% of what's really going on, doesn't accurately portray most of the rest. But from a "does it work" perspective, it's amazingly good. And that's what matters for a model.

The breakdown, the dissonance, that I'm seeing comes in even at the "behavior and predictions" level of accuracy. When the setting tells me that the range of possibilities is X-4 to X+4, and the rules tell me that the range of possibilities is Y +/- purple... then the nitty gritty subatomic physics don't even need to be known, I already know the model is bad.

Are classes and levels the right model? Depends both on what you're modeling and what you want out of it. For some purposes (an accurate simulation, for example), they're absolutely not the correct model. For other purposes (heroic fantasy gaming) they can work a lot better. For some people.

From a game perspective, PCs and NPCs are asymmetric in purpose. While this is not true from an in-universe perspective (necessarily, it can be but isn't always), if you want to have a game like D&D it must be true. It's inherent in being a PC or an NPC. As a result, what the player of those characters needs to have to portray them in their role is different.

NPCs frequently only exist on-camera for a single scene, or have only a single role in the on-camera events. This makes 99% of what goes into making a PC (or any other long-term, frequently recurring, detailed character) is absolutely wasted and irrelevant for an NPC. You can generate it, but it won't be used anywhere and is a waste of time and effort (thus impeding making more meaningful content as you only have so much prep time). They have those features (skills, personalities, etc), but you don't have to write them down anywhere and can generate them as needed to support their role in the world rather than having to build them on a pattern that's balanced for PCs who are on camera the whole time.

Another side effect is that you end up reifying classes and levels as actual, in-universe things by forcing everything to follow this pattern. You get master blacksmiths who, despite never having martial training, can fight off armies of guards. You get all nobles being super-powerful. PC/NPC transparency conflicts badly with the other assumptions made to create the game. It's also tons of extra work.

The problem of the uber-lethal blacksmith comes directly from the class/level setup. A system that simply allows a character to be good at what they're good at, without tying it to an adventuring-focused set of level-progressing abilities, doesn't have that problem.

With something like HERO, I can just assign what's needed to an NPC, or make it up on the fly, without creating an artificial break between different types of characters -- and without having to choose between treating the rules as a boardgame that happens to have some disconnected roleplaying... or something like Looking For Group or OotS, where the rules are part of the joke.

Jay R

2018-03-22, 11:20 AM

Why does the plot require the PC's? Is narrative causality unavoidable?

With the assembled armies of Gondor, Rohan, the elves, etc., why does it take two hobbits to end the threat of Sauron and win the war?
With hundreds of fully trained wizards trying to defeat Voldemort, why does it take three students - Harry Potter, Ron, and Hermione - to defeat him?
With all the cops in Gotham City, why does in take a man in black underwear and a hoodie to catch all the criminals?
With most of the nobles and people of Paris opposed to Cardinal Richelieu, why does it take D'Artagnan, a hick from Gascony, to thwart his plans?

Because those are the people whose story we're telling, that's all.

The plot doesn't require these particular PCs. These PCs require a plot.

Satinavian

2018-03-22, 11:30 AM

I also agree with Max.

Having rules that can simulate the game world instead of only some very narrow adventuring part of it, allows to answer questions that relate to the game world beyond that narrow adventuring part.
You also don't have those weird "You can't scale this up" moments where you suddenly have to choose arbitrary bounderies where ssome things work differently from the rules and then to moke rules on the fly for those different scales/situation.

Max_Killjoy

2018-03-22, 11:44 AM

With the assembled armies of Gondor, Rohan, the elves, etc., why does it take two hobbits to end the threat of Sauron and win the war?
With hundreds of fully trained wizards trying to defeat Voldemort, why does it take three students - Harry Potter, Ron, and Hermione - to defeat him?
With all the cops in Gotham City, why does in take a man in black underwear and a hoodie to catch all the criminals?
With most of the nobles and people of Paris opposed to Cardinal Richelieu, why does it take D'Artagnan, a hick from Gascony, to thwart his plans?

Because those are the people whose story we're telling, that's all.

The plot doesn't require these particular PCs. These PCs require a plot.

If we're lacking any "in fiction" answers for those sorts of questions, then the "special roles" of the characters become transparently artificial, matters of blatant narrative causality.

Using the Potter example, the irony is that Voldemort himself made the story about Potter -- Potter was in effect "the chosen one" because Voldemort chose him, albeit accidentally. Rowling created an in-fiction reason for the story to be specifically about Harry, that went far beyond the narrative causality of "because he's the protagonist".

Pelle

2018-03-22, 03:25 PM

The problem of the uber-lethal blacksmith comes directly from the class/level setup. A system that simply allows a character to be good at what they're good at, without tying it to an adventuring-focused set of level-progressing abilities, doesn't have that problem.

I agree that class/level systems have their problems, but they only have that problem if you assume that NPCs need to be built with the same character creation rules as PCs.

Why does player character creation rules have to interfere with the rules for playing the game, that models the setting reality? If player characters are limited to Strength 100 for some gamist reason, there could still exist other characters or monsters with Strength 110 if the rules for playing the game define those scores. It can be a functioning game, and also model the fiction ok, even if it doesn't allow you to play every possible character in the setting.

Max_Killjoy

2018-03-22, 03:41 PM

I agree that class/level systems have their problems, but they only have that problem if you assume that NPCs need to be built with the same character creation rules as PCs.

IMO, using different rules for different characters depending on their "game" or "narrative" role is also a problem

So, class/level systems just impose a choice between one problem or the other... either use separate rules, or have oddities like the uber-lethal baker.

I'd much rather use a system where assigning values and working backwards just results in a different point value for the character, rather than completely blowing up any notion of the rules being consistent across all characters.

Why does player character creation rules have to interfere with the rules for playing the game, that models the setting reality? If player characters are limited to Strength 100 for some gamist reason, there could still exist other characters or monsters with Strength 110 if the rules for playing the game define those scores. It can be a functioning game, and also model the fiction ok, even if it doesn't allow you to play every possible character in the setting.

A special limit placed on PCs for purely "gamist" reasons is, IMO, a problem in and of itself.

Jay R

2018-03-22, 04:34 PM

If we're lacking any "in fiction" answers for those sorts of questions, then the "special roles" of the characters become transparently artificial, matters of blatant narrative causality.

Using the Potter example, the irony is that Voldemort himself made the story about Potter -- Potter was in effect "the chosen one" because Voldemort chose him, albeit accidentally. Rowling created an in-fiction reason for the story to be specifically about Harry, that went far beyond the narrative causality of "because he's the protagonist".

Since the mindless dungeon-crawls of the mid-1970s, I don't think I've played a game that didn't have that, provided by either the DM or me.

Gustav is with the group trying to repair the monolith because he was the Ranger needed to get them through the Dark Forest.

Gwystyl joined a party investigating a interruption of a trade route because he wanted to go that way, and it made sense to get paid to travel there with powerful companions.

Pteppic is trying to prove worthy to be the next Pharaoh because he's one of the sons of the Pharaoh.

Ornrandir helped start a new colony on a recently discovered continent because he signed up to do so. He wound up in charge of the hunting parties because he was quickly recognized as the best hunter. That led to him exploring, and ....

Gwydion was on the quest of the Staves of the Wanderers because he was a follower of one of the previous holders of the Staves before they died.

Professor Power uses his electric and magnetic powers to help people because the accident that gave them to him injured many people, so he did what he could to help. It has never crossed his mind to stop.

Shadowmonk is trying to protect kids from drugs because he was once a drug user, and then a smuggler, and knows how bad it was for him.

Dr. MacAbre joined a group of superheroes because his mystic powers included the ability to turn into a wolf, a bat, or a mist. If he's becoming a vampire, he wants to be around people with the power to stop him.

Hyperion used his powers with a super-group because his wife was a researcher investigating metahumans.

Cal Young is exploring the cave with strange properties because he's a federal marshal and his assignment is to investigate it.

Jean-Louis is taking on projects in Paris for Cardinal Richelieu because there's not much else that a bastard son of a French Count, who grew up as a rogue in the streets, can do. Also, it pays much better than being a cutpurse did.

--------------

But it is not necessarily true that the character himself knows why he is the one, or even that any other character knows.

'I do really wish to destroy it!' cried Frodo. 'Or, well, to have it destroyed. I am not made for perilous quests. I wish I had never seen the Ring! Why did it come to me? Why was I chosen?'

'Such questions cannot be answered,' said Gandalf. 'You may be sure that it was not for any merit that others do not possess: not for power or wisdom, at any rate. But you have been chosen, and you must therefore use such strength and heart and wits as you have.'

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-22, 04:54 PM

None of my games have involved the PCs being special in the sense that Harry Potter is special. They've always done things that other people could have done, but didn't. We just happen to follow that group of people doing things, not another group. It helps that I don't have a pre-planned story for them, more just a situation that they will run into. Most of the time they make their own path. One group ended up overturning centuries of tradition by interrupting long-running plans of various groups. Not because they're special, but because they stumbled upon these slowly-maturing plots and meddled. Anyone with the right skill-set, mindset, and power-set could have done the same.

In another sense, all my PCs (with me DM'ing) are special. They're picked out of the masses as people with potential to become strong. They're trained Adventurers (card-carrying members of the Adventurer's Guild), which recruits people with greater-than-average potential for soul-growth and sorts them according to their moral fiber (the ones who seem likely to use their power in antisocial ways get sent on the lowest-success-chance missions). So in-universe, they're potentially special.

Pelle

2018-03-22, 05:30 PM

IMO, using different rules for different characters depending on their "game" or "narrative" role is also a problem

So, class/level systems just impose a choice between one problem or the other... either use separate rules, or have oddities like the uber-lethal baker.

I'd much rather use a system where assigning values and working backwards just results in a different point value for the character, rather than completely blowing up any notion of the rules being consistent across all characters.

Ok, but what if you end up playing in a class based game, due to what other people want, genres, what's available etc? Is it then really a problem that an NPC can exist with certain stats and abilities, not created by PC rules? The characters don't know of the character creation rules (it's cool if advancement is somewhat associated, but disregard that for a moment). They only interact with what they see in the fiction. If they are presented a master baker, they know he is good at baking, no more. Why is it important that the GM should spend time on following the character creation rules rather than fiating him to have the master-baking ability?

A special limit placed on PCs for purely "gamist" reasons is, IMO, a problem in and of itself.

Sure, but it's a different problem IMO. It might affect your choice of game, but to me it is not a problem when playing the game. I.e. after character creation, interacting with the world etc.

ImNotTrevor

2018-03-22, 09:34 PM

The thing is, every "simulation" will have edge cases where it obviously doesn't work.

That's what making rulings is FOR. It's why we have a DM there in the first place.

Why do the PCs operate from different rules from the NPCs? Because they're the only ones controlled by actual people for longer than a few minutes at a time.

The baker doesn't NEED a Bake skill. That's pointless. He just bakes good. That's it. When they eat his bread, it is really good bread. If the characters attack the baker with lethal force, he dies. Why bother with combat at all? The baker logically can't win against a half orc with a war axe and an urge to chop bakers. So we take those rules and say "don't need you right now."

The problem is believing all rules are ON and ENGAGED, ALL THE TIME. No they aren't.

We engage the rules AS NEEDED to arbitrate situations in the fiction. Combat is proof of this. We do not roll initiative for shopping. That rule is not engaged right now. It is engaged when having a fight with a non-obvious outcome. If it's Orc vs. Hobo, hobo loses automatically. Because doing otherwise is a colossal waste of time.

The GM has a human brain that can think logically. That's the go-to for most things. When you need rules to step in and arbitrate, use them.

You don't need to engage any rules for the baker. He can just exist and bake good.

THE RULES DESCRIBE HOW TO ARBITRATE CERTAIN INTERACTIONS, NOT HOW REALITY WORKS.

If you come from that angle, all the problems vanisb. No interaction needinf arbitration? No rules needed. Do what makes sense.

RazorChain

2018-03-22, 10:30 PM

Mechalich

2018-03-22, 10:49 PM

Why bother with combat at all? The baker logically can't win against a half orc with a war axe and an urge to chop bakers.

Actually a baker absolutely could win against a half-orc with a war axe, especially if they had some weapon of their own like a poker or something, and they have a much higher chance of getting away whether injured or uninjured, depending on how long said person with axe has to hack at them, the environment in which said hacking is occurring, and whether or not there's anyone around to intervene. Bladed weapon assaults, including by people who know what they are doing with them, happen on a regular basis in the real world and people survive them all the time.

D&D actually represents this situation - a level one half-orc fighter with a battle axe versus a level one commoner with a club - surprisingly well. The half-orc has a very high percentage chance of winning, but it is significantly less than one hundred percent. The problem comes in when you start stacking levels onto things, since that's when you do get instant death scenarios and also absurdities like a hill giant murdering tens of thousands of people.

And it is actually important to be able to represent the combat capabilities of ordinary people, because ordinary people actually do a lot of fighting in fantasy settings, whether in militias, or bar brawls, or as MacGuffins. Knowing how many rounds it will take the BBEG to murder the princess is a highly relevant data point. This is even more important in modern games - in fantasy a person who is not equipped and trained for combat is certainly at a huge disadvantage. In an urban fantasy game a six year old with a pistol can absolutely kill the biggest, baddest man on the planet if they get a good shot in at close range (when this happened in The Wire no one thought it implausible).

There are certainly game setups where the masses are utterly irrelevant and do not need stats. A game set in DBZ works this way. In that setting there are literally only a dozen or so people on the planet who have any importance whatsoever, but such settings are highly anomalous.

THE RULES DESCRIBE HOW TO ARBITRATE CERTAIN INTERACTIONS, NOT HOW REALITY WORKS.

The rules do more than just arbitrate. The rules represent a model system for a fictional backdrop (the setting) in which a story structure (the game) is run. The model is inherently incomplete, because it's a model. Said model my discard huge zone of narrative option as outside the rules and controlled via fiat, and that's fine. For example, a game about cooking battles probably doesn't need a stealth system. But you should not use two different systems for the same time of entity - characters - simply due to which agent in the story structure happens to be controlling them. 'Characters with Stats' are one group, whether PC or NPC. Now, by no means should all NPCs have stats - that was a category error on the part of 3.X. Creatures both too weak to meaningfully influence events (like a mouse) or too powerful to be meaningfully influenced by events (like a deity) can safely be handled by fiat, and the same is true of NPCs that aren't going to have any mechanical interaction with the PCs or with any other statted NPCs.

Max_Killjoy

2018-03-23, 06:17 AM

"Arbitrate" vs "Model" is a false dichotomy.

The rules need to model the reality of the setting to a certain degree of fidelity in order to arbitrate situations accurately and fairly.

Flipping a coin one time to decide who wins each combat is a rule, but it arbitrates arbitrarily*, and produces bad results because it doesn't take into account a host of relevant factors from "the fiction".

* speaking of words that sound alike but mean really divergent things now...

Pelle

2018-03-23, 07:02 AM

Max_Killjoy

2018-03-23, 08:14 AM

Do you need rules to determine what (can) exist in the fiction/setting, as long as the rules for arbitrating situations (using the existing stats etc) are ok?

To me that's world building, and I don't want rules to restrict me there. And the players/characters should learn about the world by interacting with it, not extrapolating from arbitrary PC build rules.

The PC build rules -- as an integral part of the overall ruleset -- should represent what's possible, not determine what's possible.

Part of the problem with a class-build system is that if there's not a class for it, you have a gap -- and to build a character in that gap you have to wedge square pegs in round holes or extrapolate something.

Pelle

2018-03-23, 08:39 AM

The PC build rules -- as an integral part of the overall ruleset -- should represent what's possible, not determine what's possible.

Part of the problem with a class-build system is that if there's not a class for it, you have a gap -- and to build a character in that gap you have to wedge square pegs in round holes or extrapolate something.

I disagree that PC build rules should represent all characters that are possible. Sure, it's great if your system does, but it doesn't have to.

It is of course a limitation of the system that you can't play every possible character in the setting, but that doesn't need to affect the fiction unless you want it to. To me this just seems like a self-imposed problem, sorry.

I'm trying to think how I can relate this to the "purpose of the rules" thread from some time ago...

ImNotTrevor

2018-03-23, 10:31 AM

"Arbitrate" vs "Model" is a false dichotomy.
It's not presented as a dichotomy, so....?

The rules need to model the reality of the setting to a certain degree of fidelity in order to arbitrate situations accurately and fairly.
They need to handle the variable involved with that particular situation, and that's it. How good the rules for rice prices are has no bearing on the rules for how much damage there is in an axe swing.

Flipping a coin one time to decide who wins each combat is a rule, but it arbitrates arbitrarily*, and produces bad results because it doesn't take into account a host of relevant factors from "the fiction".
That the rules arbitrate based on fiction as their primary function doesn't go against anything I said, so thanks for agreeing angrily?

The FUNCTION of rules in the game is to arbitrate situations. For perfect simulation you're actually better off with no rules, just hard data, high-intensity models of all situations. But that's boring and not a game.

Children play games of pretend all the time, with no rules. Conflicts arise, and without anyone or anything to arbitrate, the game devolves to argument.

The rules serve as that arbitrator. The fiction will be there one way or another, rules or no.

Since the FUNCTION of the rules is to arbitrate fairly, they require some amount of modelling amd accounting for variables, yes. But since the primary function the rules serve is to arbitrate, WHENEVER THE RULES MODEL FAILS, DM STEPS IN. That's why you have a DM.

On bakers and orcs:
It will certainly vary by situation, sure. Hence why the DM sits there.

If the rogue stabs a guy in the throat while he sleeps, that guy is PROBABLY dead, high level or not. People generally don't make a habit of surviving with knives in their tracheas.
Now, because I know contrarians exist, yes. There may be situations where being stabbed in the throat does not cause prompt and unpleasant death. Such as for undead creatures or things without necks. These are obviously excluded.

The point of the arbitration mention is this:
If the rule doesn't make sense for this situation, DON'T USE IT. I'm shocked that this is a difficult concept or causes people's panties to bunch up. Just say "huh. Doesn't work here. Ok. I'll just do what's intuitive, instead." Problem solved.

If you end up needing to do that more than use the rules, then the rules are likely garbage. But if you only need to do that for things that obviously shouldn't operate by same rules, that's not a problem. (A baker OBVIOUSLY shouldn't operate like a Paladin. You'd need a whole other system for baker sim, and they're not important enough to merit inclusion of Breadmaking, Pastrycraft, and Sucromancy as skills for determining the goodness of a croissant. It can just be good.)

Sure. HERO could model a baker. You could fully stat out a baker and know exactly how delicious his bread is.

Meanwhile I'm gonna write "Mike the baker. Fat, pacifist, makes really good cupcakes." And my simulation of bakers at the table will be exactly as good.

Satinavian

2018-03-23, 10:45 AM

The point of the arbitration mention is this:
If the rule doesn't make sense for this situation, DON'T USE IT. I'm shocked that this is a difficult concept or causes people's panties to bunch up. Just say "huh. Doesn't work here. Ok. I'll just do what's intuitive, instead." Problem solved.
1) I don't want to decide in every situation if i actually want to use the rules or not. That is useless additional overhead.
2) I want all players to be able to plan based on rule extrapolations without them having to guess or to ask if the rules are actually use in some hypothetical situation that might or might not ever get to occur on the table
3) I don't want to handwave things all. I am using rules because i really don't just want to rely on intuition and common sense. Rules that can't provide that are useless rules.

Max_Killjoy

2018-03-23, 11:07 AM

I disagree that PC build rules should represent all characters that are possible. Sure, it's great if your system does, but it doesn't have to.

It is of course a limitation of the system that you can't play every possible character in the setting, but that doesn't need to affect the fiction unless you want it to. To me this just seems like a self-imposed problem, sorry.

To me, it's a self-imposed problem of certain types of rules.

The PCs are interwoven with "the fiction", with the secondary reality -- it's the world they live in and the history that they come from. They are people in that world, and the rules for people in that world should apply to people in that world. The only thing inherently special about the PCs is that they're PCs, and not NPCs. That's a table-level difference, not a "fiction"-level difference.

If there's something that only PCs have access to, or only NPCs have access to, and that differentiation in the rules is not reflective of some aspect of the secondary reality those characters live in -- if it's not modelling some aspect of "the fiction" --then that differentiation is pure artifice, the gamist equivalent of the narrative causality trope.

In other words, if the PCs are restricted from ever having certain skills or abilities, or limited to certain strict combinations of abilities and skills, then (at least as far as I'm concerned) there must be an in-"fiction" (setting, secondary reality) reason for why that is.

Psyren

2018-03-23, 11:16 AM

1) I don't want to decide in every situation if i actually want to use the rules or not. That is useless additional overhead.
2) I want all players to be able to plan based on rule extrapolations without them having to guess or to ask if the rules are actually use in some hypothetical situation that might or might not ever get to occur on the table
3) I don't want to handwave things all. I am using rules because i really don't just want to rely on intuition and common sense. Rules that can't provide that are useless rules.

This is an example of Perfect Fallacy - all rules will have gaps somewhere (unless they're so broad that they're guidelines rather than rules) because rules themselves are the product of flawed humans. The existence of flaws doesn't render them useless however. As long as a rule gives you more to go on than starting from scratch then it serves a purpose imo.

@OP: Why are you assuming that the PCs being special (or as you call it, "snowflakes") is a bad thing? It seems to me that's a basic assumption of many games, not least of which are games like D&D or Pathfinder.

PersonMan

2018-03-23, 11:17 AM

In other words, if the PCs are restricted from ever having certain skills or abilities, or limited to certain strict combinations of abilities and skills, then (at least as far as I'm concerned) there must be an in-"fiction" (setting, secondary reality) reason for why that is.

