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Yora
2018-09-01, 03:55 PM
Maybe it's getting older, having been overexposed, or just getting more refined in my tastes, but these last years I have found myself increasingly disinterested in the classic tales of fantasy adventurers. I love Conan and slaying a dragon and gaining its huge treasure are certainly great fun. But tales of mighty warriors and great battles against overwhelming foes have become rather stale to me. Been there, done that, and it doesn't generally reach the depths that I think both fantasy and RPGs are capable of.

There are plenty of games that are very different and don't have you play medievalesque warriors and wizarda, but I actually still really like settings of the high fantasy type, with dragons, elves, and giants. However, when you look into fantasy RPGs, they tend to lean very much towards fighting monsters and soldiers and improving your armory.

One clear counterexample that I can think of would be Pendragon. In this game the players play as knights who are ruling their own estates while also serving their king.
And I guess there is also Ars Magica, in which each player plays a wizard and also several of his servants that all together form a magic cabal somewhere in medieval Europe. Though I admit that I never really understood what is actually happening during a campaign.

What other games and campaign concepts are out there and have you seen used that make combat something that happens on occasion but isn't the main measure of progress? Do you have any neat ideas you've head for alternative campaigns over the years?

GunDragon
2018-09-01, 04:08 PM
I read your post and feel the same way. I've been playing D&D for about a decade now and yes the classic tale of heroic adventurers stopping the evil plans and picking up sick loot has gotten kind of old and boring. I still like it that way, of course, but it just doesn't have the same allure that it used to.
So lately I have been working on a system called Moonlight Hollow, which is more of a survival horror game set in a world that is closer to modern day earth.
There is sanity rules, the player characters are not mighty heroes, just regular people with some skills and basic equipment. You can still loot things, but rarely will you find anything super powerful.
Magic and supernatural elements are there of course, but only there to support the horror and awfulness that goes on in the game.
Combat is not as common as in D&D, and when it does happen, it tends to be quick and deadly, best to be avoided if you can manage it.
It's refreshing and different from what my friends and I usually play. The game is still in the works though.

Yora
2018-09-01, 04:26 PM
An idea that I find quite intriguing would be to have the players as Indiana Jones type characters who face their opposition with cleverness, smart talking, evasion, and the occasional brawl.
But the movies are still about getting a treasure from a magical hiding place and are in some ways very much tied to their modern setting. Though of course they are still total fantasy and you wouldn't have found any archeology professor in 1935 routinely fiat fighting Nazis on top of moving trucks. They don't represent their supposed setting realistically at all. So I think that with some work it probably should be possible to have the adventures of "civilian" treasure hunters even in a setting where plenty of seasoned warriors are around.
Perhaps by making it a setting that doesn't have any superhuman elite warriors. With "great heroes" being praised for their abilities as leaders instead of their ability to take on monsters or a dozen soldiers all by themselves.

GunDragon
2018-09-01, 04:41 PM
An idea that I find quite intriguing would be to have the players as Indiana Jones type characters who face their opposition with cleverness, smart talking, evasion, and the occasional brawl.
But the movies are still about getting a treasure from a magical hiding place and are in some ways very much tied to their modern setting. Though of course they are still total fantasy and you wouldn't have found any archeology professor in 1935 routinely fiat fighting Nazis on top of moving trucks. They don't represent their supposed setting realistically at all. So I think that with some work it probably should be possible to have the adventures of "civilian" treasure hunters even in a setting where plenty of seasoned warriors are around.
Perhaps by making it a setting that doesn't have any superhuman elite warriors. With "great heroes" being praised for their abilities as leaders instead of their ability to take on monsters or a dozen soldiers all by themselves.

That would be interesting. Maybe if you workshopped it a touch, D&D could be made to work for such an idea. Perhaps introduce a level cap? I think the Rogue class would be perfect for that job.