In my experience, a relatively elegant way to achieve this is to make "NPC-only" abilities something that a PC could acquire, but only with a massive investment that makes it effectively unobtainable, at least during the events of the game. Specialist knowledge that requires years of study is an easy way to do this, also conveniently giving a sort of "retirement goal" to PCs especially interested in said knowledge or ability.

Pelle

2018-03-23, 11:38 AM

To me, it's a self-imposed problem of certain types of rules.

The PCs are interwoven with "the fiction", with the secondary reality -- it's the world they live in and the history that they come from. They are people in that world, and the rules for people in that world should apply to people in that world. The only thing inherently special about the PCs is that they're PCs, and not NPCs. That's a table-level difference, not a "fiction"-level difference.

If there's something that only PCs have access to, or only NPCs have access to, and that differentiation in the rules is not reflective of some aspect of the secondary reality those characters live in -- if it's not modelling some aspect of "the fiction" --then that differentiation is pure artifice, the gamist equivalent of the narrative causality trope.

In other words, if the PCs are restricted from ever having certain skills or abilities, or limited to certain strict combinations of abilities and skills, then (at least as far as I'm concerned) there must be an in-"fiction" (setting, secondary reality) reason for why that is.

I don't see why you need an in-fiction reason. Part of the premise of the game is which characters in the setting are suited for playing. That's just an out-of-game consideration, and you have set of out-of-game character generation rules to establish the stats you need for using the in-game rules.

You can choose to use a system where every character possible can be played, or you can choose one where only a subset can be played. This is just an out-of-game consideration, and has no bearing on playing the game. If you want to play in a game where every character in the setting is a possible PC, then obviously a class based system is a bad choice. But if you want to play the type of characters made possible with the classes (and advancement rules etc), then that does not have to affect the fiction.

Let's say you make a game about playing weak, but smart nerds that get bullied by strong and stupid jocks. Using the player character creation rules, you are not allowed to make a stupid or strong PCs, because the premise of the game is that you are smart and weak. Of course there exist stupid and strong characters in the setting, even so. The game could still function, though you might not like being limited to playing a nerd.

Max_Killjoy

2018-03-23, 12:26 PM

I don't see why you need an in-fiction reason.

For the same reason the rules need to mesh with the fiction in general -- otherwise you end up with results from the rules that make no sense in the context of the fiction.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-23, 12:28 PM

For the same reason the rules need to mesh with the fiction in general -- otherwise you end up with results from the rules that make no sense in the context of the fiction.

Does not follow. In a game about being heroic people doing heroic things, why should the rules include ways to play merchants doing non-heroic merchant things? It's out of scope. No system can cover every possibility, nor should it even try, lest in doing so it cause even more absurdities.

Max_Killjoy

2018-03-23, 12:31 PM

Does not follow. In a game about being heroic people doing heroic things, why should the rules include ways to play merchants doing non-heroic merchant things? It's out of scope. No system can cover every possibility, nor should it even try, lest in doing so it cause even more absurdities.

Will the PCs never encounter merchants?

Will the PCs never have to interact with or bargain with merchants? Will PCs never be challenged by having to barter, or being short on coin, or someone trying to swindle them?

Do we know for a fact that merchants will never be involved in combats? Do we know that no PC will ever attempt to punch a merchant in the face?

Do we know for a fact that no PC will ever have a merchant-family origin in their backstory?

Pelle

2018-03-23, 12:47 PM

For the same reason the rules need to mesh with the fiction in general -- otherwise you end up with results from the rules that make no sense in the context of the fiction.

It does mesh with the fiction though. They just provide a subset of the whole fiction. It's not complete, but is not in conflict with the fiction either.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-23, 12:58 PM

Will the PCs never encounter merchants?

a) Will the PCs never have to interact with or bargain with merchants? Will PCs never be challenged by having to barter, or being short on coin, or someone trying to swindle them?

b) Do we know for a fact that merchants will never be involved in combats? Do we know that no PC will ever attempt to punch a merchant in the face?

c) Do we know for a fact that no PC will ever have a merchant-family origin in their backstory?

Absolutely none of those require that the players can play a merchant. There's no need for PC rules for merchants in such a game.

a) is handled by standard skill rules, with the merchants having appropriate values for their skills.

b) is handled by having a generic combat stat block for non-combatants. Merchants with combat skills (due to their own personality) can get combat blocks. These blocks don't need anything to do with the merchanting ability of the people. Those two don't need to be connected in any way.

c) is handled by normal background rules and has no significant mechanical implications. Unless you choose it to, but it doesn't mean that you have to stat out a "merchant" as a PC.

As a note--I was reading the HERO system rules for character creation because you often mention those as being among your favorites. Those character creation rules are over 300 pages long...that's as long as the entire 5e SRD. There's no way anyone except an expert could easily make up balanced NPCs on the fly. Too many conditional operations, too many interlocking details (if this, then those, unless this other...). Not to mention that those rules are all about super heroes. There's a literal separation of PC (and their opponents) and the basic NPCs, built into the system itself. So either you're an expert (in which case an expert in 5e D&D can make up an NPC on the fly just as fast or faster) or you don't use very many NPCs. Or you make very low-detail NPCs, which is exactly the same as making them using different rules.

Edited to remove accusatory language. If I'm not remembering right about HERO being your favorite, I apologize.

Max_Killjoy

2018-03-23, 01:18 PM

Absolutely none of those require that the players can play a merchant. There's no need for PC rules for merchants in such a game.

a) is handled by standard skill rules, with the merchants having appropriate values for their skills.

b) is handled by having a generic combat stat block for non-combatants. Merchants with combat skills (due to their own personality) can get combat blocks. These blocks don't need anything to do with the merchanting ability of the people. Those two don't need to be connected in any way.

c) is handled by normal background rules and has no significant mechanical implications. Unless you choose it to, but it doesn't mean that you have to stat out a "merchant" as a PC.

As a note--I was reading the HERO system rules for character creation because you often mention those as being among your favorites. Those character creation rules are over 300 pages long...that's as long as the entire 5e SRD. There's no way anyone except an expert could easily make up balanced NPCs on the fly. Too many conditional operations, too many interlocking details (if this, then those, unless this other...). Not to mention that those rules are all about super heroes. There's a literal separation of PC (and their opponents) and the basic NPCs, built into the system itself. So either you're an expert (in which case an expert in 5e D&D can make up an NPC on the fly just as fast or faster) or you don't use very many NPCs. Or you make very low-detail NPCs, which is exactly the same as making them using different rules. Either way, your statements here ring real hollow.

A good percentage of the rules for character creation are tied up in Powers (including Advantages and Limitations for those Powers), which is necessary for the general nature of the system and building everything from superpowers to magic spells to combat starships with those same Powers, etc.

For a merchant "Normal" NPC, I can assume a lot. Base Characteristics will be 10, Figured Characteristics will be default if none of the Base change. Everyman Skills will be known for the setting at hand. Two or three additional Skills will probably cover everything needed for the merchant, such as Professional Skill Baker for a baker, set to match their level of expertise / ability. I can assume a couple of social or personality Disads, or ignore them, or add something particular to the personality that's developing.

I can literally create that in my head as play continues in under 15 seconds, and generally I don't care about or need to know the number of Character Points that sort of NPC comes to. If I need exact detail for an NPC that will be repeated, I'll turn my scratch notes into a fullblown character build for that NPC between sessions.

If a PC wants to get into a fistfight or a baking competition with that baker NPC, I know everything I need to know to handle the rules side.

E: To be clear, I don't have a problem with a GM making lower-detail or partial-built NPCs in circumstances that warrant them. My problem is specifically with systems that consider this the default and treat NPCs as set-dressing -- or which have rules that force a choice between that sort of NPC, or nonsensical "lethal bakers".

Satinavian

2018-03-23, 01:53 PM

Absolutely none of those require that the players can play a merchant. There's no need for PC rules for merchants in such a game.There are traditional heroic fantasy RPGs which cover both bakers and merchants as viable PC option and include detailed rules for them. And i have seen over a dozen regular merchant PCs over the years

VoxRationis

2018-03-23, 02:00 PM

This thread has a very meta kind of title. I've never seen someone precede the pronoun "it" with an article before.

ImNotTrevor

2018-03-23, 02:15 PM

1) I don't want to decide in every situation if i actually want to use the rules or not. That is useless additional overhead.

You already do this. Rather, you only use the rules when they come up already. You don't have Initiative going at all times, right? You don't engage social rules for all conversations, either. This isn't anything you don't already do, just being aware that you do it.

2) I want all players to be able to plan based on rule extrapolations without them having to guess or to ask if the rules are actually use in some hypothetical situation that might or might not ever get to occur on the table

I feel like you didn't read what I wrote.
3.5 drowning rules are stupid. In a situation that would cause Drown Healing, that instead doesn't happen. Right? You're a sane DM.

If there's nothing meaningful to arbitrate in the fiction, you don't use the rules. You don't roll to open doors or walk down the street. Right?

If doing a rule would produce a stupid result I this particular situation, don't use it right now. Put it back in the toolbox and use your person brain.

3) I don't want to handwave things all. I am using rules because i really don't just want to rely on intuition and common sense. Rules that can't provide that are useless rules.

Did I say not to use rules or did I say that rules have a use and when that use isn't producing sensible outcomes to just not use them for a moment?

Obviously, a ruleset that is so ridiculous that you have to do EVERYTHING is a bad ruleset, or if it's outputs are regularly nonsensical.

You are free to prefer however many rules you want, and to whatever degree of granularity you prefer. But understanding the function of those rules is key:
When conflict happens, use the rules to resolve it fairly. (Arbitrate)
If the outcome is nonsensical, discard it and do something sensical instead.
For an example, in Dark Heresy there are no rules for shooting a guy who is tied up and helpless except for the normal attack rules. Which include a roll to see what bodypart you hit. This can lead to, if you use the rules, an Inquisitor levelling his pistol at a prisoner's head, squeezing the trigger, and hitting their leg.
OR
You just say "his head explodes." Because logically that's what would happen, and you move on.

Is that a problem with the rules? Yes. They should probably have a paragraph directing you to do the second option most of the time, or a special case if the enemy may actually survive a gunshot wound to the head at point-blanl range. (That exists in 40k, so the rule SHOULD exist. But if it doesn't, and you've just found that out, gameplay can continue while you make a quick fix.)

However, it is not necessary for ALL systems to have this rule. Many cover this eventuality with a sentence.

99% of the time, to re-address your second point, if rules and logic diverge, it is less jarring to do what Logically Should Happen than to do what the rules say.

EDIT:
To bring it back to character creation, there is essentially no reason to assume other people besides players in a game like D&D operate based on classes. MOST things in D&D don't gain power via levels.

In other systems, NPCs explicitly DON'T work like PCs do. Apocalypse World is one example. The PCs are more bad-ass than other people, which is WHY we're following what they do instead of other people. This is the group of people that's gonna ruin everything. (At least... most of the time it's their fault.)

Quertus

2018-03-23, 08:00 PM

Well, this sounds an awful lot like trying to put everyone's "fight me" topics in a single thread. What are my opinions on these topics? Hmmm...

Should dungeons make sense? Depends on whether they need to make sense. Know your players. If they are going to dig for details, or use things or causes creatively, then, yes, they probably need to make sense. Does the story or your sanity require it? If so, then, yes, they probably need to make sense. If none of these are true, then it's probably wasted effort. The same is true of most all world building.

Does some major event need to occur for the game to be fun? No. Graves / dungeons don't need to do anything but just sit there for the players to have fun exploring, clearing, and looting them. This notion that some event must occur, else the game will be boring is demonstrably false.

How do I feel about special snowflakes? Much better for the PCs to be special than boring. Doubtless some marketing survey somewhere explains that people like feeling special, especially in their escapism.

Narrative causality is the devil. Avoid it like the plague. Unless it's your thing, then... have your own kind of "fun" over there, and keep it away from me.

Do things need stats? If I want to replace the axed baker with my own custom robot / golem, named baker 2.0, the rules need to fairly arbitrate what I need in order to accomplish this task, how skilled baker 2.0 is compared to his predecessor, etc., to an acceptable level of granularity for the game at hand. And I might need to know what happens when baker 2.0 has an axe to grind with a particularly unruly customer.

Do gods need stats? Deities definitely should have stats, so that, when the players develop the moral fiber to realize that the gods in every D&D edition (and most RPGs) I've played in are an abomination and the true BBEG of the campaign world, said players can have their PCs overthrow the gods and implement a much better system.

How good does the simulation and system for adjudication that is the rules need to be? Hmmm... good enough that, if I play one character at 20 tables in what is supposed to be the same world, the physics of the world seem consistent, and are predictable, no matter which GM my d20 rolls today. (that is, I should be able to make my plan, then roll a d20 to determine my GM, and still have the plan work with predictable physics (see also "baker 2.0")).

Have I missed any major topics?

Edit: just inserting the seemingly requisite Fight me!

This thread has a very meta kind of title. I've never seen someone precede the pronoun "it" with an article before.

I have, but usually in reference to the transgender crowd: "is he an it now?"

RazorChain

2018-03-23, 08:11 PM

@OP: Why are you assuming that the PCs being special (or as you call it, "snowflakes") is a bad thing? It seems to me that's a basic assumption of many games, not least of which are games like D&D or Pathfinder.

I don't assume it's a bad thing, I just ask the why of it. What is the purpose of making the PC's special, why do the rules make them special? It is connected to the idea that do interesting things happen to you because you are the protagonist or are you the protagonist because interesting things happen to you.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-23, 08:33 PM

johnbragg

2018-03-23, 08:44 PM

I like to set up a situation where it makes sense for "Adventurer" to be a recognized job in society, and a world where there's a reason for all these half-inhabited dungeons and other grid-paper friendly environments just outside the reach of the civilized kingdoms.

A gimmick I'm planning on using sometime is that the home Kingdom runs various magical rituals binding the kingdom together and generating various crunch effects, and one of those rituals calls forth Heroes from across space and time and other worlds. So the players get to be Gunslingers or off-brand Jedi Knights or My Little Pony OCs if they want to, without those things having to be a regular feature in a world they don't fit well in. They're highly unusual, but no more unusual than the last bunch or the bunch before that. (The high mortality rate is part of the reason that they summon heroes from elsewhere.)

I like there to be reasons why the King of the well-organized Kingdom doesn't simply launch a campaign to wipe out the threats and nuisances on the fringes of the kingdom--leaving that job to murderhobo PCs. And for there to be reasons that the threats and nuisances don't just wipe out frontier villages wholesale--there's something of a system, a set of rules that keeps the system from plunging into all-out warfare (at least most of the time--those ruined castles got ruined somehow).

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-23, 08:56 PM

I like to set up a situation where it makes sense for "Adventurer" to be a recognized job in society, and a world where there's a reason for all these half-inhabited dungeons and other grid-paper friendly environments just outside the reach of the civilized kingdoms.

I do the second by having the whole setting recovering from a world-wide Cataclysm that left a huge mess of previous civilizations. Not to mention the long-running remnants of a magical war that knocked pieces out of time for a while popping up. There's plenty of room for adventure out there--most of the world is inhabited only by the remains of civilizations that (magically) nuked themselves back to a primitive state.

The first is an official part of my setting--all PCs are official Adventurers (card-carrying members of the International Adventurer's Guild, set up by international treaty). The Guild recruits those who show potential to channel their oft-times disruptive energies to the good of society. And kill off the ones with *ahem*less desirable*ahem* moral values. They do the jobs the nations would rather not do, those that require breaking with tradition or require significant risk. The Adventurers are well paid and treated well, and some even get to retire. The Guild used to be staffed by convicted criminals (mostly political prisoners), but that ran into issues and reform was needed.

Satinavian

2018-03-24, 02:03 AM

You already do this. Rather, you only use the rules when they come up already. You don't have Initiative going at all times, right? You don't engage social rules for all conversations, either. This isn't anything you don't already do, just being aware that you do it. I use the rules for the stuff covered by the rules. Yes, i use initiative whenever several actors want to act at the same time and it is important who goes first. What else should i use there ? I can't even think of a situation where initiative would not work to resolve order of actions.

That is even true for conversations. Yes i don't always use the rules. But in systems that have social mechanics worth speaking of (things like SiFRP) i tend to use them far more often. I also have not yet found a social system i really like, because there are always way too many situations that can't be modelled adequately with any given one. Yes, i do have to decide often if i want to use social rules or not and i do recognize it as some kind of failure of those social rules.

I feel like you didn't read what I wrote.
3.5 drowning rules are stupid. In a situation that would cause Drown Healing, that instead doesn't happen. Right? You're a sane DM.I don't really play D&D nowadays. But it sounds like a bad rule.
If i have a bad rule i don't keep the bad rule and arbitrate away the results whenever i don't like them. I just make a new houserule. If i have to do so too often, i consider looking for a better system, where the rules cover far more situations delivering sensible results.

You might have recognized that i don't want ertain things. That doesn't mean that i never encounter them/never have to do them. But i do value a system forcing those things on me far less.

A system covering everything and producing always sensible results is an unachievable ideal. But it should be treated as an ideal when writing rules, carefully balanced against other ideals like being easy to use or cemprehensible to get the best possible compromise. "Level of detail/abstraction" is a really powerful concept for that.

To bring it back to character creation, there is essentially no reason to assume other people besides players in a game like D&D operate based on classes. MOST things in D&D don't gain power via levels.

In other systems, NPCs explicitly DON'T work like PCs do. Apocalypse World is one example. The PCs are more bad-ass than other people, which is WHY we're following what they do instead of other people. This is the group of people that's gonna ruin everything. (At least... most of the time it's their fault.)If i can somehow rationalize classes and levels then i can easily use the same kind of rationalization for NPCs. Of course NPCs in D&D get power via levels the very same way PCs do. At best there are some NPC-only races.

And I know there are quite some systems that handle PCs and NPCs differently. I tend to not like those systems. I think that is bad design.

Having NPCs more/less powerful than PCs is easy even when using the very same rules. Most systems allow PCs being more or less powerful than other PCs, often inbaked in advancement rules or general wordbuilding guides. What is so difficult in giving NPCs more or less build points, attribute points/levels than PCs if you want to make PCs more/less powerful ? The rules already cover individuals of differing power all following the same rules. Just choose individuals of the right powerlevel to be your NPCs or your PCs. But have the rules work the same for everyone.

The only justification i could follow somewhat for differing PC and NPC rules come from this "level of detail"-thing. Where NPC that don't matter don't get attention to their actual stats and are instead handled by some very simplified template. This says to me "These NPCs should actually also use all the rules, but for shortness sake we model them with this approximation. It is not really accurate but anything those guys do is so meaningless that we don't care for the differences anyway and use this to speed things up".
But if i use such rules that also means that if an NPC somehow gets important or somehow is actually in the focus of attention, he suddenly gets the full rule treatment. Those simplified stats were never his real stats.

Frozen_Feet

2018-03-24, 02:45 AM

The above discussion goes way back to Kriegspiel and the dawn of modern wargaming.

Question: why did they add a game master to Kriegspiel?

Answer: because it was felt that the original, highly detailed, highly intricate rules were too slow to play. Hence, some rules were eliminated in favor of a living person making on-the-spot judgement calls to fill in the results where the rules would fail, or take too much time, to create them.

Question: so what if the game master's judgement calls don't model the situation accurately?

Answer: only use people who know their stuff as game masters.

Question: so what if *I'm* the game master and I don't know my stuff???

Answer: *sigh* Here are the original, more complex rules.

Conclusion: if you're a game master and you expect rules to tell you everything, you are doing something wrong. Tabletop games are incomplete by design because trying to model everything by rules is not feasible.

This doesn't mean the rules should tell nothing, however. It tells you what kind of a rule is worthwhile: one that delivers an accurate response faster than you.

And here's the kicker: a rule algorithm can be fast and accurate in most situations, yet slow and inaccurate in some. And it's not a given that a new rule could be made that would cover both cases equally well (see: any mathematically non-linear problem).

In a situation where a rule is usefull part of time, and you don't have a rule that would be more usefull all of the time, you do not ditch the rule just because it is incomplete. This principle goes ways past gaming, it's why we still use Newtonian mechanics for everyday phenomena despite there being an overall better theory present in General Relativity. GR reduces to Newtonian at the human level, so it's not worth it to bother with extra detail if you only work on that level.

Satinavian

2018-03-24, 05:24 AM

As i said, you have to balance the wish of having rules that are able to simulate everything against the wish to have rules that are easy and fast.

Where exactly the balance point should be and which parts of the game are important enough to warrant more detailed rules is basically a matter of taste and has been fought over for decades by fans of particular systems.

But to say that the ability of the rules to simulate the game world is unimportant is as wrong as saying to have rules are easy to use is unimportant.

As for Newtonian mechanics and relativity : We have both. We use both. Relativity also says how well the Newtonian model works and where you should use ia smooth transition instead of a clean break. If rules had that behavior, it would be fine.

No one is saying "We have Newtonian physics and that is enough. We don't need relativity. You should just eyeball the high velocity stuff instead of using the complex boring math."

ijon

2018-03-24, 08:35 AM

No one is saying "We have Newtonian physics and that is enough. We don't need relativity. You should just eyeball the high velocity stuff instead of using the complex boring math."

WELL HOLD ONTO YOUR BUTT BECAUSE I'M GONNA SAY THAT RIGHT NOW

in my book, simulationism is boring and usually unnecessary. I've switched over from d&d entirely to feng shui 2e, and honestly, the patchiness of the rules is a positive. it means there's more wiggle room, more space to do cool things in without needing to look up whether the rules say it's possible, and when you do miss a rule... well, as long as it fits together well enough, who really cares? when in doubt, do the cooler thing.

after all, that's why I'm at the table: to pretend I'm someone much cooler than I really am. so why have mooks be anything more than four stats and a mean accent? why give NPCs combat stats they'll never use? why even bother explaining how two cops, a redneck superhero, and some old fart street magician ended up fighting crime together? what's important is that it's happening, things are exploding, and it's a good time for everyone involved. except the bad guys. they're dead. probably.

well ok, the PCs should probably have a reason why they're there, but BEYOND THAT.

(is this the part where I say "fight me")

Max_Killjoy

2018-03-24, 09:09 AM

WELL HOLD ONTO YOUR BUTT BECAUSE I'M GONNA SAY THAT RIGHT NOW

in my book, simulationism is boring and usually unnecessary. I've switched over from d&d entirely to feng shui 2e, and honestly, the patchiness of the rules is a positive. i

Wait, are you asserting that D&D is a "simulationist" system?

If you're going to start using the three categories, D&D of every edition is straight up a "gamist" system, top to bottom, all the way.

And no, "simulationism" is not defined by complexity or completeness of the rules/mechanics, which is probably the mistaken notion that this myth of D&D as "simulationist" arises from.

ijon

2018-03-24, 09:24 AM

Wait, are you asserting that D&D is a "simulationist" system?

If you're going to start using the three categories, D&D of every edition is straight up a "gamist" system, top to bottom, all the way.

And no, "simulationism" is not defined by complexity or completeness of the rules/mechanics, which is probably the mistaken notion that this myth of D&D as "simulationist" arises from.

yeah I was referring more to 3.5, and the giant pile of rules that I assume was an attempt at modeling whatever world you used the system for. I don't care for any of it, mostly because it meant that each of my turns were anywhere between 30 to 60 minutes apart. I could browse imgur in between turns, half-listen to what was happening, look at what changed in the last minute, and still have enough of an idea of what was happening to make whatever dumb move I was probably gonna do anyway. if there's some consistency lost in return for making combat faster and more fun, that is a trade I will make every time.

(also, there weren't enough fast cars and big guns, but that's not exactly a big surprise)

is there a system that does simulationism well, but is relatively light on rules (or has easy to remember rules)? because if so, I'd be interested in looking at that, if only to see how it managed to pull it off.

Frozen_Feet

2018-03-24, 09:26 AM

As for Newtonian mechanics and relativity : We have both. We use both. Relativity also says how well the Newtonian model works and where you should use ia smooth transition instead of a clean break. If rules had that behavior, it would be fine.

No one is saying "We have Newtonian physics and that is enough. We don't need relativity. You should just eyeball the high velocity stuff instead of using the complex boring math."

"We", in the sense of "all of humanity", use both. Individual people rarely use both, indeed even engineers are rarely taught both. Because the high velocity stuff does not come up enough to justify everyone spending time on intricacies of learning and using the more complex theory.

This hold true even where general relativity has lead to something usefull for everyday life, such as satellite positioning. 99% people who use these things do not know how these things work, nor have they a strong incentive to learn. If my phone's GPS is malfunctioning, I will "eyeball it" and try again in a different position, rather than trying to calculate what's up with the satellites. For a game, I'll use simplistic "% to work" for the GPS, because anything more would be overkill.

Max_Killjoy

2018-03-24, 09:28 AM

I use the rules for the stuff covered by the rules. Yes, i use initiative whenever several actors want to act at the same time and it is important who goes first. What else should i use there ? I can't even think of a situation where initiative would not work to resolve order of actions.

That is even true for conversations. Yes i don't always use the rules. But in systems that have social mechanics worth speaking of (things like SiFRP) i tend to use them far more often. I also have not yet found a social system i really like, because there are always way too many situations that can't be modelled adequately with any given one. Yes, i do have to decide often if i want to use social rules or not and i do recognize it as some kind of failure of those social rules.
I don't really play D&D nowadays. But it sounds like a bad rule.
If i have a bad rule i don't keep the bad rule and arbitrate away the results whenever i don't like them. I just make a new houserule. If i have to do so too often, i consider looking for a better system, where the rules cover far more situations delivering sensible results.

You might have recognized that i don't want ertain things. That doesn't mean that i never encounter them/never have to do them. But i do value a system forcing those things on me far less.

A system covering everything and producing always sensible results is an unachievable ideal. But it should be treated as an ideal when writing rules, carefully balanced against other ideals like being easy to use or cemprehensible to get the best possible compromise. "Level of detail/abstraction" is a really powerful concept for that.

Pretty much -- I'd like a system that produces perfect results for all situations and does so transparently and quickly, without stepping on the players' toes. As that's impossible, we have to start making compromises, and not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

If i can somehow rationalize classes and levels then i can easily use the same kind of rationalization for NPCs. Of course NPCs in D&D get power via levels the very same way PCs do. At best there are some NPC-only races.

And I know there are quite some systems that handle PCs and NPCs differently. I tend to not like those systems. I think that is bad design.

Having NPCs more/less powerful than PCs is easy even when using the very same rules. Most systems allow PCs being more or less powerful than other PCs, often inbaked in advancement rules or general wordbuilding guides. What is so difficult in giving NPCs more or less build points, attribute points/levels than PCs if you want to make PCs more/less powerful ? The rules already cover individuals of differing power all following the same rules. Just choose individuals of the right powerlevel to be your NPCs or your PCs. But have the rules work the same for everyone.

The only justification i could follow somewhat for differing PC and NPC rules come from this "level of detail"-thing. Where NPC that don't matter don't get attention to their actual stats and are instead handled by some very simplified template. This says to me "These NPCs should actually also use all the rules, but for shortness sake we model them with this approximation. It is not really accurate but anything those guys do is so meaningless that we don't care for the differences anyway and use this to speed things up".

But if i use such rules that also means that if an NPC somehow gets important or somehow is actually in the focus of attention, he suddenly gets the full rule treatment. Those simplified stats were never his real stats.

If the issue is "I don't have time to make all these random or one-time NPCs to the level of detail of a PC or important NPC", then I'm fine with it, I've done that.

If the issue is "PCs and NPCs use different rules/mechanics because the PCs are special", then I'm absolutely opposed to that, especially if it's baked into the rules.

Satinavian

2018-03-24, 09:30 AM

in my book, simulationism is boring and usually unnecessary. I've switched over from d&d entirely to feng shui 2e, and honestly, the patchiness of the rules is a positive. it means there's more wiggle room, more space to do cool things in without needing to look up whether the rules say it's possible, and when you do miss a rule... well, as long as it fits together well enough, who really cares? when in doubt, do the cooler thing.
See, feng shui is a system i would never play as it missing things i think are essential and provides things i couldn't care less about.

ijon

2018-03-24, 09:43 AM

See, feng shui is a system i would never play as it missing things i think are essential and provides things i couldn't care less about.

well, it does have a pretty specific focus, so if you're not into having a tabletop version of a dumb action movie, it probably wouldn't appeal to you. but I like it, since it provides just enough crunch to combat to keep things mostly objective, while explicitly going "just make it up" with stunts and assists, and having a general tone of "if it's cool, do it".

but that's the thing. it's got a specific focus. it doesn't really care about what happens outside of that. and since it cares about what I care about - flashy fight scenes where you can fire a double barrel shotgun 5 times because who's really counting shots here, or jump off a pile of crates and kick 5 mooks in the face on the way down - I'm happy with that.

so yeah, eyeball away. beats digging through a rulebook.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-24, 10:19 AM

"We", in the sense of "all of humanity", use both. Individual people rarely use both, indeed even engineers are rarely taught both. Because the high velocity stuff does not come up enough to justify everyone spending time on intricacies of learning and using the more complex theory.

This hold true even where general relativity has lead to something usefull for everyday life, such as satellite positioning. 99% people who use these things do not know how these things work, nor have they a strong incentive to learn. If my phone's GPS is malfunctioning, I will "eyeball it" and try again in a different position, rather than trying to calculate what's up with the satellites. For a game, I'll use simplistic "% to work" for the GPS, because anything more would be overkill.

Exactly. In modeling (no, not that kind), there's a basic trichotomy:

Accurate. Widely applicable. Computationally tractable. Choose two.

In science and engineering, there are three basic levels of accuracy we use.

1) Rules of thumb/empirical formulas. These are the equivalent of eyeballing it, based on past history. You know roughly what stresses a part has to handle, but since it's not a binding concern you add in a 2x or 3x safety margin and use the pre-built part that fits best, bodging it into place if needed. These empirical rules take care of the majority of situations, especially in engineering. In game terms, this is using a pre-made stat-block and fudging the rest as needed.

2) "Classical" first-principles models. Newtonian mechanics is an example here. These are accurate enough in their area, but no where near exact. These are the bread and butter of most practicing scientists for things they aren't directly focusing on. The equivalent of making a stat block using simplified NPC rules. Stuff's left out, but no one cares because the important parts are elsewhere.

3) "Full-up" first-principles models. General relativity, QED, the big boys. Basically no one ever uses them because they're either computationally intractable except in very special circumstances or because we just don't need that level of accuracy. Only dealt with by specialists. Everyone else uses the things they produce and adapts them to lower levels.

Even most chemists (the field most affected by special relativity) never learn special relativity. They use empirical rules that incorporate fudge factors to correct for relativistic effects. Same with actual Schrodinger-style quantum mechanics. They use "corrections" to empirical rules instead, because the actual rules are way too much work for any realistic system. This would be building all NPCs using PC rules--it's way overkill 99.999999% of the time.

My specific PhD research involved collisions between molecules at intermediate energies (~0.5 eV/amu to a few 10s of keV/amu). In that sub-field (which is governed by relativistic quantum mechanics), the dominant calculation method (model) made the following aphysical assumptions:

1) nuclei move in straight lines and are fully classical (no quantum behavior at all).
2) Electrons move so much faster that they effectively respond infinitely fast to movement of the nuclei (the Born-Oppenheimer approximation).
3) Time-dependent phenomena are irrelevant.

All three of these are not really true. In fact, they're pretty bad assumptions. But the error induced by them is drowned out by the other errors involved in the problem, so they work just fine.

Same goes for game systems. The game rules are there to make it playable, not to make statements about the in-game reality. I strongly prefer games that choose to be computationally tractable and reasonably widely applicable--accuracy of the model is almost entirely irrelevant and can be counterproductive at times.

Max_Killjoy

2018-03-24, 10:48 AM

Same goes for game systems. The game rules are there to make it playable, not to make statements about the in-game reality. I strongly prefer games that choose to be computationally tractable and reasonably widely applicable--accuracy of the model is almost entirely irrelevant and can be counterproductive at times.

So when the "fiction" tells you that the range of human physical capability is pretty much like in our world, but the rules/mechanics result in a total mismatch, what's you're response?

Satinavian

2018-03-24, 12:06 PM

My specific PhD research involved collisions between molecules at intermediate energies (~0.5 eV/amu to a few 10s of keV/amu). In that sub-field (which is governed by relativistic quantum mechanics), the dominant calculation method (model) made the following aphysical assumptions:

1) nuclei move in straight lines and are fully classical (no quantum behavior at all).
2) Electrons move so much faster that they effectively respond infinitely fast to movement of the nuclei (the Born-Oppenheimer approximation).
3) Time-dependent phenomena are irrelevant.Nice. My PhD research was about simulation about (special) relativistic nonequilibrium quantum thermodynamics. The number of assumption to arrive at anything that could actually be simulated with then available PCs was quite high. Luckily that one was pure theory where an idealized system was acceptable but the statistics of relativistic quantum events were the point of the excersice so i had to use all the theories in this model. But i have also done extensive simulations of fluids in strongly curved spacetime and about evaporative cooling at ultralow temperatues for achieving BE condensation to improve experimental setups on other occasions.

You really don't have to explain to me how to choose a model for a simulation and how to decide which theory to use based on what you want to achieve.

Same goes for game systems. The game rules are there to make it playable, not to make statements about the in-game reality. I strongly prefer games that choose to be computationally tractable and reasonably widely applicable--accuracy of the model is almost entirely irrelevant and can be counterproductive at times.And i insist to have both world simulation and ease of use.

I already covered level of abstraction. To take that physical anology further, you choose unphysical assumptions and approximations for easier use but have to weight against the resulting errors (if you are lucky you can calculate how big those errors should be). You do not always choose the most simplified model imaginable because you don't care about accuracy. If your results are grossly inaccurate they are most likely useless.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-24, 12:25 PM

Nice. My PhD research was about simulation about (special) relativistic nonequilibrium quantum thermodynamics. The number of assumption to arrive at anything that could actually be simulated with then available PCs was quite high. But i have also done extensive simulations of fluids in strongly curved spacetime and about evaporative cooling at ultralow temperatues for achieving BE condensation to improve experimental setups on other occasions.

You really don't have to explain to me how to choose a model for a simulation and how to decide which theory to use based on what you want to achieve.

And i insist to have both world simulation and ease of use.

I already covered level of abstraction. To take that physical anology further, you choose unphysical assumptions and approximations for easier use but have to weight against the resulting errors (if you are lucky you can calculate how big those errors should be). You do not always choose the most simplified model imaginable because you don't care about accuracy. If your results are grossly inaccurate they are most likely useless.

Then you insist on playing only games that cover very narrow slices of the entire parameter space.

You certainly don't reach for the most accurate model--especially if you need results that apply over any kind of a wide range. Every model has a range where it works well and a range where it fails. Generally, the more accurate the model the narrower the range is (or the more computationally intractable it gets to maintain that accuracy). The general method is to start at the least granular and work up as you need more accuracy (not the other way around). A good chunk of the difference between an experienced engineer or scientist and a newbie is knowing where the heuristic models can apply and where they have difficulty. Where it's worth getting more accurate. What the binding error terms are--when do you have to do the full expansion and when you can truncate at a single term.

If you're simulating a very narrow range of scenarios, you can have a very detailed, accurate model. If (as an example) all combat revolves around formalized duels with swords between professionals in controlled situations, you can have a system that works elegantly for that without too much trouble. But if that same system also has to cover combat between human-sized people and dragons, that same system will choke and die. A system where combat is super gritty and characters are fragile (relative to the threats) will not represent a setting where heroes do heroic things, heroically, fighting giants or dragons or demons. And as you increase the granularity of the system, you dramatically increase the load on those playing it.

I have yet to see a game that made a decent attempt to model a fictional world with any non-trivial fidelity. Every one that has tried has huge gaping holes that shatter my verisimilitude, specifically because they claim to be accurate and then manifestly fail to do so. Much better, in my opinion, to have rules as a common framework, a common language. A guide for the players (including DMs) on fun, efficient ways of resolving common character/world interactions. A well thought out UI that allows access to the fictional world with a minimum of impedance. Yes, this is gamist. And unapologetically so. The rules exist to aid the players play the game--if they don't help, get new rules.

And Max_Killjoy--I have yet to see actual evidence of such errors. We've had that conversation before and you never really brought up anything that I found convincing. Lots of "I don't like" and style issues, but no fundamental mismatches. None of the games I play actually make the statement that "everything works like it does in real life unless stated." In fact, that's explicitly disclaimed. Because that way lies madness and inconsistency.

Max_Killjoy

2018-03-24, 12:54 PM

And Max_Killjoy--I have yet to see actual evidence of such errors. We've had that conversation before and you never really brought up anything that I found convincing. Lots of "I don't like" and style issues, but no fundamental mismatches. None of the games I play actually make the statement that "everything works like it does in real life unless stated." In fact, that's explicitly disclaimed. Because that way lies madness and inconsistency.

I'm just using "like the real world" as an example, it's not the important part. The important part is when the fiction/setting says one thing, and the rules say another.

People mention setting vs system outcome mismatches all the time on these forums -- D&D is a giant hodgepodge of outcome mismatches between the published settings and the actual system. (The Tippyverse is one version of following the rules to one place they're more likely to end up, rather than Forgotten Realms or Krynn.) Or just nonsensical results such as the infamous healing caused by drowning. If the rules work out such that a character can heal by drowning, then either the rules are poorly constructed, or the setting has something strange going on.

If the setting says that the best possible human vertical jump is 5 feet straight up, then the rules had better max out at 5 feet. If the setting says that the average person can jump over a 1 foot obstacle with little effort, then the rules had better not result in half the attempts to jump over a 1 foot obstacle ending in the character landing face-first on it.

Satinavian

2018-03-24, 01:09 PM

Yes, i really don't want the most accurate model in an RPG. Abstraction is fine. Instead i do prefer a wide range of things the system cover, because i don't want to contrain myself in the topics that can become relevant in the game too much. If something unexpected happens i still want to be able to use my system for it. I agree that this is a matter of taste and some people are fine with systems which ave a narrow focus and are either more accurate or easier to use or both. That is a valid preference.

But i do object to people claiming that wide applicability has no value. It is not the only thing that counts but that hardly makes it irrelevant or worthless. I would even defend wide applicability if it was not my preferred attribute.

As for existing systems, well, there are quite a few with wider focus than D&D doing also better in the accuracy department because D&d also has some other priorities like fun tactical skirmishes full of rule of cool or balance considerations. I tend to use one of those even if they are far from perfect.

What i also sometimes do is having optional detailed subsystems that can be switched on and off for things that are often relevant and interesting and where i only sometimes want the added details.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-24, 01:36 PM

I'm just using "like the real world" as an example, it's not the important part. The important part is when the fiction/setting says one thing, and the rules say another.

People mention setting vs system outcome mismatches all the time on these forums -- D&D is a giant hodgepodge of outcome mismatches between the published settings and the actual system. (The Tippyverse is one version of following the rules to one place they're more likely to end up, rather than Forgotten Realms or Krynn.) Or just nonsensical results such as the infamous healing caused by drowning. If the rules work out such that a character can heal by drowning, then either the rules are poorly constructed, or the setting has something strange going on.

If the setting says that the best possible human vertical jump is 5 feet straight up, then the rules had better max out at 5 feet. If the setting says that the average person can jump over a 1 foot obstacle with little effort, then the rules had better not result in half the attempts to jump over a 1 foot obstacle end in the character landing face-first on it.

Those are all 3e dysfunctions, a system where the designers tried to be as simulation-friendly as D&D gets (which isn't very, by absolute standards I fully accept). And to get there (or the Tippyverse), you have to ignore all common sense readings and focus on the most literal, most unnatural readings of the text. That's the peril of becoming more rule-bound and trying to codify everything--the interactions between rules grow in a combinatorial fashion and no human being can hope to balance everything. Rules work much better if you allow room for a human to say "that doesn't make sense in this instance, the rules can go hang." And that was philosophically disfavored by 3e.

I think you're so repulsed by 3.5e's version of D&D specifically that you're painting with way too wide a brush. I totally get that 3.5e did a crappy job in a lot of ways and made many promises it can't hope to keep. The solution isn't to make more promises or to blame the whole structure, the solution is to decide what's important and focus there. Do fewer things, better.

Nothing you've brought up is a fault of a class-level system, it's a fault of some implementations of such a system. I bet if I had time and money to read most other systems I could find the exact same sorts of dysfunctions (to a greater or lesser degree).

@Satinavian: Wide applicability is a great thing. Its rare that I actually see it work--every game system has to take a stand on what's important. Those that try to be all things to all people fail. 5e D&D does a decent job with "Approachable Heroic Fantasy--larger-than-life figures doing heroic things in fantasy environments." 4e D&D did a good job of "Heroic Fantasy Tactical Combat." GURPS focuses on a wide range of settings, but doesn't do "Larger-than-life" (ie non-gritty combat) incredibly well from what I've been told. FATE has its focuses (and makes that very clear in the book)--pulpy cinematic action. It doesn't handle gritty very well at all.

Frozen_Feet

2018-03-24, 01:43 PM

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-24, 02:06 PM

@PhoenixPhyre & Max_Killjoy: if you ask me, the problem isn't in finding the errors, it's never defining how frequently these errors have to happen in actual play to count as "total mismatch".

To use the jumping example: if 1-of-216 player characters can break real-life records at level 1 (, I couldn't give a damn. It would lead to ridiculous results if generalized to a population level, but I don't need to do that. I only need to generate a Jump value for characters present and can assume reality prevails elsewhere. I need to generate either a lot of characters or play a lot of session for it to come up often, so the expected real play time had without encountering the issue is pretty high. Hence, damns given: zero.

1-of-20 would be just on the edge of being annoying enough to change the rules.

I agree. It's why I don't really worry about discrepancies that may occur in theory, under particular readings of rules. Or those that arise from interactions between rules that were never supposed to come into conflict. That's why there's a living DM, not a computer. The rules are a guide, not a strait-jacket.

Now if the setting tells me that monks are supposed to be awesome fighters, and the rules tell me that they're crap, that's a problem.

On a related note--I saw the following quotes (all variants of the same idea) and think it very apropos of most of these discussions:

Lord Byron: Truth is always strange; stranger than fiction.
Mark Twain: Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities, truth isn't.
G. K. Chesterton: Truth must necessarily be stranger than fiction, for fiction is the creation of the human mind and therefore congenial to it.
Leo Rosten: Truth is stranger than fiction; fiction has to make sense.

FreddyNoNose

2018-03-24, 03:34 PM

RazorChain

2018-03-24, 04:08 PM

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-24, 04:23 PM

I don't get it why people think D&D is a simulationist system. It doesn't manage to simulate our reality, in most cases it's rules don't even manage to simulate it's own setting reality.