Nifft
2018-09-01, 05:25 PM
An idea that I find quite intriguing would be to have the players as Indiana Jones type characters who face their opposition with cleverness, smart talking, evasion, and the occasional brawl.
But the movies are still about getting a treasure from a magical hiding place and are in some ways very much tied to their modern setting. Though of course they are still total fantasy and you wouldn't have found any archeology professor in 1935 routinely fiat fighting Nazis on top of moving trucks. They don't represent their supposed setting realistically at all. So I think that with some work it probably should be possible to have the adventures of "civilian" treasure hunters even in a setting where plenty of seasoned warriors are around.
Perhaps by making it a setting that doesn't have any superhuman elite warriors. With "great heroes" being praised for their abilities as leaders instead of their ability to take on monsters or a dozen soldiers all by themselves.

I would expect that the movies portray the most interesting highlights of Indy's life, and not his typical day-to-day experience.

He's not routinely fist-fighting a Nazi on top of a truck as part of his daily commute every morning.

In terms of your requirements, he's a reasonably good example -- even though he overcomes challenges using violence, he doens't loot his enemies nor accumulate their phat gear. He's more inclined to infiltration than confrontation, except when a confrontation aides his infiltration (i.e. cold-clocking a soldier and stealing his uniform to blend in; notably his equipment doesn't change after he discards that disguise, even though the soldier's weapons were surely part of the outfit).

Yora
2018-09-02, 03:11 AM
Which is where I think that the system really matters. D&D is based on the core premise of "defeat enemy, gain XP, get advancement". This doesn't really lend itself to a campaign where the story takes two or three year long breaks on a regular basis. What does a thief or a wizard do as his regular work? It's a system that encourages players to seek out enemies to fight. Getting past enemies without raising an alarm is counter productive. When you pick easy fights now, you will actually have an advantage against your enemies later on.

I think what is needed is some kind of advancement system that doesn't reward fighting enemies and that also doesn't primarily improve the PCs ability to fight enemies. This is the fundamental base on which the whole d20 system is build on, which I think makes it unsuitable for anything but dungeon crawling.

The Fallen Empires hack for Apocalpyse World could be an interesting option. It's a game focused about surviving and maintaining your home base in a hostile environment. Most of the character classes are designed to be quite violent, but the way the system works, intimidation is just as viable as use of force. I think it would depend on the GM to determine how violently insane the NPCs of the setting are reacting to the PCs actions. But I think it should be possible to run the game with opponents who are real threats in a fight but who are also reluctant to immediately resort to bloodshed.

Aneurin
2018-09-02, 04:49 AM
You might be interested in The One Ring by Cubicle 7. It is, perhaps obviously given the name, a Lord of the Rings-based system with solid rules for handling down-time and travel, and a wealth system that's highly abstracted.

Yes, there's still some fighting in there, but a large part of the system is built around telling a story, traveling and exploring. The more you play, the more of the world you open up; you can create havens which are safe places to rest between journeys, you can raise families and build your standing in communities. There's no real incentive to go out, kill things and rifle through their pockets.

I think it's on Humble Bundle at the moment, too.

Yora
2018-09-02, 06:58 AM
I tried to learn those rules once, but I was never really getting it. How does the game incentivise players to make plans and react to things? Does it have anything that leads to events that push the players into action when the characters are comfortably sitting in their homes?

Minty
2018-09-02, 08:23 AM
I tried to learn those rules once, but I was never really getting it. How does the game incentivise players to make plans and react to things? Does it have anything that leads to events that push the players into action when the characters are comfortably sitting in their homes?

This isn't a system issue. If the characters just sit in their homes and won't do anything unless you can lure them out with mechanical incentives like xp and loot, then that kind of suggests that those players aren't invested in the world or the story or even their own characters. The experience of the adventure itself should be the incentive, not the rewards for completing it. Part of getting away from the whole kill-loot-get-xp-repeat transactional way of playing is to create characters that actually engage with the world and have their own reasons for what they're doing. You don't need rules for that, just players that are interested in telling a story about their characters instead of moving game tokens around and getting bigger numbers.

Provengreil
2018-09-02, 09:00 AM
That would be interesting. Maybe if you workshopped it a touch, D&D could be made to work for such an idea. Perhaps introduce a level cap? I think the Rogue class would be perfect for that job.