And it doesn't even claim to simulate a world in any printed books I've seen. Certainly not for 4e or 5e. It claims to provide a shared framework for resolving certain interactions between player characters and the adventuring world in a way that makes for a fun game. Not even all possible interactions. It's intentionally and explicitly limited in scope. For me, that's a strong plus. For others? Not so much.

Mechalich

2018-03-24, 06:43 PM

The mismatch between rules and setting (or crunch and fluff) is by no means unique to 3.X D&D or even D&D as a whole. It is in fact extremely common throughout the hobby. Every game ever produced by White-Wolf has this problem to setting-shattering levels, whether oWoD, nWoD, Aberrant, Exalted, Scion, or even their really obscure stuff. L5R has this problem, so does Shadowrun. And many game systems, such as pretty much anything ever produced by Palladium, don't even bother to imagine a coherent setting at all.

If having a coherent setting is a design goal - and this is not always the case (the most popular fictional setting in the world right now is the MCU, and it very much does not care about that), then it is a major design goal to have what characters - PC and NPC, Human and Non-Human - are doing via the rules match up with what they are actually doing within the setting itself.

Now, this goal is obviously in tension with other goals such as ease of play and overall rules comprehensibility, so there are going to be compromises made in any game. One of the reasons 3.X D&D is called out so often in this area is because it is an immensely complex rules system that attempts to model whole ranges of encounters that other games simply ignore or subsume into very broad systems while somehow producing even worse outcomes in terms of having the rules support the narrative.

ross

2018-03-24, 07:17 PM

Avoid what? The knowledge that we're playing a game? Why?

Koo Rehtorb

2018-03-24, 08:25 PM

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-24, 09:49 PM

Any attempt to accurately simulate a real world by treating rules as physics is doomed to fail. It's tilting at windmills.

What you actually do is allow the GM/players to determine what's possible and then allow rolls based on that. If it's possible to do a thing then roll 2d6+the appropriate modifier. 10+ is a success, 7-9 is a partial success. If it's possible to do a thing is determined by GM/player expectations of the tone they're going for. In some games leaping the 50 foot chasm is doable, in other games it isn't. If it's doable in the genre you're going for then make a roll, if it isn't doable then you fall to your death, no roll allowed.

This I can agree with, although it's important to note that the reverse of the chasm situation is also true--if there's no doubt that you succeed (based on the fictional situation), then you succeed, no roll needed either.

Only involve mechanics when there's doubt as to success or failure (or degrees of such) and where the consequences are of interest. So your trained martial artist wants to punch a baker. Ok, you've now punched a baker. The important part is what comes next, the consequences that flow from that act. Those might need mechanical backing--is he dead? Injured but can still call for help?

Or so your baker-background character wants to bake a cake. Is it particularly complex, such that a trained person would fail with reasonable frequency, and is there no time to try again? Make a check. Otherwise, narrate the cake production. At most you'd make a check if it's important exactly how good the cake is.

D+1

2018-03-24, 10:49 PM

I don't assume it's a bad thing, I just ask the why of it. What is the purpose of making the PC's special, why do the rules make them special? It is connected to the idea that do interesting things happen to you because you are the protagonist or are you the protagonist because interesting things happen to you.
Seriously? I mean this is like the most basic reflexive principle in RPG's. It's the same as the reflexive principle in math. A=A. Things happen to the PC's because they are the focus of the game, and the game focuses on the PC's because THEY are the ones that interesting things are meant to happen to. These things are equal to each other. The players are given interesting PC's so that interesting things happen to them and they can, in turn, do interesting things. Dull, uninteresting things still happen and are done by most everyone who is not a PC. They are NOT why anyone sits at a table to play an RPG.

How is that not obvious? It doesn't even matter if the PC's BEGIN as nothing more than normal people with normal abilities - NON-snowflakes. They become snowflakes because they are, indeed, the protagonists, the only characters that really matter in the entire game, and as they go forth and do things, and have things happen to them and around them, they will grow and improve and have opportunities that will not happen for the non-snowflakes. When the game is over, the non-snowflakes will still be non-snowflakes. Things will not have happened to them, nor will things that they have done really mattered. It will be the PLAYER characters whose deeds and presence will be of note or interest. This is the basic premise of RPG's.

Frozen_Feet

2018-03-25, 11:13 AM

Re: "Is D&D simulationist?"

First point first: "simulationist" = "simulation". The former is specific GNS terms which doesn't mean what people think it means, referring to a certain style of play. The latter simply means imitating the behaviour of something.

In the latter sense, D&D absolutely is a simulation, and so are all roleplaying games, because the core of all RPGs is playing pretend, that is, imitating something, whether it is the Hero's journey in genre literature, or realistic modelling of a modern battlefield.

What trips people up is that simulations have all sorts of different goals and they come in all degrees of accuracy. In first edition AD&D, Gary Gygax explicitly spelled out that D&D is not meant to be holistic, realistic simulation of anything, and can only be deemed a failure if approached from that viewpoint. D&D is a game, not a model of reality. But he also said that realism is still attempted where it enhances the game.

The reason why Ron Edwards thought that D&D is "incoherent" in the sense of mixing "gamism" and "simulationism", is because he (and a lot of other people) apparently didn't get that even partial simulation of reality can be worth it because it allows for interesting challenges to overcome (a "gamist" trait) or because it allows for interesting events to arise which then make interesting stories when told after-the-fact (a "narrativist" trait).

Because of things like this, GNS is fatally flawed and is about as valid as theory of roleplaying games as Freudian psychology is as theory of the human mind. Hence, do not bother categorizing games to "gamist", "narrativist" and "simulationist", and especially, even if you do, do not pretend this says anything about whether a game is or includes simulation.

---

Seriously? I mean this is like the most basic reflexive principle in RPG's. It's the same as the reflexive principle in math. A=A. Things happen to the PC's because they are the focus of the game, and the game focuses on the PC's because THEY are the ones that interesting things are meant to happen to. These things are equal to each other. The players are given interesting PC's so that interesting things happen to them and they can, in turn, do interesting things. Dull, uninteresting things still happen and are done by most everyone who is not a PC. They are NOT why anyone sits at a table to play an RPG.

How is that not obvious? It doesn't even matter if the PC's BEGIN as nothing more than normal people with normal abilities - NON-snowflakes. They become snowflakes because they are, indeed, the protagonists, the only characters that really matter in the entire game, and as they go forth and do things, and have things happen to them and around them, they will grow and improve and have opportunities that will not happen for the non-snowflakes. When the game is over, the non-snowflakes will still be non-snowflakes. Things will not have happened to them, nor will things that they have done really mattered. It will be the PLAYER characters whose deeds and presence will be of note or interest. This is the basic premise of RPG's.

There is so much wrong with this. The saddest part is that I already pointed out what was wrong with this in my first post to this thread, but it has entirely escaped discussion.

To wit: are your players gormless lackwits who are as incapable of taking initiative as you were of asking your crush out in highschool?

If yes, I can get where you're coming from, but you have a problem that needs fixing.

If not, then your mindset is wrong from the get-go.

In a world where players are not gormless lackwits, they aren't "given interesting PCs that interesting things can happen to", they choose a game and a character that they think has a possibility of being interesting, and then, if the player was good enough as a player to know themselves and the game, they will proceed to do things which are interesting to them.

If the player only knows themselves, but not the game, then they may or may not find interesting things to do in the game. If the player knows neither themselves nor the game, their ability to find anything of interest is always at peril, and dependant on other players.

In all cases, failure of interesting things happening is always at least partly the fault of the players, as what is interesting is always subjective and dependant on the player. Nothing, anywhere, requires the characters to be special, and indeed, if a player chose poorly, no matter how interesting someone else thinks their character or the things happening to them are, the player will find no joy in it.

Similarly, nothing about roleplaying games ever requires the premise that player characters are the only ones who matter, or only characters to who things happen to. A skilled player will make their character matter if they want to even if no such premise exists.

FreddyNoNose

2018-03-25, 12:57 PM

I don't get it why people think D&D is a simulationist system. It doesn't manage to simulate our reality, in most cases it's rules don't even manage to simulate it's own setting reality.

Some people simply use the simulation argument to discount or shoot down the other person. It is a whataboutism as in: "Oh, you use this rule but what about real swords hitting plate armor".

Other people have an odd thinking/need to try to understand a game as a simulation rather than a game. There are lots of variations on how they approach it and their approach doesn't work for me.

Games are abstractions and have abstract rules. When a person sits down to play a game he needs to understand he agreed to play the rules of that game. And if the rules say rolling 7 on a d20 means you get for ducks unless the day of the week is Tuesday and the Queen of Hearts is on the table in which case you loose a sheep, then you can't complain about how the rules don't simulate reality or make other non-sense to you. You sit down, you accepted the rules. You can't wrap your head around it, that is your problem. Rules aren't perfect so there will be parts where it is likely to have issues, and that doesn't mean you should be trying to meta-game that to your advantage. Because the secret rule is you should be punished for it.

Kelb_Panthera

2018-03-25, 08:38 PM

It makes as much sense as you're willing to push it towards making as a DM.

First thing's first, ecologically and otherwise scientifically; you're playing a fantasy game. Suspend your disbelief here. If it's not something a layman could observe with extremely minimal, simplistic instrumentation, just let it go. You'll end up with much less of a headache that way.

That out of the way, trying to achieve verisimilitude is a laudable goal that really helps with immersion.

You ask about dungeons full of loot; how do you lay them out? Why are they there? These are questions you -can- answer reasonably. In a world where objects of -immense- monetary value that can fit in a man's pocket exist and are regularly created and traded for the purpose of adventuring (read; magic items), it's only natural that any number of unsuccessful adventuring parties would leave such treasure behind in a given dungeon; plus any liquid assets they may have been carrying (read; coins and small art objects.) When you then add to the equation raiders (read; evil, or at least self-interested, adventurers), creatures that like to gather shinies or actual treasure (everything from simple jackdaws to dragons), and hidden bases of operation for those characters too powerful to be constrained by society, never mind the hidden temples of cults to various unsavory deities and fiends, and it becomes pretty trivial to justify treasure flowing -into- dungeons as frequently as out, just not the same ones. Old "dungeons" get raided and new ones get built and filled.

You ask about narrative causality; there's no reason, at all, that you can't decide how a given plot will progress if the PCs don't interact with it at all. If your goal is to make a world that feels lived in, you probably -should- make more plots than the PCs can reasonably interact with (simple outlines, no need to write novellas here) and have the ones that the PCs don't interact with progress as planned between sessions while you plot more deeply on the one that the PCs picked up. Just don't forget to do the good guys and the neutrals as well as the villains.

On PC snowflakedom; that's up to the players until and unless the DM steps in and places guidelines and restrictions. Some players, believe it or not, want to play an average Joe that's in over his head and grows into a hero. Others do want to play something whacky and even borderline-nonsensical as a bit of fantastic escapism. You have to decide how far you're willing to let them go, as a DM, and be upfront and firm about it. I'm a D&D 3.5, kitchen-sink kinda DM so you've got to get pretty... odd... to really throw me off but YMMV. As for -why- they should be allowed to do it; the goal of any recreational game is to have fun. Some people find playing the special snowflake to be fun. If you don't like it, you have to either compromise with them or play with somebody else; simple as that.

Max_Killjoy

2018-03-25, 09:34 PM

ImNotTrevor

2018-03-25, 11:16 PM

I use the rules for the stuff covered by the rules.

Yes. But the rules cannot reasonably be expected to cover all eventualities. That's a stupid expectation to have. It's why we have a GM.

If i have a bad rule i don't keep the bad rule and arbitrate away the results whenever i don't like them.
Then you already do what I'm talking about. Why the argument, again?

I just make a new houserule. If i have to do so too often, i consider looking for a better system, where the rules cover far more situations delivering sensible results.
I personally prefer simplified and abstracted rulesets for this reason. I rarely have nonsense results because outcomes are abstracted enough to bend a little into reasonable territory, regardless of how it turns out.

You might have recognized that i don't want ertain things. That doesn't mean that i never encounter them/never have to do them. But i do value a system forcing those things on me far less.
Expecting to never have to arbitrate a nonsensical outcome from the rules is an unreasonable expectation. (You don't need me to tell you that.) Your personal tolerance for how frequently you deal with it is your thing, but when a system makes conscious use of the Human Brain in the GM chair, that's not bad design. It's design you dislike.

A system covering everything and producing always sensible results is an unachievable ideal. But it should be treated as an ideal when writing rules,
I disagree with the word "Should," here. I don't think it is a concern that merits universal adoption by all designers. Sometimes, a nonsense outcome is ideal. A game based on Cartoons would obviously not want only sensible outcomes.

carefully balanced against other ideals like being easy to use or cemprehensible to get the best possible compromise. "Level of detail/abstraction" is a really powerful concept for that.
Sure.

If i can somehow rationalize classes and levels then i can easily use the same kind of rationalization for NPCs.
They're a game abstraction for ease of use on the player side. Do you really need more than that?

Of course NPCs in D&D get power via levels the very same way PCs do.
Dragons don't.
Most creatures with Advancement rules don't.
They CAN, but that's far from their only way of doing so.
That all NPCs MUST gain levels to advance is disproven by the Monster Manual.

And I know there are quite some systems that handle PCs and NPCs differently. I tend to not like those systems. I think that is bad design.
Neat.
I disagree.

Having NPCs more/less powerful than PCs is easy even when using the very same rules.
Not in all cases.

Most systems allow PCs being more or less powerful than other PCs, often inbaked in advancement rules or general wordbuilding guides. What is so difficult in giving NPCs more or less build points, attribute points/levels than PCs if you want to make PCs more/less powerful ? The rules already cover individuals of differing power all following the same rules. Just choose individuals of the right powerlevel to be your NPCs or your PCs. But have the rules work the same for everyone.
Again, I disagree that this should be universal. That this is how you like it, doesn't mean that's how it SHOULD be. I like small cars, but you'll never find me saying "Cars Should Be Small!" Because that's not going to work out well for people who don't like small cars.

The only justification i could follow somewhat for differing PC and NPC rules come from this "level of detail"-thing. Where NPC that don't matter don't get attention to their actual stats and are instead handled by some very simplified template. This says to me "These NPCs should actually also use all the rules, but for shortness sake we model them with this approximation. It is not really accurate but anything those guys do is so meaningless that we don't care for the differences anyway and use this to speed things up".
But if i use such rules that also means that if an NPC somehow gets important or somehow is actually in the focus of attention, he suddenly gets the full rule treatment. Those simplified stats were never his real stats.

I disagree with this as well. In a game system where it is accepted that the PCs really are qualitatively different from other people, making that distinction clear in their build rules is what I'd call good design. It solidifies the fictional concept better than "they have more points." Having more points isn't cool. It's just more of what other people are. It's functionally saying that whatever stuff normal people are made of is the same stuff Gods are made of, just less of it. The difference is QUANTITATIVE rather than QUALITATIVE. You're not different, there's just more of the special sauce in you than in Timmy the Baker.

Yawn.

In AW, you're a badass who is fundamentally different from the scrubs in town. You aren't just them with more points. You're the only one of your kind. You're THE Angel. THE Saavyhead. Other people might do similar stuff, but they don't do it how you do it. You're a different breed, and the rules make that clear in their function. You aren't SUPPOSED to be normal people of unusual dedication. You're something more that they can't be. Hence why we're following YOUR actions and not some random rust farmer.
And that, to me, is more fun than having 15 more points.

But again, different games are for different audiences. AW ain't for you. Neato. Just don't piss in my wheaties and assert a game I like is badly designed because it doesn't match your preference.

Satinavian

2018-03-26, 02:23 AM

Yes. But the rules cannot reasonably be expected to cover all eventualities. That's a stupid expectation to have. It's why we have a GM.It is better to have rules that cover a situation than not having rules that cover that situation. If it were the other way around we would strife for rules covering as little as possible a.k.a. freeform roleplaying which clearly does not appeal to a majority.
And if it is better to have rules that cover a situation, then rules that cover more situation are better than rules covering less situations, all other things being equal.

Then you already do what I'm talking about. Why the argument, again?You misunderstood my sentence, but i can't really blame you due to grammar. Let's try again :

If i have a bad rule i don't ( keep the bad rule and arbitrate away the results whenever i don't like them ).

Bad rules get replaced by houserules. If that is too much hassle, than the rule was obviously not that bad or the result is unimportant anyway and there is also no need to arbitrate it away.

I personally prefer simplified and abstracted rulesets for this reason. I rarely have nonsense results because outcomes are abstracted enough to bend a little into reasonable territory, regardless of how it turns out.Don't disagree here. Abstract rules tend to work more often then detailed rules. That is why i am very of going into too much detail for subsystems.

I disagree with the word "Should," here. I don't think it is a concern that merits universal adoption by all designers. Sometimes, a nonsense outcome is ideal. A game based on Cartoons would obviously not want only sensible outcomes. Then we have to disagree. Even for a Cartoon i want to have rules producing the Cartoon premises sensibly. I think it is a universal design goal

Dragons don't.
Most creatures with Advancement rules don't.
They CAN, but that's far from their only way of doing so.
That all NPCs MUST gain levels to advance is disproven by the Monster Manual.
Yes, there are fringe cases that don't advance (only) via class levels. PCs and NPCs still advance the same way. Humanoids have class levels. Animals have only racial hitdice and sizes, dragons have ages. Etc. But as half the ridiculous kobold builds on this board can show you, none of that depends on if the character in question is a PC or NPC. (Same thing for PC awakened animals, actual PC dragons, various outsiders, undeads etc.)

Again, I disagree that this should be universal. That this is how you like it, doesn't mean that's how it SHOULD be. I like small cars, but you'll never find me saying "Cars Should Be Small!" Because that's not going to work out well for people who don't like small cars.Yes, that one is a preferrence. But is a strong preferrence.

If PCs and NPCs follow different rules and the rules have any impact worth anything, the differences will be noticable to the charcters and the gameworld. And then they require an in game explaination or damage versimilitude and thus immersion.

That is drawback. How big of a drawback depends obviously on taste and how much you value immersion but a drawback it is always. Now, what are the benefits for using different rules for PCs and NPCs ?

I disagree with this as well. In a game system where it is accepted that the PCs really are qualitatively different from other people, making that distinction clear in their build rules is what I'd call good design. It solidifies the fictional concept better than "they have more points." Having more points isn't cool. It's just more of what other people are. It's functionally saying that whatever stuff normal people are made of is the same stuff Gods are made of, just less of it. The difference is QUANTITATIVE rather than QUALITATIVE. You're not different, there's just more of the special sauce in you than in Timmy the Baker.There are hardly any settings where PCs are qualitatively different. In fact it is so rare that i have trouble finding even one. Yes, there are many systems, where PCs are part of some very special subgroup of persons (e.g. nearly all WoD stuff, Ars Maciga, Superhero-RPGs etc.) and it is very reasonable that the special subgroup has special rules because they are special as justified by the setting. But PCs vs. NPCs ? No, other NPC members of the same special subgroup stil get exactly the same rules as it should be. Because even there the PCs are not actually special compared to NPCs of the same race/profession/upbringing/supernatural background.
Yes, there are some fringe cases, where the PCs are the only beings in existence that have access to some particular supernatural force. But i can't remember a case of that outside of specific, often heavily homebrewed campaigns.
[quote]In AW, you're a badass who is fundamentally different from the scrubs in town. You aren't just them with more points. You're the only one of your kind. You're THE Angel. THE Saavyhead. Other people might do similar stuff, but they don't do it how you do it. You're a different breed, and the rules make that clear in their function. You aren't SUPPOSED to be normal people of unusual dedication. You're something more that they can't be. Hence why we're following YOUR actions and not some random rust farmer.
And that, to me, is more fun than having 15 more points.[/qoute]I utterly hate games like that. I even dislike fiction like that. I think it is a case of bad writing and an RPG that actively encourages this kind of thing is badly written. I cannot perceive it as anything but a flaw.

There are other cases where i can at least kind of understand the appeal of some different preferrence even if i don't share it and just chalk it up to different taste. There exist lot's of those instances. But here ? No, i really completely don't get it. "Mary Sue - the RPG : PCs are super special for no particular reason and we have rules to make it so" is a bad idea imo.

johnbragg

2018-03-26, 06:19 AM

For the longest time describing a character as a "snowflake" was absolutely belittling and derogatory.

I still have to remind myself that someone might be using it as a neutral descriptor, and I'll probably never shake that initial gut objection to the term no matter how many times it turns out to have been neutral.

I think "snowflake" is a negative relative to the other PCs, but a neutral design choice relative to the world. (Mostly neutral, obviously some love it and some hate it. But when it's a design choice, it applies to everyone at the table, not just to one PC)

In a game system where it is accepted that the PCs really are qualitatively different from other people, making that distinction clear in their build rules is what I'd call good design. It solidifies the fictional concept better than "they have more points." Having more points isn't cool. It's just more of what other people are. It's functionally saying that whatever stuff normal people are made of is the same stuff Gods are made of, just less of it. The difference is QUANTITATIVE rather than QUALITATIVE. You're not different, there's just more of the special sauce in you than in Timmy the Baker.

If PCs and NPCs follow different rules and the rules have any impact worth anything, the differences will be noticable to the charcters and the gameworld. And then they require an in game explaination or damage versimilitude and thus immersion.

There are hardly any settings where PCs are qualitatively different. In fact it is so rare that i have trouble finding even one. Yes, there are many systems, where PCs are part of some very special subgroup of persons (e.g. nearly all WoD stuff, Ars Maciga, Superhero-RPGs etc.) and it is very reasonable that the special subgroup has special rules because they are special as justified by the setting. But PCs vs. NPCs ? No, other NPC members of the same special subgroup stil get exactly the same rules as it should be. Because even there the PCs are not actually special compared to NPCs of the same race/profession/upbringing/supernatural background.
Yes, there are some fringe cases, where the PCs are the only beings in existence that have access to some particular supernatural force. But i can't remember a case of that outside of specific, often heavily homebrewed campaigns.

There are other cases where i can at least kind of understand the appeal of some different preferrence even if i don't share it and just chalk it up to different taste. There exist lot's of those instances. But here ? No, i really completely don't get it. "Mary Sue - the RPG : PCs are super special for no particular reason and we have rules to make it so" is a bad idea imo.

I'm wondering how you two would react to an idea I'm kicking around.

E6 generic-fantasy-base world (not kitchen-sink) with Rituals, powered by the combined and directed psychic energy of societies. The rules of the setting are that reality is malleable--it's not a low-magic setting, it's a low-powered setting. (Collect too much power in one individual without dispersing it somehow and you get a black hole that disconnects into a bubble universe, where you have complete and total power--if you figure that out)

One of those Rituals summons heroes from Elsewhere. That allows players to play whatever 3.5 or Pathfinder or class they want (translated to E6), or homebrewed classes like Jedi Knight, Disney Princess, Modern Soldier, or My Little Pony OC (unicorn spellcaster). So the PCs are snowflakes--they're the only Warforged or monk or kitsune rogue or PC drow. But their snowflakiness is as limited as their life expectancy--sure, nobody's ever seen an MLP unicorn before adventuring with a native spellcaster, warrior and trickster. Of course, last year nobody had ever seen a Space Wizard Swordsman or a Gunslinger either. Too bad about what happened to those guys. If they get lucky, maybe they'll live long enough to retire like the Mayor of Haroldburg, calls himself a Priest of St Cuthbert. (Basically, everybody carries around a bubble of their own reality. So guns work fine when the Modern Soldier is holding them, and ammo refreshes overnight like spells. Take the gun away from the Modern Soldier, maybe it's a wand, maybe it's a bow--or maybe it's just a hunk of strange materials that doesn't seem to do anything.)

Satinavian

2018-03-26, 07:16 AM

One of those Rituals summons heroes from Elsewhere. That allows players to play whatever 3.5 or Pathfinder or class they want (translated to E6), or homebrewed classes like Jedi Knight, Disney Princess, Modern Soldier, or My Little Pony OC (unicorn spellcaster). So the PCs are snowflakes--they're the only Warforged or monk or kitsune rogue or PC drow. But their snowflakiness is as limited as their life expectancy--sure, nobody's ever seen an MLP unicorn before adventuring with a native spellcaster, warrior and trickster. Of course, last year nobody had ever seen a Space Wizard Swordsman or a Gunslinger either. Too bad about what happened to those guys. If they get lucky, maybe they'll live long enough to retire like the Mayor of Haroldburg, calls himself a Priest of St Cuthbert. (Basically, everybody carries around a bubble of their own reality. So guns work fine when the Modern Soldier is holding them, and ammo refreshes overnight like spells. Take the gun away from the Modern Soldier, maybe it's a wand, maybe it's a bow--or maybe it's just a hunk of strange materials that doesn't seem to do anything.)So while the PCs are unique, they have these uniqueness via being part of a group of summoned heroes which does include NPCs and of whom each is unique in his own personal way because they represent a draw from the whole multiverse.

I wouldn't actually have any problem with this. Anything special has a solid ingame reason and PCs are not special because of PC (as there are also summoned NPCs). I would be wary of the expected rules and expectation clash that nearly always ensures if you import stuff from many different fictions and throw it into the same setting. But that is mostly a headache for the DM. Personally i would make sure to choose something that could work under the E6 paradigma, but also something that does not really fit generic fantasy.

Quertus

2018-03-26, 09:45 AM

ImNotTrevor

2018-03-26, 03:43 PM

It is better to have rules that cover a situation than not having rules that cover that situation. If it were the other way around we would strife for rules covering as little as possible a.k.a. freeform roleplaying which clearly does not appeal to a majority.
I run in both freeform and tabletop circles, and have been for 15 years. Freeform is plenty popular as a general thing, but it is largely not visible because you can't exactly sell it. That no money is payed for a thing doesn't make it unpopular. And that you don't see much freeform rp on a TRPG-centered forum is also not an indication of the popularity of the form.

And if it is better to have rules that cover a situation, then rules that cover more situation are better than rules covering less situations, all other things being equal.
If I only have rules for the thing the system is for, that's enough. Rules for fantasy dinosaur riding knights don't need lasergun rules.

You misunderstood my sentence, but i can't really blame you due to grammar. Let's try again :

If i have a bad rule i don't ( keep the bad rule and arbitrate away the results whenever i don't like them ).

Bad rules get replaced by houserules. If that is too much hassle, than the rule was obviously not that bad or the result is unimportant anyway and there is also no need to arbitrate it away.
I'm talking specifically about the edge cases which will ALWAYS exist by your own admission, and have already talked about how a person's personal preference for how often they ignore nonsense is up to them.

Then we have to disagree. Even for a Cartoon i want to have rules producing the Cartoon premises sensibly. I think it is a universal design goal
I don't honestly think ANY design goal is universal, so that's part of why I disagree with this one. I can't think of any that are universally applicable. (No, not even "Should be fun." Because that means so many different things to so many different people that, as a goal, it has no functional or distinct meaning.)

Yes, there are fringe cases that don't advance (only) via class levels. PCs and NPCs still advance the same way. Humanoids have class levels.
I'm away from my books, but I'm 99% certain there are humanoids with other advancement rules. Yes, anything CAN take a class. But there is nothing in the rules limiting anything but PCs to that form of advancement.

Yes, that one is a preferrence. But is a strong preferrence.
I strongly prefer small cars over trucks, but I still make sure to state opinions as such.

If PCs and NPCs follow different rules and the rules have any impact worth anything, the differences will be noticable to the charcters and the gameworld. And then they require an in game explaination or damage versimilitude and thus immersion.
Why? This is an assumption with no backing.

That is drawback. How big of a drawback depends obviously on taste and how much you value immersion but a drawback it is always.
My personal experience disagrees with your "always" statement. You're mixing up subjective opinion and objective fact, again.

Now, what are the benefits for using different rules for PCs and NPCs ?
1. Simplification
2. Mechanically reflecting qualitative fictional differences
3. Increased Immersion (in my experience, players tend to wonder why they're the ones running around saving the world when there's another person just like them under every rock.)
4. In games like AW, the NPC rules are, effectively, the effects of PC rules. This means that Players have greater influence over events and are the real movers and shakers of the setting, and it neuters temptations to minmax NPCs for railroady reasons

There's 4 off the top of my head, from my personal experience with my players.

There are hardly any settings where PCs are qualitatively different. In fact it is so rare that i have trouble finding even one. Yes, there are many systems, where PCs are part of some very special subgroup of persons (e.g. nearly all WoD stuff, Ars Maciga, Superhero-RPGs etc.) and it is very reasonable that the special subgroup has special rules because they are special as justified by the setting. But PCs vs. NPCs ? No, other NPC members of the same special subgroup stil get exactly the same rules as it should be. Because even there the PCs are not actually special compared to NPCs of the same race/profession/upbringing/supernatural background.
Cool. In such situations I have no problem with it being the case. I'm not advocating that it should never be that way. I'm saying the stylistic choice of doing it differently is valid and can even, shockingly, be fun for people that enjoy it.

I utterly hate games like that. I even dislike fiction like that. I think it is a case of bad writing and an RPG that actively encourages this kind of thing is badly written. I cannot perceive it as anything but a flaw.
At least you're wording it kinda as an opinion. An opinion worded to be derogatory, but an opinion.

I find those systems, when done well, to be very fun. I also like systems that don't do that.
I'm some kind of crazy person, I guess.

There are other cases where i can at least kind of understand the appeal of some different preferrence even if i don't share it and just chalk it up to different taste. There exist lot's of those instances. But here ? No, i really completely don't get it. "Mary Sue - the RPG : PCs are super special for no particular reason and we have rules to make it so" is a bad idea imo.

Why does being unique equate to being a Mary Sue?
If you knew most of the Apocalypse World characters I've seen, you'd have a hard time calling any of them Mary Sues, even if they ARE fundamentally more capable of changing their world than anyone else. That's the entire point.

Apocalypse World is less like a rise to the top and more like a flaming dumpster careening down a hill, and you see what neat patterns the flames make as it burns. So the players are especially empowered to ruin everything by the rules. It's fun in the same way an explosion is fun, or a destruction derby is fun. You don't NEED anyone else to hold the dynamite, and honestly if your players get to be broken people ruining everything, for fun, and they have every tool available to do so, why would you need the NPCs to do it?

It's a very different philosophy. Entropy: The Game has no heroes. Things just get crazier and crazier and then explode, and it's a riot. Not everyone likes Monster Trucks and Destruction Derbys, either. Neato. Don't go to them and don't play AW.

It's ok to not like stuff.
It's not ok to piss in other people's wheaties.

ImNotTrevor

2018-03-26, 04:03 PM

I'm wondering how you two would react to an idea I'm kicking around.

I have no problem with the idea. As I said, I'm not AGAINST PC/NPC transparency.
I'm just also not against PC/NPC distinction, either.
I like both. Each has its place and its usefulness.

I hate baseball. I cannot personally fathom how one could watch baseball and find it entertaining.
That is irrelevant to the fact that other people love baseball. And good on them for liking their hobby. I hope they have fun, and I'll go do something else.

Note, I didn't say Baseball was a bad sport. I just admit I don't get it.

See how that's not pissing in a baseball fan's wheaties?

It's the derogatory BS I'm mostly irritated by. It's elitist and tiresome. Ew.

Satinavian

2018-03-27, 02:33 AM

I run in both freeform and tabletop circles, and have been for 15 years. Freeform is plenty popular as a general thing, but it is largely not visible because you can't exactly sell it. That no money is payed for a thing doesn't make it unpopular. And that you don't see much freeform rp on a TRPG-centered forum is also not an indication of the popularity of the form.That explains a lot.

If I only have rules for the thing the system is for, that's enough. Rules for fantasy dinosaur riding knights don't need lasergun rules. No, but it wouldn't hurt to have rules for animal husbandry or about all the things dinosaurs do when no knight is riding them into battle. Because they are obviously part of the world and it is very much possible that the players don't really pay attention to the fighting knights and are far more interested in the dinosaurs and kinda change the focus of the game this way.

I'm away from my books, but I'm 99% certain there are humanoids with other advancement rules. Yes, anything CAN take a class. But there is nothing in the rules limiting anything but PCs to that form of advancement. PCs are also not limited to class levels either. If you are playing something advancing by age category or via some other way, your PC will have this advancement option. There are whole supplements dedicated to make that work and to try balancing it somehow.

1. Simplification
2. Mechanically reflecting qualitative fictional differences
3. Increased Immersion (in my experience, players tend to wonder why they're the ones running around saving the world when there's another person just like them under every rock.)
4. In games like AW, the NPC rules are, effectively, the effects of PC rules. This means that Players have greater influence over events and are the real movers and shakers of the setting, and it neuters temptations to minmax NPCs for railroady reasonsI give you the simplification. But fictional differences ? Any different groups of persons could and should get different rules anyway, that has no relation to the PC/NPC dynamic. Immersion ? I am convinced it nearly always harms the immersion to replace the question "Why is this guy(PC) doing it instead of the other guy (NPC) with the exactly same background ?" with the question "Why is this guy (PC) able to do it and not the other guy (NPC) with the exactly same background ?". Number 4 is indeed interesting. But seems to by more about distribution of story telling privileges between player and GM artificially linked to the characters.

Why does being unique equate to being a Mary Sue?I don't have a problem with characters that are special. It is about specialness because of PC status alone. Something that never makes sense in the game world. The game world itself should not distinguish PCs and NPCs as the premise of a game is that the characters of the world believe their world is real. But different rules for PCs and NPCs mean that the same actions have different outcomes. Something that is very much observable and noticible and what can be planned for. And the justifications for that tend to have the same quality as typical Mary Sue fiction, where a character suddenly accomplish things someone of similar background should not expect to succeed in for reasons or gets the powers they need to shine in a certain situations exactly when they need them to shine by contrievance and background retconning or coincidences just so happen that this character is the one solving the problem or that NPCs suddenly become clumsy and incompetend as soon as they come near the plot as if some invisible author would make sure that Mary Sue character seems better.

Special characters that are plausible part of the word are no problem. Powerful characters with established powers based in the world are no problem. Both work for PCs and NPCs alike. But Characters whose specialty is based on the PC-tag which can by definition never be part of a game world hurt versimilitude.

Apocalypse World is less like a rise to the top and more like a flaming dumpster careening down a hill, and you see what neat patterns the flames make as it burns. So the players are especially empowered to ruin everything by the rules. It's fun in the same way an explosion is fun, or a destruction derby is fun. You don't NEED anyone else to hold the dynamite, and honestly if your players get to be broken people ruining everything, for fun, and they have every tool available to do so, why would you need the NPCs to do it?

It's a very different philosophy. Entropy: The Game has no heroes. Things just get crazier and crazier and then explode, and it's a riot. Not everyone likes Monster Trucks and Destruction Derbys, either. Neato. Don't go to them and don't play AW.I don't like AW or actually any form of chaos for lulz. But i do have enough experience with player driven plots and do like them. I even played a couple that went so far as to skip the GM entirely. None of that used different rules for PCs and NPCs, instead in the GM-less versions the borders between PC and NPC were even less pronounced than normally as PCs were used to provide plot the same way NPCs would in a normal game.

The easiest way for PCs to be able to do anything NPCs can do and being able to usurp their traditional narrative roles is to give them the exactly same rules. That makes it easier, not harder.

Florian

2018-03-27, 02:57 AM

For the longest time describing a character as a "snowflake" was absolutely belittling and derogatory.

Well, yes, often with some good reasons behind it. One is nearly frankensteinian characters that are solely justified by a cobbled-together backstory, the other is players basically not wanting to play something that is part of the game world/setting - like someone being hellbent on playing a Warforged in the realms. Or a combination of both - then you end up with the only Warforged Maho Tsukai wielding a laser rifle in the realms, all justified by backstory, blargh!.

Else, the protagonists are always special snowflakes - and should be that.

ImNotTrevor

2018-03-27, 12:27 PM

That explains a lot.

What does it explain?

No, but it wouldn't hurt to have rules for animal husbandry or about all the things dinosaurs do when no knight is riding them into battle. Because they are obviously part of the world and it is very much possible that the players don't really pay attention to the fighting knights and are far more interested in the dinosaurs and kinda change the focus of the game this way.
If they want to play Dinosaur Husbandry: The Game, that's it's own game with its own possibilities, whuch could also be fun.

PCs are also not limited to class levels either. If you are playing something advancing by age category or via some other way, your PC will have this advancement option. There are whole supplements dedicated to make that work and to try balancing it somehow.
Sure. In those particular cases. But this doesn't disprove my point that there's no in-rule reason why you can't have a baker with 2 hp and a 20 in Profession: baking.

I give you the simplification. But fictional differences ? Any different groups of persons could and should get different rules anyway, that has no relation to the PC/NPC dynamic.
Why not? There's no reason to do it either way. Main characters are inherently different from side characters. If you seek to emulate fiction, this may be admirable.

Immersion ? I am convinced it nearly always harms the immersion to replace the question "Why is this guy(PC) doing it instead of the other guy (NPC) with the exactly same background ?" with the question "Why is this guy (PC) able to do it and not the other guy (NPC) with the exactly same background ?".
This is assuming other people of the same background exist, 1, and it's answered simply:
"For some of the same reasons that

Number 4 is indeed interesting. But seems to by more about distribution of story telling privileges between player and GM artificially linked to the characters.
Or, it's taking the best tool the players have for setting interaction and baking a certain degree of narrative authority into it. And literally everything I the system is artificial, so that weak dig can go. The condescension is palpabke.

I don't have a problem with characters that are special. It is about specialness because of PC status alone.
Ok. Cool. And? That's a preference.

Something that never makes sense in the game world.
Never? Utterly and totally never? You certain about that?

The game world itself should not distinguish PCs and NPCs as the premise of a game is that the characters of the world believe their world is real. But different rules for PCs and NPCs mean that the same actions have different outcomes.
That conclusion doesn't follow from the premise. PCs may just be able to do things NPCs can't. That's still non-transparency. To draw from AW, an NPC might own a bar. But they don't get the Maestro'd moves. An NPC May have a gun (nearly all have some kind of weapon) but they don't get Gunlugger moves. They might be a doctor, but they don't get Angel moves.
In fact, the NPCs generally don't have mechanics at all unless a player's move interacts with them or a Custom Move gets activated (which is still a player roll. The GM in Apocalypse World never rolls dice.)

Something that is very much observable and noticible and what can be planned for. And the justifications for that tend to have the same quality as typical Mary Sue fiction, where a character suddenly accomplish things someone of similar background should not expect to succeed in for reasons or gets the powers they need to shine in a certain situations exactly when they need them to shine by contrievance and background retconning or coincidences just so happen that this character is the one solving the problem or that NPCs suddenly become clumsy and incompetend as soon as they come near the plot as if some invisible author would make sure that Mary Sue character seems better.
Again, you're lumping many concepts together from assumed knowledge based on your personal distaste that conflicts with the experience of other people. (Not just me.)

Special characters that are plausible part of the word are no problem. Powerful characters with established powers based in the world are no problem. Both work for PCs and NPCs alike. But Characters whose specialty is based on the PC-tag which can by definition never be part of a game world hurt versimilitude.
For you.

I don't like AW or actually any form of chaos for lulz.
Neat. I dislike verisimilitude worship and favor a fun time over a perfectly verisimilitudinous one. But if someone really values it that highly, awesome! In hope they have fun. Their game is just as fun for then as mine is for me. So while I personally dislike it

But i do have enough experience with player driven plots and do like them. I even played a couple that went so far as to skip the GM entirely. None of that used different rules for PCs and NPCs, instead in the GM-less versions the borders between PC and NPC were even less pronounced than normally as PCs were used to provide plot the same way NPCs would in a normal game.
That's a great way to do it, yes. Though without the GM there's only PCs. Just long term or short term. If we're being pedantic and technical.

The easiest way for PCs to be able to do anything NPCs can do and being able to usurp their traditional narrative roles is to give them the exactly same rules. That makes it easier, not harder.

I don't notice problems in the systems I play with these differences. Neither do my players.

Satinavian

2018-03-29, 05:16 AM

What does it explain?Why you seem to value certain functions of rules so little.

If they want to play Dinosaur Husbandry: The Game, that's it's own game with its own possibilities, whuch could also be fun. I want to be able to switch "what is the game about" dynamically during the game thus providing the players real freedom.

Sure. In those particular cases. But this doesn't disprove my point that there's no in-rule reason why you can't have a baker with 2 hp and a 20 in Profession: baking.Because there so way to arrive at such values. If i actually do play D&D 3.x, i use the rules and there will never be such a baker. If i use a version that allows such a baker by allowing arbitrary values for human NPCs, i'll have to ask myself why the PC baker that i could build works so different.

Why not? There's no reason to do it either way. Main characters are inherently different from side characters. If you seek to emulate fiction, this may be admirable. What makes main characters different from side characters ? Number of scenes they are in ? Who gets to be a viewpoint character ? That stuff the main character do gets more attention in discription ? That outside viewers deem it more important ?

Main character are not different to side characters IN the fiction. They are only different on a meta-level.

Or, it's taking the best tool the players have for setting interaction and baking a certain degree of narrative authority into it. And literally everything I the system is artificial, so that weak dig can go. The condescension is palpabke.Artificial is the link between player tools for influencing the setting on one hand and PC/NPC distinction on the other. Dozens of systems have tools for player empowerment. Dozens of systems have PC/NPC distinction. But in nearly none of them there is a link between those two.

Never? Utterly and totally never? You certain about that? Actually yes. I can't imagine an exception.

That conclusion doesn't follow from the premise. PCs may just be able to do things NPCs can't. That's still non-transparency. To draw from AW, an NPC might own a bar. But they don't get the Maestro'd moves. An NPC May have a gun (nearly all have some kind of weapon) but they don't get Gunlugger moves. They might be a doctor, but they don't get Angel moves.
In fact, the NPCs generally don't have mechanics at all unless a player's move interacts with them or a Custom Move gets activated (which is still a player roll. The GM in Apocalypse World never rolls dice.)Yes. That would annoy me without end and probably push me out of the game.

Maybe what i do is versimilitude warship. For me that one versimilitude is the most essential thing RPGs are about. Take that away and i can hardly recognize the result as part of the hobby at all. Sure, i cn and do accept that versimilitude is not top priority for everyone. But it should always be a priority. Second,third, fourth maybe. I have always seen the Forge games that tried to cut certain game motivations to the absolut minimum and maximize others as failures simply lacking essential parts.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-29, 05:39 AM

But verisimilitude is deeply subjective, not objective. What works for you may not for someone else.

Mechalich

2018-03-29, 06:32 AM

Strong rule sets that effectively model the world for high levels of verisimilitude have the additional value - in a TTRPG - of helping to make the system more robust when it comes to plays taking actions that are clearly within the rules but are otherwise nonsensical.

For instance, in 3.X one of the reasons for the existence of NPC classes and the high-level artisans - like a baker with a +15 to profession: baking - aren't supposed to be lambs to the slaughter if the PCs decide to simply massacre a whole town. The idea was that instead of the 2e model - which had 0-level NPCs that any PC over about level 8 could kill an arbitrary number of in one hit - it wouldn't be possible for a party of 4 to march into a town and slaughter everyone. Now, it didn't mechanically work out that way because the designers failed to match the power curves appropriately, but that was the intent. And in an E6 paradigm, meaning one where the 3.X rules actually function, having level 2-6 commoners as opposed to only level 1 commoners is mechanically very meaningful.

But verisimilitude is deeply subjective, not objective. What works for you may not for someone else.

Well true, in the context of adapted settings it is possible to measure verisimilitude qualitatively, because there is a uniform target. The game should functionally emulate the source material in a manner the functions and feels similar. And D&D is one of this systems where this applies, because you can compare the gameplay to the in-universe fiction. Now, obviously there's going to be a range. Ed Greenwood's Forgotten Realms looks slightly different from R.A. Salvatore's, and you'd ideally like to build a game that could produce both outputs. However, 3.X D&D doesn't produce either of them. It doesn't produce anything even resembling the Forgotten Realms.

What the rules actually produce is Planescape. Planescape is great, but it is also crazy. Planescape offers no answers, no solutions, and no victories. It's just a metaphorical space to interrogate questions with a bunch of cool art attached. Now Planescape is great and in my personal opinion the best thing D&D has ever produced (and all the articles that consistently support Planescape: Torment as the best RPG ever made agree), but Planescape is absolutely not what D&D says on the cover.

If you go into D&D expecting to get traditional fantasy out of it, you're going to be upset. What you get instead is the Mazalan Book of the Fallen (which is explicitly built from the author's old D&D campaigns), which is over four million words of very intense grimdark madness with no answers to anything, no moral center, and no actual conclusion. If that's what you want - and a certain class of people seem to like Mazalan even though personally reading it was among the more infuriating experiences I've had in a long time - that's fine, but you need to be up front about it.

Crunch should be compatible with the advertised fluff. When it's not, you get problems. The endless debates about 'martials vs. casters' and other disparities are a result of people being sold a system that doesn't do what it claims to do. That includes verisimilitude. D&D has possessed, in every incarnation (even 4e) massive piles of world-building information that people pay good money for and expect to use. The game claims it will produce coherent fantasy worlds and it doesn't.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-29, 09:26 AM

@Mechalich--

I'm in a bit of a hurry right now, but in my experience mechanics are uniformly a detriment to verisimilitude.

Freeform is the most verisimilitudinous, because the fictional universe is all you have. It has other issues, but not verisimilitude.

Wargames, with all their multitudinous rules, are the least verisimilitudinous--things are done for game purposes with very little concern for making the fiction fit.

In large part, this is because you can't codify enough to actually simulate what you need to. Thus, adding more rules inevitably causes friction between the moving parts and new places for things to break. Adding rules does increase the ability to actually use it in a shared-mindscape game like a tabletop. But at a tradeoff.

The trick is balancing gaming utility vs the loss of verisimilitude from adding new mechanical rules.

ImNotTrevor

2018-03-29, 09:40 AM

Why you seem to value certain functions of rules so little.
I value THE function of rules. I can simulate seasons, crop growth, animal husbandry, disease progression/spread, and many other things better than virtually any TRPG can with a google search and a few notes, and then asking for specifics. The rules are usually going to be less good at simulating a process than a human being with familiarity with said process. (Who will in turn likely be less accurate than computer models for the high-end computational stuff.)

I want to be able to switch "what is the game about" dynamically during the game thus providing the players real freedom.
That condescension is back. "If your game can't do 9 different things, it's not REAL freedom."
My wheaties are smelling of urine again. Weird how yours aren't. I have no problem with valuing verisimilitude *despite* my jab about it earlier. (Which was more of a "see? Piss flavored wheaties aren't fun, huh?" Kind of deal.)

I prefer having many small and highly focused systems that do the thing we want to do really well rather than one goliath system that does many things kinda "eh."

Because there so way to arrive at such values.
Yes there is.

Name: Bob
HP: 2
AC: 8
BAB: 0
Skills:
Baking 20

There. It's made. Any unfilled information can be assumed to rank at 0 or simply not be a thing he has. Using the same method of enemy creation that the rulemakers used, (assign abilities and hitdice as they make sense) I've done a baker. Enjoy.

If i actually do play D&D 3.x, i use the rules and there will never be such a baker. If i use a version that allows such a baker by allowing arbitrary values for human NPCs, i'll have to ask myself why the PC baker that i could build works so different.
It works different because the system is not made for making players into bakers. We don't also wonder why tractor factories have trouble making planes, so I don't understand this complaint. The PC process makes people who do D&D stuff. Namely:
People who dive into holes, kill the critters they find there, and take its treasure to buy better killing impliments so they can go into deeper holes with meaner critters and....
D&D does a particular thing. It is good at that thing. If you don't like that thing, it is not the game for you. Many people DO like that thing. And so they play D&D. Heck, most of the people who I know who play D&D play it SPECIFICALLY because nonsensical outcomes can happen and they find those moments hilarious/wildly entertaining.

What makes main characters different from side characters?
We follow them through the story, not other characters. They are also the primary movers of events as we view them. (Inb4 "some books have reactive protagonists" yup. Those books are also boring and feel like you're following a side character around instead of the main character. Weird.)

Number of scenes they are in ?
This is a byproduct of being followed around.

Who gets to be a viewpoint character ?
The PCs.

That stuff the main character do gets more attention in discription ?
Another side-effect of being followed around. It doesn't make sense to talk about two hobbits going on an adventure for a paragraph and then spend the rest of the book on a guy farming yams in excruciating detail to whom nothing more exciting happens than a slight upturn in yam prices. People will wonder why they didn't get to go on Hobbit adventure instead of Yam Simulator 1062

That outside viewers deem it more important ?
They better, or you'll not sell more than 5 copies.

Main character are not different to side characters IN the fiction. They are only different on a meta-level.
Aragorn: not different from yam farmers.
Gandalf: not different from yam farmers. Just some dude with a stick and a hat. Operates by yam farmer rules. If a yam farmer fights a Balrog and wins he, too, will get a bleached robe and a sweet beard.
Ooooor that's nonsense.

Artificial is the link between player tools for influencing the setting on one hand and PC/NPC distinction on the other. Dozens of systems have tools for player empowerment. Dozens of systems have PC/NPC distinction. But in nearly none of them there is a link between those two.
Yes. PbtA systems are unique in that regard.
Popular/common =/= good.

Actually yes. I can't imagine an exception.

Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen. Only of his kind, primary character, simply doesn't function by the same rules as the others, also a well -written and fascinating character.
Aaaaand your absolute is demolished with one example. Don't do absolutes.

Yes. That would annoy me without end and probably push me out of the game.
Cool. That you dislike the system bothers me less than my liking the system apparently bothers you.

I'm glad you enjoy the systems you enjoy, and i hope they succeed at providing your kind of fun. Please show me the same respect. That's all I ask.

Maybe what i do is versimilitude warship. For me that one versimilitude is the most essential thing RPGs are about.
You like what you like. Nothing wrong with that.

Take that away and i can hardly recognize the result as part of the hobby at all. Sure, i cn and do accept that versimilitude is not top priority for everyone. But it should always be a priority. Second,third, fourth maybe. I have always seen the Forge games that tried to cut certain game motivations to the absolut minimum and maximize others as failures simply lacking essential parts.

Was it only Max complaining about PRESCRIBING what a TRPG must be or did you chime in on agreement?

Because this paragraph is deliciously ironic in that context.

Otherwise, it's prescriptivist nonsense and exactly the thing the Forge did: prescribing your preference as necessary and the true best way to make games.

Weeeeeeee!

ImNotTrevor

2018-03-29, 10:06 AM

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-29, 10:47 AM

isn't it a known mechanical engineering thing that more moving parts means more possible points of failure?

Yes.

And the number of points of failure goes up quadratically with the number of interacting rules.

A flat hierarchy (a general rule and a bunch of special cases that each only depend on the general rule and don't interact unless they say they do) is way more robust than a complex, nested, strongly-coupled inheritance graph. In part, this is because it's way easier to reason about the interactions when it's simple. The magnitude of follow-on effects when you make a change is drastically reduced.

This is why in computer science they've moved away from deep inheritance chains and do polymorphism by composition instead (the idea behind the maxim "favor composition over inheritance." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composition_over_inheritance)

3e D&D failed to model a coherent world in part because it tried to give rules for everything and stuff everybody into the same system of character building with rigid, strongly-related mechanics. What works for PCs (designed to be played repeatedly over a long period of time and designed to grow in power gradually as they face challenges) fails miserably when trying to figure out the people for whom that doesn't hold. Falsifying the basic axioms of a system means you can no longer reasonably use that system. It might work, it might produce nasal demons. You're in UB territory there.

------------------

Mechanics should only get involved when two things are true:
a) there's doubt as to the outcome of an attempted action
b) failure and success have different, interesting consequences.

Baking has neither, really. So why have mechanics for it? Those will either be a waste of build resources (if baking never comes up), or a tax (if baking is essential), and reduce player freedom. Because now if they didn't put points into Baking, they can't bake successfully. Whereas before they could, the success was just dependent on some other criteria (DM whim, a random roll, the demands of the fiction, etc). And that (not being able to bake at all) breaks verisimilitude way worse than having variability. At least for me.

Koo Rehtorb

2018-03-29, 10:55 AM

Baking has neither, really. So why have mechanics for it? Those will either be a waste of build resources (if baking never comes up), or a tax (if baking is essential), and reduce player freedom. Because now if they didn't put points into Baking, they can't bake successfully. Whereas before they could, the success was just dependent on some other criteria (DM whim, a random roll, the demands of the fiction, etc). And that (not being able to bake at all) breaks verisimilitude way worse than having variability. At least for me.

Alternatively, don't necessarily say that failing a roll means failing what you were trying to do. If you don't have baking but make an important baking roll for some reason (captured by an ogre and forced to cook his bread) and fail it, then just say you succeed at baking but the ogre doesn't like it, or any other million complications.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-29, 11:43 AM

Alternatively, don't necessarily say that failing a roll means failing what you were trying to do. If you don't have baking but make an important baking roll for some reason (captured by an ogre and forced to cook his bread) and fail it, then just say you succeed at baking but the ogre doesn't like it, or any other million complications.

But that's not related to the baking part. That could be resolved in any number of ways (including a luck roll or a social check) that don't need a specific "baking" mechanic. Same with all the other complications.

That's fine if you're doing an abstracted system anyway--there the success or failure of a check doesn't mean the success or failure of the action. For a simulation-based system, that's exactly what a success or failure on a specific task means (by definition).

Psyren

2018-03-29, 11:45 AM

I haven't read the entirety of the debate but I think I align most closely with Satinavian. I would much rather have a flawed rule covering a scenario that I can use as a starting point, than no rule at all, especially if said rule (a) comes from a designer or team I largely agree with philosophically, and (b) that the system as a whole has an easy pipeline for the designers to issue clarifications, FAQs, and errata when needed.

I'm not versed with enough systems to truly quantify the degree of "rules-heaviness" I enjoy to a minute level. I know that 5e is about as "light" as I'm likely to go, and definitely consider something full of tables to roll on like Rolemaster or... GURPS I guess?... to be too high. For me, most d20 OGL systems hit that sweet spot, including 3.5, Pathfinder, and Starfinder.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-29, 11:49 AM

I haven't read the entirety of the debate but I think I align most closely with Satinavian. I would much rather have a flawed rule covering a scenario that I can use as a starting point, than no rule at all, especially if said rule (a) comes from a designer or team I largely agree with philosophically, and (b) that the system as a whole has an easy pipeline for the designers to issue clarifications, FAQs, and errata when needed.

I guess part of my problem is that I'm a strong rule follower. If there's a rule, it takes a large effort to change that and makes me uncomfortable. And if DMs "break the rules" (in a game that expects the rules to be followed), it makes me strongly uncomfortable and breaks my fun into pieces. If the rules are optional, it's easier. And if there's no rule, just a framework of design principles and suggestions, that's easiest of all.

With the d20 games I'm always worried that tweaking anything will cause a cascade of changes (or shatter things tremendously). 5e's much more resilient as long as the basic philosophy stays the same, in my experience.

Florian

2018-03-29, 11:56 AM

I haven't read the entirety of the debate but I think I align most closely with Satinavian. I would much rather have a flawed rule

My feeling is that this is more about the difference between "associated" and "disassociated" rules instead of "flawed", i.e. general resolution mechanics vs. (task/object) tailored resolution mechanics.

Psyren

2018-03-29, 02:27 PM

I guess part of my problem is that I'm a strong rule follower. If there's a rule, it takes a large effort to change that and makes me uncomfortable. And if DMs "break the rules" (in a game that expects the rules to be followed), it makes me strongly uncomfortable and breaks my fun into pieces. If the rules are optional, it's easier. And if there's no rule, just a framework of design principles and suggestions, that's easiest of all.

I think there's a difference between "expecting the rules to be followed" and "expecting the rules to be perfect." I think knowing that the latter is impossible makes it much easier to find leeway in the former, and I have no qualms about doing so.

With the d20 games I'm always worried that tweaking anything will cause a cascade of changes (or shatter things tremendously). 5e's much more resilient as long as the basic philosophy stays the same, in my experience.

It generally doesn't. The confidence to tweak things so they work better will come with knowing the rules inside out though. One great way to do that for 3.5/PF is to participate in their "Simple RAW" threads, either asking or answering questions - you'll learn the nuances (and dysfunctions) pretty quickly.

My feeling is that this is more about the difference between "associated" and "disassociated" rules instead of "flawed", i.e. general resolution mechanics vs. (task/object) tailored resolution mechanics.

Yeah and I utterly loathe disassociated mechanics. (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17231/roleplaying-games/dissociated-mechanics-a-brief-primer) When people say 3.5 and PF are simulationist, I suspect what they actually mean is that those systems rely on associated mechanics, which I vastly prefer. And while I can't speak for the gaming base at large, I can see a conscious decision in 5e to move back towards association from what 4e tried to do.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-29, 05:33 PM

I think there's a difference between "expecting the rules to be followed" and "expecting the rules to be perfect." I think knowing that the latter is impossible makes it much easier to find leeway in the former, and I have no qualms about doing so.

It generally doesn't. The confidence to tweak things so they work better will come with knowing the rules inside out though. One great way to do that for 3.5/PF is to participate in their "Simple RAW" threads, either asking or answering questions - you'll learn the nuances (and dysfunctions) pretty quickly.

I'd much rather have a note: "The DM will decide on this" than a bad rule. Because bad rules set precedent, cause friction between players, encourage loophole-hunting, and most critically reduce the range of possible situations (because things get coerced to fit the rules that exist). And none of those are fun for me. DMs are better (in my experience) about making specific, limited-scope rulings that preserve verisimilitude (and keep the game moving, which to me is just as important) than game designers trying to divine a rule that covers all the variations.

For me the show-stopper with playing 3.5/PF is not the subsystems or the broken-ness. It's really the presence of lots and lots of stacking, situational modifiers. I don't have the mind-space left to deal with that and find it fun. If a computer's tracking all that for me, that's one thing.

I was reading the Savage Worlds rules recently. I found them interesting, with lots of good ideas. But the thing that turned me off was that there was a situational modifier for everything. It means that in order to resolve even simple actions I have to run through a flow-chart of ifs, thens, unlesses, and other conditionals in my head. And have all the numbers memorized or spend forever looking up charts. And that seems like a nightmare. I like systems that know when to just get out of the way and let me play the game. From my initial reads, SW doesn't do that until you're an expert. And 3.5/PF does it never.

A second issue is the presence of trap options. I despise trap options. Even if there are more viable options once you remove the trap options, I'd still prefer a more restricted system where everything works within a reasonable margin. I should be able to take what looks good for a character concept and come out somewhere within a playable range of other characters built more carefully. 5e does that very well--except for a couple too-powerful options (if you super specialize), taking any character and putting the highest score into the main attack stat produces a playable character. You have to work to intentionally anti-optimize a character into unplayability in 5e. 3.5/PF can have that happen even if you're trying to avoid it.

Max_Killjoy

2018-03-29, 06:22 PM

Yeah and I utterly loathe disassociated mechanics. (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17231/roleplaying-games/dissociated-mechanics-a-brief-primer)

I have to remind myself every time they come up that they're not objectively bad... I just utterly despise them and will likely never understand why anyone else doesn't.

When people say 3.5 and PF are simulationist, I suspect what they actually mean is that those systems rely on associated mechanics, which I vastly prefer. And while I can't speak for the gaming base at large, I can see a conscious decision in 5e to move back towards association from what 4e tried to do.

Depends on what part of 3.5/PF -- levels are about as disassociated as it gets.

Psyren

2018-03-29, 06:27 PM

I'd much rather have a note: "The DM will decide on this" than a bad rule.

I don't like "bad rules" either. But a bad rule and a flawed rule are not the same thing in my eyes.

Maybe if you gave an example of what you consider to be a "bad rule?" We might even agree depending on what you pick.

For me the show-stopper with playing 3.5/PF is not the subsystems or the broken-ness. It's really the presence of lots and lots of stacking, situational modifiers. I don't have the mind-space left to deal with that and find it fun. If a computer's tracking all that for me, that's one thing.

Whereas I find having encyclopedic knowledge of that stuff to be very fun and immersive. I agree though, I want more computerized management of such things to become commonplace.

A second issue is the presence of trap options. I despise trap options. Even if there are more viable options once you remove the trap options, I'd still prefer a more restricted system where everything works within a reasonable margin. I should be able to take what looks good for a character concept and come out somewhere within a playable range of other characters built more carefully. 5e does that very well--except for a couple too-powerful options (if you super specialize), taking any character and putting the highest score into the main attack stat produces a playable character. You have to work to intentionally anti-optimize a character into unplayability in 5e. 3.5/PF can have that happen even if you're trying to avoid it.

I like traps because it gives me something to tinker with - either to make it good within the confines of the system, or ways to think about making it better. For example, Vital Strike is mostly a trap, but a simple tweak (merging it with the rest of its chain and having it auto-scale) makes it a decent alternative to full-attacking. Would I have preferred the designers just did that in the first place, absolutely, but it didn't take a lot of energy for me to come up with that better version either. And often the alternative to traps is no content at all - Sturgeon's Law and all that.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-29, 07:00 PM

I don't like "bad rules" either. But a bad rule and a flawed rule are not the same thing in my eyes.

Maybe if you gave an example of what you consider to be a "bad rule?" We might even agree depending on what you pick.

A bad rule is one that does any of the following:
* Fails to allow for natural variance--are all wooden doors the same difficulty to break? That's a bad rule that either requires breaking the rule (deviating from the fixed DC) or hammering the universe into a bed of Procrustes.
* Has no clear readings at all nonsense--see most of the dysfunctions thread contents.
* Has a clear reading, but that reading is WTF (drown healing).
* Is actively user-hostile as per Grod's Law--balancing power with annoyance (Truenamers :smallsmile:)
* Pretends to be "realistic" but actually is worse than the default (5e's variant encumbrance, because the weights of things are just totally screwy).
* Requires a spreadsheet to even begin to make sense (3.5e's crafting)
* Encourages people to take strongly off-concept options to make a simple concept usable (3.5e's multiclassing)

Whereas I find having encyclopedic knowledge of that stuff to be very fun and immersive. I agree though, I want more computerized management of such things to become commonplace.

I prioritize game flow over almost everything else. I had a 1 hr game with a couple newbies the other day. We got through 3 separate combats and some exploration, despite each combat having between 8 and 12 participants (5 PCs/allies, 5-7 enemies). And that's without AoE attacks--they were a fighter and a rogue, with a NPC cleric and NPC support caster (who only cast cantrips). Doing that in 3.5/PF would be unreal.

The fewer mechanical bits (down to a squishy threshold) I have to remember to juggle during play, the better I can make my roleplay (in the "making decisions for the character" sense) as I have much lower overhead. I can portray NPCs better, I can make witty quips, I can describe the environment, I can respond to questions, etc. If I'm trying to juggle durations for several spells, situational bonuses, etc, something's going to fall to the floor. I found that out when I played 4e.

Is that +1? Is it +1 only if the moon is full? Against half-lycanthrope incorporeals? No, because the character is facing SSW during a month that starts with "Q", it's actually a -4 (but only on this one particular check). I exaggerate, but not by much. Especially when you have buffs that stack and have varying durations.

I strongly prefer to have all numerical modifiers written down and only changed rarely (and only out of combat). For anything in combat, the advantage/disadvantage system (especially them not stacking) is beautiful.

I like traps because it gives me something to tinker with - either to make it good within the confines of the system, or ways to think about making it better. For example, Vital Strike is mostly a trap, but a simple tweak (merging it with the rest of its chain and having it auto-scale) makes it a decent alternative to full-attacking. Would I have preferred the designers just did that in the first place, absolutely, but it didn't take a lot of energy for me to come up with that better version either. And often the alternative to traps is no content at all - Sturgeon's Law and all that.

Traps are awful. I play mostly with newer players, and letting them just pick what looks good is a huge advantage. And it means I don't have to plan my build out too far in advance, letting things change as the campaign progresses. It feels much less like playing a build and more like playing a character. When I play CRPGs (especially D&D-based ones), I spend way too much time trying to optimize my build and not enough time actually enjoying the story, which is what I care about. But that perfectionist streak tells me that it actually matters in those settings. In 5e, the optimization floor is so much higher that it doesn't bug me to be "sub-optimal", because regularly sub-optimal is still pretty darn good.

I don't really care about having lots of content. I make 99% of my non-class content myself, because that's what I love. More garbage classes is just more noise to sift through and more books to buy. And more things to break.

Psyren

2018-03-29, 10:25 PM

A bad rule is one that does any of the following:
* Fails to allow for natural variance--are all wooden doors the same difficulty to break? That's a bad rule that either requires breaking the rule (deviating from the fixed DC) or hammering the universe into a bed of Procrustes.
* Has no clear readings at all nonsense--see most of the dysfunctions thread contents.
* Has a clear reading, but that reading is WTF (drown healing).
* Is actively user-hostile as per Grod's Law--balancing power with annoyance (Truenamers :smallsmile:)
* Pretends to be "realistic" but actually is worse than the default (5e's variant encumbrance, because the weights of things are just totally screwy).
* Requires a spreadsheet to even begin to make sense (3.5e's crafting)
* Encourages people to take strongly off-concept options to make a simple concept usable (3.5e's multiclassing)

I agree with you on a few of these but I think you've missed the mark on the rest.
Yes, Grod's Law is a good standard to avoid breaking (though the degree to which that happens is vastly overstated - we've got what, Truenamer, Kineticist, Sacred Geometry?) And yes, I find 3.5 multiclassing (or rather, the need for it) pretty inelegant. But for the rest:

1) Just because they give you the DC for breaking a typical door doesn't mean that all doors in the universe have to be exactly the same. It just gives you something to work with/start from. When you know typical wooden doors are DC X and typical steel doors are DC Y, you have a baseline to then say "the king's vault door is three times as hard as that" or "the abandoned

2) The vast majority of the dysfunctional rules (including drown healing) are pretty clear what was intended, or at the very least what a common sense reading would result in. In drown healing's case, it's obvious that if you're already dying, drowning you won't improve your situation unless you're a Scrag or something similar. People point out the wonky wording for fun, not as ammunition to throw in their GM's face and insist they be allowed to drown heal their dying teammates - and if by some stroke of bad luck you end up with a player that insists on this outside of a silly campaign, just treat them like the troll they clearly are.

3) Crafting is far from rocket science. Half market price, 1 day/1000gp, have the prereqs. That's it. Do you honestly need a spreadsheet for that?

4) Can't speak to 5e encumbrance as I neither know nor care about how it works.

I prioritize game flow over almost everything else. I had a 1 hr game with a couple newbies the other day. We got through 3 separate combats and some exploration, despite each combat having between 8 and 12 participants (5 PCs/allies, 5-7 enemies). And that's without AoE attacks--they were a fighter and a rogue, with a NPC cleric and NPC support caster (who only cast cantrips). Doing that in 3.5/PF would be unreal.

The fewer mechanical bits (down to a squishy threshold) I have to remember to juggle during play, the better I can make my roleplay (in the "making decisions for the character" sense) as I have much lower overhead. I can portray NPCs better, I can make witty quips, I can describe the environment, I can respond to questions, etc. If I'm trying to juggle durations for several spells, situational bonuses, etc, something's going to fall to the floor. I found that out when I played 4e.

Is that +1? Is it +1 only if the moon is full? Against half-lycanthrope incorporeals? No, because the character is facing SSW during a month that starts with "Q", it's actually a -4 (but only on this one particular check). I exaggerate, but not by much. Especially when you have buffs that stack and have varying durations.

I strongly prefer to have all numerical modifiers written down and only changed rarely (and only out of combat). For anything in combat, the advantage/disadvantage system (especially them not stacking) is beautiful.

And I'm happy for you, truly! 5e is clearly satisfying a significant market need. Just please understand that there are folks who like rules-heavy games too, and modifier stacking enables a level of verisimilitude well beyond what advantage/disadvantage are capable of.

Traps are awful. I play mostly with newer players, and letting them just pick what looks good is a huge advantage.

All games with enough depth end up with trap options. Even vaunted 5e - I can open up any two class handbooks and find red/orange ratings throughout. Hell, handbooks exist in the first place because some options are better than others. This is not an indictment - it just proves that flaws are inevitable in human works, save the ones too simplistic to have peaks or valleys at all.

I don't really care about having lots of content. I make 99% of my non-class content myself, because that's what I love.

And that's fine, more power to you. But I definitely don't think you're the kind of person designers have in mind when making books and modules. I don't mean that disparagingly either - a GM with your creative spark would be a treasure for any group. For the rest of us though, we don't have the time to weave entire tapestries out of whole cloth, and only have time for a bit of darning.

ImNotTrevor

2018-03-29, 10:59 PM

And I'm happy for you, truly! 5e is clearly satisfying a significant market need. Just please understand that there are folks who like rules-heavy games too, and modifier stacking enables a level of verisimilitude well beyond what advantage/disadvantage are capable of.

If a stack of +1's and +2's happen to be the thing that makes you feel verisimilitudinous.

For me, juggling that BS is firmly Gamestuff and has jack-all to do with a convincing, realistic portrayal of a competent dungeoneering adventurer. It's a bunch of math I have to do between descriptions that jarringly pulls me out of the fiction of the game world and into the system's clunkering clockwork mechanics.

So no, I'm not allowing the broadbrush claim that many Bonuses are more verisimilitudinous than just one. Verisimilitude is a portrayal of a fictional thing such that. that the thing COULD BE REAL, or in other words behaves as expected.

Bonuses don't universally enhance that, nor do they unlock otherwise unreachable summits of verisimilitude. Come on, man. I appreciate the attempts at not pissing in wheaties, but the backhanded condescension and elitism is still visible, and it kinda entirely undermines the "you do you" part.

Psyren

2018-03-29, 11:27 PM

If a stack of +1's and +2's happen to be the thing that makes you feel verisimilitudinous.

Of course it does. Far moreso than 1 source of Advantage cancelling out 15 sources of Disadvantage ever would, anyway. Call that elitism if you want, it won't change my view.

Max_Killjoy

2018-03-30, 06:46 AM

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-30, 06:55 AM

Two things I'm seeing here.

First, it seems that there's a disregard for moderation or "centrism". Heavily paraphrasing, "If some stacking bonuses are good, then more is always better!" "If too many stacking bonuses is bad, then the solution is to have none!"

It's not stacking bonuses per se. It's small, stacking, situational modifiers. And yes, I'd say having small, stacking, situational modifiers at all is a bad thing (for me). I'm not claiming its objectively bad design, I'm claiming that I don't like them and that having them makes me not want to use that system. There's a significant difference.

Second, letting the perfect be the enemy of the good seems to be a common gamer foible -- or at least, using even the most most edge-case imperfections of an approach they don't like as an argument for dismissing that approach entirely. Again, heavily paraphrasing, and pulling in from other discussions, "A perfect simulationist ruleset is impossible, therefore any simulationism is impossible, don't bother with it at all." "Rules sometimes cause disconnects with the fiction, so we should have as few rules as possible."

Rules don't sometimes cause disconnects--they always cause disconnects. This is true even in reality--the "laws" of physics have serious WTF cases where reality says "screw your so-called laws, I'm going that way" (the laws are imperfect and incomplete). Stranger crap happens in reality than we would ever allow in a game.

So the trick is to balance the disconnects that they cause with the benefits they provide--regularity, reduction of table-conflict, ease of play, etc. Rules at all are a purely game thing. They are not, never have been, and never will be the physics (metonymy warning) of the fiction. The novels (even if set in the same universe) don't play by the game rules. Because those game rules are designed for one purpose, and one purpose only. To make a good game.

So yes, the goal is to have as few rules as will serve the purposes of the game. Rules for the sake of rules is a waste of time and adds nothing but noise to the system.

This (rather famous) quote sums up my feelings here--

Il semble que la perfection soit atteinte non quand il n'y a plus rien à ajouter, mais quand il n'y a plus rien à retrancher.

It seems that perfection is attained not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to remove.

Max_Killjoy

2018-03-30, 06:57 AM

All games with enough depth end up with trap options. Even vaunted 5e - I can open up any two class handbooks and find red/orange ratings throughout. Hell, handbooks exist in the first place because some options are better than others. This is not an indictment - it just proves that flaws are inevitable in human works, save the ones too simplistic to have peaks or valleys at all.

That may be too broad a definition of "trap option". A trap option isn't just "not as good as the others", it seems good but is by the nature of the system unrecoverable unless the GM (or system) allows for rebuilds at later points. By strict rules (IIRC), once you take a Feat in later D&Ds, you're stuck with it.

(Again IIRC) there's a Feat that increases Hit Points, which seems great at low level because characters have relatively few HP compared to what the Feat grants, but becomes a wasted Feat at higher levels because it represents a tiny fraction of the total HP typically have at those levels.

The very nature of D&D's progression system also increases the danger of setbacks and sunk costs.

(I don't know what the red/orange ratings are, in most RPG books that sounds like it would be "before you allow this, note that it may disrupt the game", not "this is a lesser option that looks great now".)

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-30, 07:03 AM

Satinavian

2018-03-30, 07:07 AM

I prefer having many small and highly focused systems that do the thing we want to do really well rather than one goliath system that does many things kinda "eh." I get that. I don't have any problem with that. I just don't share this taste.

People who dive into holes, kill the critters they find there, and take its treasure to buy better killing impliments so they can go into deeper holes with meaner critters and....
D&D does a particular thing. It is good at that thing. If you don't like that thing, it is not the game for you. Many people DO like that thing. I have many players seen trying to make other characters. I have many DMs seen using D&D for other stuff.

Sure, verteran players tend to know what the system can do and use the right tool for the right stuff but even of those many see all the things D&D can't do more as a drawback and simply don't use it as general fantasy system. They use it only if they want to have the particular D&D experience.

Aragorn: not different from yam farmers.
Gandalf: not different from yam farmers. Just some dude with a stick and a hat. Operates by yam farmer rules.
Aragorn : Not different from Arathorn (or Isildur)
Gandalf : Not different from Radagast

Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen. Only of his kind, primary character, simply doesn't function by the same rules as the others, also a well -written and fascinating character.
Aaaaand your absolute is demolished with one example. Don't do absolutes. I don't follw comics and don't know him. How is he different from all the other supers and how is this dependent on his protagonist status ?

If i made him in some super hero RPG system, would he really need different rules from everyone else because he is so special?

Was it only Max complaining about PRESCRIBING what a TRPG must be or did you chime in on agreement?

Because this paragraph is deliciously ironic in that context.

Otherwise, it's prescriptivist nonsense and exactly the thing the Forge did: prescribing your preference as necessary and the true best way to make games.

Weeeeeeee!
DESCENT is not an RPG.
DESCENT shares many elements with RPG. It is also a really fun game and playing it a worthwile hobby. It is also one of the closest things board games ever achieved in being RPGs, but it is still solidly in the board game area.

Mechwarrior is an RPG. Nearly all important conflicts however are played out via wargame rules using Battletech or Battlespace. Some people would say it is just wargame scenarios linked by some RPG style campaign, but it is still nearly always classified as RPG.

If i classify something as borderline not an RPG i don't mean it is bad or worthless. The borders to many hobbies (board games, war games, Larp, Impro-theater, freeform storytelling, writing...) are quite permeable and since RPGs exist hybrids were made, usually by people enjoying both hobbies.

Max_Killjoy

2018-03-30, 07:19 AM

It's not stacking bonuses per se. It's small, stacking, situational modifiers. And yes, I'd say having small, stacking, situational modifiers at all is a bad thing (for me). I'm not claiming its objectively bad design, I'm claiming that I don't like them and that having them makes me not want to use that system. There's a significant difference.

I'm just using that as one example, and I didn't put your name on it because it wasn't specifically what you'd said.

However, I think there's a real difference between having a handful of stacking situational modifiers that occasionally interact... or having a host of them that take up a large amount of headspace.

Rules don't sometimes cause disconnects--they always cause disconnects. This is true even in reality--the "laws" of physics have serious WTF cases where reality says "screw your so-called laws, I'm going that way" (the laws are imperfect and incomplete).

Are you saying that all rules CAN cause disconnects, or that all rules ALWAYS cause disconnects?

Are you saying that sometimes the rules of physics hit edge cases or strange circumstances, or that I can't predict where a thrown ball will land with any degree of "rightness" because the rules of physics never actually work?

Stranger crap happens in reality than we would ever allow in a game.

This really doesn't matter to me in fiction, or in RPG design. I far too often have seen a fictional or RPG character presented as able to do something because some guy one time a century ago did it. My rules don't need to allow for someone to fall 20000 feet out of an airplane with no parachute and walk away from the impact unscathed because of some freak set of circumstances because a player can prove it happened this one time.

The rules don't need to do a perfect job of covering every possible situation, they just need to do a good job of covering most situations, and form a framework that allows the GM to neutrally cover the others.

So the trick is to balance the disconnects that they cause with the benefits they provide--regularity, reduction of table-conflict, ease of play, etc. Rules at all are a purely game thing. They are not, never have been, and never will be the physics (metonymy warning) of the fiction. The novels (even if set in the same universe) don't play by the game rules. Because those game rules are designed for one purpose, and one purpose only. To make a good game.

So yes, the goal is to have as few rules as will serve the purposes of the game. Rules for the sake of rules is a waste of time and adds nothing but noise to the system.

Whereas I'm less concerned with the number of rules and more concerned with whether the rules do what I want them to. But at least on my part is there never a call for rules for the sake of rules.

If the novels don't play by the game rules, then either the rules are wrong, the author didn't study the rules before writing the book (depending on which came first), or the book doesn't take place in the same setting as the game, it just looks similar on the surface.

If a system has levels, then it's telling me that people gain ability in these sudden and severe chunks, and that some of the ability gained can be unrelated to what they've been up to lately.

Mechalich

2018-03-30, 07:30 AM

With regard to stacking bonuses, if you are trying to model a scenario - like tactical scale combat - then you want to do so with the incorporation of as many possible variables as you can.

Now there are two central limits here: First, at some point incorporation of too many variables just breaks the math of your system - D&D is fairly robust to this but dice pool systems and other resolution mechanics can simply fail to produce functional results when you engage in too much meddling. Second, incorporating too many variables can become cumbersome and impede gameplay flow. That's much more qualitative and is going to vary from table to table and depends not only on the system itself but things like the system mastery of the players and GM style.

Rules at all are a purely game thing. They are not, never have been, and never will be the physics (metonymy warning) of the fiction. The novels (even if set in the same universe) don't play by the game rules. Because those game rules are designed for one purpose, and one purpose only. To make a good game.

If the game is designed to emulate an existing fictional property and the game rules are incapable of producing gameplay that reasonably emulates said fiction then the game is bad at what it is supposed to do. It has failed to meet the most fundamental design goal. If you make a game called Checkers 2000 and turns out to play chess instead of checkers that fact that chess happens to be a superior game to checkers in almost every way does not mean that you haven't failed massively to do what you set out to do. Similarly, if you make a Star Wars game and it is incapable of producing a reasonable facsimile of the events of ANH through gameplay then you messed up big somewhere (and there are Star Wars RPG versions that have this problem).

The fact that using most editions of D&D won't produce the Dragonlance Chronicles (far and away the most iconic piece of D&D fiction) without ignoring most of the rules in the box is a problem. It's also a problem that a game titled Vampire: the Masquerade has rules that make it impossible to preserve the Masquerade in the setting because most vampires have no mechanical means of feeding on people without them being aware of it or leaving a massive trail of bodies. That's a case where the game mechanics invalidate the game fluff, meaning that every single person who has ever played a campaign of VtM has chosen to ignore one or the other.

I don't follw comics and don't know him. How is he different from all the other supers and how is this dependent on his protagonist status ?

If i made him in some super hero RPG system, would he really need different rules from everyone else because he is so special?

Dr. Manhattan is, to a first approximation, an omnipotent being (rather like a Q from Star Trek). Using him in an RPG as a PC is therefore wholly and completely impossible and would destroy the game entirely. So yeah, you'd need different rules, since allowing his existence as something other than a storytelling device used by the GM means turning a player into Troll-GM for the purpose of the game. Using him as an example is a complete non sequitur.

In actual RPG play, an all powerful being is not a character, they are a storytelling device or a setting element. They may have a personality and take actions like a character, but they interact with the game purely by fiat. The most well known D&D example is the Lady of Pain. She has special rules, because she is a setting element needed to allow Sigil to exist. That's why she explicitly does not have stats.

If a system has levels, then it's telling me that people gain ability in these sudden and severe chunks, and that some of the ability gained can be unrelated to what they've been up to lately.

Not necessarily. Levels can be handled in a bunch of ways. For instance, depending on the granularity of the level ladder, the chunks need not be severe. Disgaea has 9999 levels, and most of the time gaining a single level is extremely marginal. They don't have to be severe either, they might require training. The old Might & Magic games required characters to go and spend time working with a trainer to make use of levels they had gained before acquiring any mechanical benefit. They also don't have to allow unrelated ability gain. Level benefits can be hard-coded and might be dependent on a specific thing, for instance in the Persona franchise your party members have hard-coded ability gains because leveling means increasing mastery of their persona and it advances in a specific way that can't be changed. D&D simply happens to have an especially ridiculous leveling system when it comes to verisimilitude, mostly because the majority of tables hate things like training times and gameplay experience restricted choices (even though many books say things like the GM shouldn't allow characters to take PrCs they haven't reasonably roleplayed entering and other stuff).

D&D-style leveling is a very clear example of where the desire for convenience has won the battle with the desire for verisimilitude, and immersion too for that matter.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-30, 07:36 AM

I'm just using that as one example, and I didn't put your name on it because it wasn't specifically what you'd said.

1) However, I think there's a real difference between having a handful of stacking situational modifiers that occasionally interact... or having a host of them that take up a large amount of headspace.

Are you saying that all rules CAN cause disconnects, or that all rules ALWAYS cause disconnects?

2) Are you saying that sometimes the rules of physics hit edge cases or strange circumstances, or that I can't predict where a thrown ball will land with any degree of "rightness" because the rules of physics never actually work?

3) This really doesn't matter to me in fiction, or in RPG design. I far too often have seen a fictional or RPG character presented as able to do something because some guy one time a century ago did it. My rules don't need to allow for someone to fall 20000 feet out of an airplane with no parachute and walk away from the impact unscathed because of some freak set of circumstances because a player can prove it happened this one time.

The rules don't need to do a perfect job of covering every possible situation, they just need to do a good job of covering most situations, and form a framework that allows the GM to neutrally cover the others.

4) Whereas I'm less concerned with the number of rules and more concerned with whether the rules do what I want them to. But at least on my part is there never a call for rules for the sake of rules.

5) If the novels don't play by the game rules, then either the rules are wrong, the author didn't study the rules before writing the book (depending on which came first), or the book doesn't take place in the same setting as the game, it just looks similar on the surface.

If a system has levels, then it's telling me that people gain ability in these sudden and severe chunks, and that some of the ability gained can be unrelated to what they've been up to lately.

1) In my experience, systems that go for stacking situational modifiers tend to go whole hog into them. Those that avoid them avoid them almost entirely.

2) The path of a thrown ball is predictable...with limited accuracy. Strongly limited. Hence the common physics joke about spherical cows in a vacuum. And that's the problem. If you invest too much confidence in the rules, you will always find discrepancies. If you accept that the rules are an interface layer to make [a game/building things] possible, then you don't get discrepancies. Rules are a proxy, and frequently a bad one.

3) I'd much rather that a rule system gives me enough to cover the primary point of the system and give guidelines for the rest. Having a general resolution mechanic and leaving things up to the DM/table's discretion works really well for me. Trying to cover even a reasonable sample of common tasks in any detail creates way too many friction points.

4) I was responding to the previous thread, which to me strongly felt as "there should be a specific rule/mechanic for everything" (as opposed to a general resolution mechanic that covers lots of things).

5) Here we'll have to agree to disagree. Novels play by very different rules than games, by the nature of their purpose (which is passive entertainment). Novels get closer to the setting fiction (because they don't have to worry about playability) than does the game, and so it's the game that's doing things "wrong" and deviating from the fiction. Things like classes and levels don't exist in-universe. They're purely a game abstraction--going the other way breaks everything horribly. Whether they're an acceptable abstraction or not depends on the details and the people.

Mechalich

2018-03-30, 08:11 AM

5) Here we'll have to agree to disagree. Novels play by very different rules than games, by the nature of their purpose (which is passive entertainment). Novels get closer to the setting fiction (because they don't have to worry about playability) than does the game, and so it's the game that's doing things "wrong" and deviating from the fiction. Things like classes and levels don't exist in-universe. They're purely a game abstraction--going the other way breaks everything horribly. Whether they're an acceptable abstraction or not depends on the details and the people.

Levels are by no means completely a game abstraction. Hierarchical tiered ranking of capability are absolutely a thing you can reference in setting, just as they exist in real life. Almost every even marginally competitive field has a least an informal system of ranking that groups people into tiers, and pretty much everyone able to post on this board has spent a good chunk of their life being sorted through just such a system: the educational system which sorts people into tiered grades (it even manages to have almost twenty of them from Kindergarten through PhD). In the case of groups like professional Go players those ranks are even numbered.

In 1e D&D every level for each class had a title attached, representing what people with that combination were called in-universe. Plenty of other games have characters in the fiction able to refer to characters by in-universe titles that match to mechanically meaningful distinctions. In MtA, for example, calling someone a 'Master' means they have at least 5 dots in one sphere and characters do this in the fiction all the time.

Classes can exist in-universe too (and class-like groups like VtMs clans mean more in-universe than they do mechanically). A wizard represents a person who is able to cast arcane spells in a specific way, which is different from a sorcerer. A paladin is a holy warrior who adheres to a special code. A druid is part of an order with a specific belief system. Certain D&D classes like fighter and rogue are overly broad and not very useful as descriptors, but many of the more specialized classes like spellthief absolutely have in-universe meaning (which is a problem with D&D design in not deploying classes in a consistent fashion it should be one or the other).

Max_Killjoy

2018-03-30, 08:28 AM

And yet in real life, people in the same grade, or with the same job title, can have radically different capabilities.

There's nothing more than superficial resemblance.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-30, 10:29 AM

And yet in real life, people in the same grade, or with the same job title, can have radically different capabilities.

There's nothing more than superficial resemblance.

I agree. Levels/classes (the RPG mechanic) provide a game function of discretizing the power-gain process and reducing the complexity of the choice tree while (hopefully) allowing designers to balance different characters. They're absolutely not actual things in-universe (at least of any coherent universe). Attempts to reify them, to make them an actual in-universe thing, quickly violate the basic assumptions of the universe. This reification is why the game rules of 3.5 (or 2e, or ...) often fail to produce the fiction--you're looking at it through a bad filter.

The long-running settings with published fiction (ie Forgotten Realms, pretty much exclusively) are the mess that they are because they've transitioned between systems with very different basic assumptions. That means that there are a lot of different parts that don't quite fit. Last time they tried to do a cleanup was the Spellplague...and we all saw how well that went.

FR (in particular) doesn't make much sense as a de novo setting. That's true. But that's a problem with FR, not with the game system or the fiction more generally. My home setting tries to take the rules of 5e seriously. Not perfectly, and I've added homebrew, but it hangs together pretty well and still provides a pretty "normal" fantasy environment. In fact, each new fact makes the rest more harmonious.

That doesn't mean that they're not useful abstractions (for some purposes).

There is value (in my opinion) in having "chunkier" progression curves--it allows individual abilities to be more potent, allows familiarization time with current abilities, and can (if implemented correctly) can provide needed stability (across game sessions) while still allowing rapid growth (in elapsed in-universe time).

There's value in providing support for archetypes with abilities that work well together--providing a baseline of mechanical competence reduces the chance of making a character that is horribly broken. There's value in narrowing the range of archetypes that the system claims to support--it enhances verisimilitude and helps the system do fewer things better (rather than more things poorly). There's value in reducing option overload.

There's value in providing rough balance between player characters. It's easier as a DM to engage everybody if they're roughly playing the same game. It's easier as a player to stay engaged if you have a relevant (if not perfect) role in every situation that arises.

Not all implementations succeed at all of this, however. But that's on the implementation, not the concept. Not all implementations of point-buy systems work there. And the type of game (speaking of fundamental principles) that works well with a point-buy may not work well with a class/level system. And vice versa. That doesn't make one good and one bad. Just different.

One particular failure of a class/level system is in not embracing its nature. 3.5e sometimes seems (to me) like it's a class/level system with a point-buy system clumsily stapled on top (or the reverse)--skill points, feats, spells/maneuvers/powers--these have many of the hallmarks of a point-buy system. They're discrete items, you get to choose X of them per "power up event" (spending XP/leveling up), and they often are enhancements (especially feats) on previous abilities. Putting so much into this secondary advancement system means that the classes (especially the full casters and the poor fighters) are often threadbare shells with little identity. The ones that aren't (ie monk) pale in comparison because they lack the advantages of one system but have all the downsides of the other. The interplay between the two parts produces breakage and dysfunction, because they're just too different and incompatible as implemented.

Choose one or the other and embrace it. The other can serve as spice, but if they're not blended well...bad things happen.

Quertus

2018-03-30, 12:53 PM

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-30, 01:03 PM

Re: situational modifiers and verisimilitude:

I love Battletech. I want to shoot someone? Target number is 4, medium range makes 6, I ran makes 8, their defense makes 9, woods in the way makes 10, I'm overheating makes 11, I'm clan makes 10, pulse makes 8, targeting computer makes 7. To a war gamer mindset, all these fiddly bit modifiers make things feel more real, more like tactical and strategic choices actually matter.

Now, mind you, I may not have a good head for having a slew of D+D situational modifiers, but that doesn't break verisimilitude for me - that just makes me want to persist all my buffs, and avoid "long sword +1, +2 vs loggerheads".

Shadowrun begs to differ. It's design philosophy seems to be, so long as nobody is playing the same game, it's much easier to ensure that you engage everyone, and one person doesn't just solve everything by themselves.

Edit: For wargames (with their competitive, high-setup nature), having lots of crunchy mechanics to make tactics more important than sheer weight of firepower makes sense. For TTRPGs? You're not competing against your fellow players in the same way, characters continue from one scene to the next (most of the time) so every scene isn't make-or-break, and there are actual characters who should make some fictional sense involved. All of these reduce the benefits and increase the annoyance of having stacking situational modifiers. It's the wrong level of abstraction, IMO.

But do they really matter? There's a fine line where having a +1 might make the difference and where either way you're just running up the numbers. I find that in a role-playing game (where the focus is on making decisions for a character), all those numbers push me to want to play the numbers, not the character. To squeeze out every +X (for fear of failing). And that makes for weird, unorganic-seeming characters--where every martial takes Travel Devotion (or a dip into a specific archetype of barbarian) and wields a 2H weapon. Or casters follow no sort of theme to their spells, because stacking the good spells is key to success.

Shadowrun's style is a common complaint I hear about the system--that you're only playing for 1/N of the time and watching the rest of the time. It's only made tolerable by the fact that most of the game (or so I hear) is in the planning and prep (which everyone participates in or is split by its very nature), not the execution. Note that in the most recent editions they've dropped this in large measure--you can deck and run as well as rig and run (with the wireless gear). Because it wasn't tons of fun for a lot of people.

Florian

2018-03-30, 01:09 PM

But do they really matter?

In BattleTech? Yes, absolutely. That game is very detailed and uses very few abstractions. But, as much as I love it, playing out one combat (lance vs. lance) will take the whole evening (unless you're like me and make liberal use of FAE arty).

On small stacking boni: I actually like how Shadowrun 5e and Splittermond handle that, as there's a min/max cap how much you can stack up, no matter the source. You can do the detailed calculation, but mostly just eyeballing it will net the same result.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-30, 01:13 PM

In BattleTech? Yes, absolutely. That game is very detailed and uses very few abstractions. But, as much as I love it, playing out one combat (lance vs. lance) will take the whole evening (unless you're like me and make liberal use of FAE arty).

On small stacking boni: I actually like how Shadowrun 5e and Splittermond handle that, as there's a min/max cap how much you can stack up, no matter the source. You can do the detailed calculation, but mostly just eyeballing it will net the same result.

Yeah. I totally get the wargame side--there it makes total sense and matters. Because the whole system is designed around that, and little else.

I can understand (and tolerate) a capped system. Especially if the modifiers usually end up at one of {0, MAX, MIN}, so you really just have to judge

* Are they about balanced? 0.
* Are they unbalanced toward bonuses? MAX
* Are they unbalanced toward maluses? MIN

Psyren

2018-03-30, 01:33 PM

That may be too broad a definition of "trap option". A trap option isn't just "not as good as the others", it seems good but is by the nature of the system unrecoverable unless the GM (or system) allows for rebuilds at later points. By strict rules (IIRC), once you take a Feat in later D&Ds, you're stuck with it.

I don't know how 4e and 5e handle this, but you're never stuck with feats in 3e/PF unless your GM is a jerk. Even in sanctioned play, retraining exists and is legal. And it's very healthy - it lets the designers issue errata without fear that they're permanently messing up someone's character (nerf scenario) or that their fix is too late for anyone to benefit from (buff scenario).

(Again IIRC) there's a Feat that increases Hit Points, which seems great at low level because characters have relatively few HP compared to what the Feat grants, but becomes a wasted Feat at higher levels because it represents a tiny fraction of the total HP typically have at those levels.

Putting aside that feat actually scales in PF, you can just take it early and retrain it later.

Re: situational modifiers and verisimilitude:

I love Battletech. I want to shoot someone? Target number is 4, medium range makes 6, I ran makes 8, their defense makes 9, woods in the way makes 10, I'm overheating makes 11, I'm clan makes 10, pulse makes 8, targeting computer makes 7. To a war gamer mindset, all these fiddly bit modifiers make things feel more real, more like tactical and strategic choices actually matter.

Now, mind you, I may not have a good head for having a slew of D+D situational modifiers, but that doesn't break verisimilitude for me - that just makes me want to persist all my buffs, and avoid "long sword +1, +2 vs loggerheads".

Indeed. And even for the folks who don't want to track all that stuff, there are so many tools that make it easier, and more being made all the time. I'm pretty excited for the future of tabletop.

I find that in a role-playing game (where the focus is on making decisions for a character), all those numbers push me to want to play the numbers, not the character. To squeeze out every +X (for fear of failing).

But that's exactly what makes it realistic, because that's what we would do in a life-or-death scenario in real life if we could. I have time to fire one shot at this guy and I need it to count, so let me get the high ground behind this curtain and look through my sniper scope and go prone/kneel and steady my breathing and aim for the gap in his kevlar and... etc. The difference is that IRL we don't see all the modifiers that come with those activities so it's faster, but in the game we do.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-30, 02:03 PM

But that's exactly what makes it realistic, because that's what we would do in a life-or-death scenario in real life if we could. I have time to fire one shot at this guy and I need it to count, so let me get the high ground behind this curtain and look through my sniper scope and go prone/kneel and steady my breathing and aim for the gap in his kevlar and... etc. The difference is that IRL we don't see all the modifiers that come with those activities so it's faster, but in the game we do.

But all those things are (or should be) assumed to be included in your attack modifier. Because otherwise you're assuming the character is incompetent unless they jump through a bunch of hoops. If any competent person would do X, then just bake X into the cake. Let modifiers handle things that are beyond a character's control or represent things that are pushing their boundaries.

It's a level of abstraction problem--if you insist that each attack roll/skill check represents success/failure at one particular detailed task (a single blow, etc), the whole thing spins out of control (with lots of room for gotcha games as well--"you didn't say you were ..."). You also end up easily reaching territory where either you have a big enough set of bonuses to win automatically or you don't (in which case you lose). Binary "don't try unless there's no contest" things like that are rarely well handled in games, regardless of "realism." Especially because it's a game the players can't win unless the DM lets them. And that's cheap.

I believe that a better assumption is that the non-static modifiers represent things outside the norm, outside SOP. That restricts the range of things that need modifiers, so each one can be more meaningful. It also still allows a roll (ha) for the dice. It also allows even those who haven't uber-optimized to have a chance to contribute, so it's much harder to lock someone out of the game (as compared to 3.5's skill system where you basically need to be a specialist to even try at a lot of things [poor fighters]).

Max_Killjoy

2018-03-30, 03:13 PM

It's a level of abstraction problem--if you insist that each attack roll/skill check represents success/failure at one particular detailed task (a single blow, etc), the whole thing spins out of control (with lots of room for gotcha games as well--"you didn't say you were ..."). You also end up easily reaching territory where either you have a big enough set of bonuses to win automatically or you don't (in which case you lose). Binary "don't try unless there's no contest" things like that are rarely well handled in games, regardless of "realism." Especially because it's a game the players can't win unless the DM lets them. And that's cheap.

Honestly, I don't recall ever having seen that "if you don't have enough bonuses to win, you automatically lose" thing happen in a game.

"Conflict resolution" is just as vulnerable to "GM gotcha" as "task resolution" -- it just takes the GM short-selling the PC's success or over-selling the PC's failure, or not following through with "fail forward" in a constructive way.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-30, 03:18 PM

Honestly, I don't recall ever having seen that "if you don't have enough bonuses to win, you automatically lose" thing happen in a game.

"Conflict resolution" is just as vulnerable to "GM gotcha" as "task resolution" -- it just takes the GM short-selling the PC's success or over-selling the PC's failure, or not following through with "fail forward" in a constructive way.

Two words. Rocket Tag.

Max_Killjoy

2018-03-30, 03:24 PM

ImNotTrevor

2018-03-30, 04:16 PM

Quick pre-note:
Dr. Manhattan is FAR from omnipotent. He seems that way in a world with no other supers, but we have no evidence of omnipotence or omniscience. He cannot, for instance, alter reality itself, space, dimension, time, or a wide variety of other things. Dr. Manhattan manipulates matter from the atomic scale up to the skyscraper scale (we've seen no bigger displays) and can view the entirety of his own personal timeline at once, barring tachyon interference. Powerful, yes. Would require different rules, also yes. The stated challenge was that there is NEVER a character who would operate on different rules.
I have provided one valid counterexample.
Don't deal in absolutes, kids! One counterexample is sufficient, even if odd.
(I wrote a 12 page paper on Watchmen for college. I'm not the greatest expert, but I'm very confident in my assessment.)

Beyond that,

I'm finding it hard to digest that people are this insanely hostile and exclusivist about PREFERENCES, while also supposedly hating it when the Forge calls their preferences, what was it, "incoherent?"
Yet it's ok to call one area of my preferences "Badly designed," or "not really trpgs."

I mean, damn. Y'all complain about the BS the Forge wrote while writing the same slop in a different flavor. Only once you've been called out you throw in a "but you do you" at the end or beginning of your condescending tirade.

Like, seriously? Are we children? Can we not talk to adults like they are adults and their opinions can be valid while being not something we comprehend for ourselves? Can we not have genuine interest in the motivations of others?

Like, I'm a raging A-hole on a frequent basis, yes. But damn, this is reminding me why I dropped this forum for several months. Maybe I need to make that permanent. I'm glad i already have many years in the hobby and a lot of self confidence. Because if I didn't? You guys would likely have convinced me to stay the hell away from it.

I'm gonna drop this thread. I know my soliloquy here won't change jack diddly, but hey. I won't go down as the guy who didn't call out crappy behavior.

Deuces.

Psyren

2018-03-30, 06:20 PM

But all those things are (or should be) assumed to be included in your attack modifier. Because otherwise you're assuming the character is incompetent unless they jump through a bunch of hoops.

In some cases (like the holding your breath thing to line up the shot), sure, they are. But you don't have control over all of them. High ground and cover are not always available for you to take advantage of. You could be in a moving vehicle or in windy conditions, which messes up your ability to steady your aim. In that particular case, that would probably be better represented by a penalty rather than lacking a bonus, but the result is mathematically identical.

Less nuanced systems throw that out the window. And I wouldn't even mind advantage/disadvantage were it not for the fact that one instance of one can negate umpteen instances of the other. I would much rather have one prevail if it's ahead by 5+ or something. Less simple, yeah, but a hell of a lot more immersive (for me.)

Two words. Rocket Tag.

Your problem is viewing 3e combat as a pass-fail binary. In reality, your first iterative is generally almost guaranteed to hit unless you're dreadfully unoptimized - if you're meant to be making attack rolls at all, it should take a pile of penalties to make you miss that first swing.

The reason people painstakingly track bonuses out the wazoo is because the lower iteratives need the help. When you're coming up to bat with a -5 or -10 right out of the gate, you'll want every modifier you can get your hands on. But even if you don't have any and you whiff those, you've still managed to hit with the first one, and therefore done something.

Quertus

2018-03-30, 08:38 PM

Two words. Rocket Tag.

Huh. Yeah, I can see that.

Haven't ever been in a campaign where that was a thing. If a character was in that sort of situation, it was because they were generally outclassed and got themselves into a fight they really should have avoided.

As much as I hate on 4e (some of it in jest), I gotta say, I tend to run games with rocket-tag PCs and padded sumo monsters. That is, the PCs would often one-shot themselves, but their opposition is often 4e-like enough to a) survive a few hits, and b) not rocket tag them in return.

In a pure rocket tag environment? Yeah, make that first shot count! If you haven't done everything to stack the deck in your favor, and aren't playing 5d chess, with rerolls and contingencies for when your übercharger misses, you're dead.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-30, 08:53 PM

As much as I hate on 4e (some of it in jest), I gotta say, I tend to run games with rocket-tag PCs and padded sumo monsters. That is, the PCs would often one-shot themselves, but their opposition is often 4e-like enough to a) survive a few hits, and b) not rocket tag them in return.

In a pure rocket tag environment? Yeah, make that first shot count! If you haven't done everything to stack the deck in your favor, and aren't playing 5d chess, with rerolls and contingencies for when your übercharger misses, you're dead.

That's the asymmetric design that I was saying is good. Many players find doing big numbers of damage fun, and like to see those go up over time. But getting nuked before you go isn't so fun for most people, especially if it happens out of the blue. And since PCs tend to be in many more encounters than any individual NPC, they have to be more relatively durable unless you're running a meat grinder. So for game purposes, the two types of characters need different mechanical treatment, even if it's just different build priorities (eg taking more defense options for NPCs).

Personally I'm not fond of pure rocket tag because I know that the DM has to be pulling his punches or the party couldn't survive. Because he's the one setting things up. It rings hollow to me, like we only win because he's letting us. That, and I like being attached to a character. No meat grinders for me, thank you very much.

RazorChain

2018-04-02, 03:29 PM

But all those things are (or should be) assumed to be included in your attack modifier. Because otherwise you're assuming the character is incompetent unless they jump through a bunch of hoops. If any competent person would do X, then just bake X into the cake. Let modifiers handle things that are beyond a character's control or represent things that are pushing their boundaries.

It's a level of abstraction problem--if you insist that each attack roll/skill check represents success/failure at one particular detailed task (a single blow, etc), the whole thing spins out of control (with lots of room for gotcha games as well--"you didn't say you were ..."). You also end up easily reaching territory where either you have a big enough set of bonuses to win automatically or you don't (in which case you lose). Binary "don't try unless there's no contest" things like that are rarely well handled in games, regardless of "realism." Especially because it's a game the players can't win unless the DM lets them. And that's cheap.

I believe that a better assumption is that the non-static modifiers represent things outside the norm, outside SOP. That restricts the range of things that need modifiers, so each one can be more meaningful. It also still allows a roll (ha) for the dice. It also allows even those who haven't uber-optimized to have a chance to contribute, so it's much harder to lock someone out of the game (as compared to 3.5's skill system where you basically need to be a specialist to even try at a lot of things [poor fighters]).

I play a lots of Gurps, one of my favorite systems. Gurps reduces combat to blow to blow and there are a lot of HEMA and SCA that play and find the one second rounds and combat adheres to their sense of realism

Baking the modifiers into the system ruins your choices more because you are making assumptions what the characters do. I cant just assume the characters jump on a table to have higher ground or retreat up a staircase. Sometimes what benefits the character in a fight does not benefit the group like retreating for defensive benefits when you are holding a formation.

Sometimes your skills and abilities allow you to do stunts that arent the best for you tactically but just look darn cool or you do a calculated risk like going for a head/vitals blow/shot which might halve your chances to hit but most certainly kills your opponent.

Everybody engaged in a fight is trying to maximize their chances by manouvering, trying to flank, use their reach, ganking on a single opponent, fighting defensively if outnumbered, using feints on low skill opponents with good defenses.

How does Gurps manage blow by blow combat? Your main goal is not to be hit while hitting your opponent. If you are unlucky your character gets incapacitated one solid blow.

Gurps combat tends to take more time than DnD combat which isnt a problem for me because on average I have one combat scene in 6 hour sessions

Doorhandle

2018-04-04, 05:53 AM

The GM will plot, make a setting and gleefully prepare things for his players. But does this all make sense? What are all those untouched dungeons laden with treasure doing there undisturbed?

Why does the plot require the PC's? Is narrative causality unavoidable?

As soon as PC's enter play something must happen or else the game will be boring. All those undisturbed graves and lootable dungeons have to be there for the PC's to have fun.

Why do the PC's get to be special? In D&D we have commoner classes instead of a being a fighter that NPC get's a guardsman class or scout instead of ranger.

Is the game made so that the players can be the snowflakes?

How do you avoid this in your games? Or do you just roll with it?

Speaking as a GM who prepares...scantily at best, the answer is "No, it does not make sense yet, because the plot isn't finished yet." I prepare a few likely locations and where the P.Cs start the session and then let things spiral out of control from there. Any inconsistencies like "what the hell do the monsters eat" or "where did that trap come from" can be addressed if and when they become relevant.

More specifically-

? What are all those untouched dungeons laden with treasure doing there undisturbed?;

Because of the monsters that want to keep said treasures. They'll be defeated eventually, but new predators will move in eventually, with their own prizes; and in the meantime will add to them with supplies taken from their victims.

Why does the plot require the PC's? Is narrative causality unavoidable?

It requires the P.Cs because you're playing a collaborative game, not narrating a story to yourself. If you were writing a book, anyone could be the protagonist, but the idea of a DMPC is hated for a reason.
As for narrative causality, it depends on whether the G.M is willing to let the dice fall where they lay or not. If they go by honest rolls only, there is absolutely no such casualty: it's up to the players to save their own asess if they screwup.
Myself, I tend to play fast and loose with it because I play fast and loose with encounter CR in general, and frequently adjust them on the fly.

Why do the PC's get to be special?

Because there is a very small niche for "slice of life" RPGS: even games where you play as a peasant are generally for the fun of getting that peasant in trouble WAAAAAAAAY over their head, which is enough to make them abnormal.
I generally have adventures as a sort of social class of their own, apart and yet a part of the normal community; with a tendency to die young and leave a mangled corpse. The players are exceptional relative to the more normal folk, but not exceptional for adventurers.

Is the game made so that the players can be the snowflakes?

Sort of. The game is made to be about the P.C party... but again, they may not be snowflakes compared to the setting. High fantasy campaigns have the fate of worlds resting upon the PC's shoulders: Low fantasy has the fate of the next paycheck being the biggest concern.