D&D is a poor system for this type of roleplaying in general, given that almost all of the listed mechanics are for killing stuff. However, if you're going for that kind of adventure, perhaps E6 could be worth looking at.

Yora
2018-09-02, 09:11 AM
But to be invested, the campaign has to have already gained speed. At the beginning, they don't really know anything about the world in which their characters live, the opportunities that are open to them, and what their characters' specific motivations are. It's the old sandbox problem. To get the game going, the players need to have some default activity that is always an attractive option to fall back on when they don't know what else they could be doing. "Let's go to a dungeon and advance our characters and hopefully discover something interesting we want to pursue" is one tried and true solution that works, but that requires a party of characters who at least somewhat regularly poke around in random dungeons looking for treasure, and then we'd be back at the initial problem.

In Apocalypse World, the core mechanic is that players get what they want on a high success, get what they want with minor complications on a regular success, and cause bad consequences on a failure. The GM has a decently sized list of general and unspecific complications that he has to draw from when a player fails a roll. Being a very low-prep system, a lot of these consist of adding new elements to the situation. It might even impact only much later like "Word of this will reach the bandits' boss". But one way or another, some kind of response will be triggered. Because of this, the action can never really come to a stop completely. Once the first session starts, everything that happens triggers more consequences. And not just "random stuff happens to get the players into action", but consequences that result directly from their actions. Though admitedly, it's a system that makes it quite clear that it's for campaigns that haphazardly stumble their way forward without any real plan where it will go or even what it's primarily about, which isn't an ideal solution for every kind of campaign.
Another thing it does is to give some of the classes a handful of NPC followers. And at the start of each session, rolls have to be made to see how the stronghold, gang, or cult has been doing recently. And again, on a failure something bad is going to happen to them. Since they provide many of the abilities and perks of these PCs, these threats are something the players have to take care of. Otherwise they might not just lose the main features of their characters, their former followers might even come after them. Though again, this would actually a distracting obstacles in campaigns in which the players ar trying to pursue one specific threat away from their home base.

Kyrell1978
2018-09-02, 09:18 AM
An idea that I find quite intriguing would be to have the players as Indiana Jones type characters who face their opposition with cleverness, smart talking, evasion, and the occasional brawl.

I've played in a 3.5 game similar to this in Ebberon. The party was off on a expedition to Xendrick to locate some artifacts and the main source of XP was for advancing plot and defeating traps and dangerous social encounters that would have been impossible to win by combat. We just had to have a session zero to see if the party would like to play this kind of game and we designed characters to fit this rather than optimize for murder hobo. It's a pretty fun change of pace. My next character is going to be similar (though we have switched to pathfinder). We are going to run through Second Darkness where I'll be playing a Sherlock Holmes based character named Augustus Dulpeen (yes I know it's spelled "wrong").

Aneurin
2018-09-02, 09:19 AM
I tried to learn those rules once, but I was never really getting it. How does the game incentivise players to make plans and react to things? Does it have anything that leads to events that push the players into action when the characters are comfortably sitting in their homes?

Because they have goals, and ambitions and things they want to achieve. Because the communities they live in are threatened.

Mostly? Because the players want to play the game and work with the GM for reasons to actually play it. And if the players don't want to play, I don't think any set of mechanics is going to help.

If it helps, any, there's pretty much a requirement that the Fellowship sets itself a group goal to work towards. It can be simple (drive the wargs out of the Shire), or lengthy and complex (destroy the One Ring in the Fires of Mount Doom, or even Reclaim the Lonely Mountain from Smaug the Terrible). I'm surprised more systems don't use something like it.


This isn't a system issue. If the characters just sit in their homes and won't do anything unless you can lure them out with mechanical incentives like xp and loot, then that kind of suggests that those players aren't invested in the world or the story or even their own characters. The experience of the adventure itself should be the incentive, not the rewards for completing it. Part of getting away from the whole kill-loot-get-xp-repeat transactional way of playing is to create characters that actually engage with the world and have their own reasons for what they're doing. You don't need rules for that, just players that are interested in telling a story about their characters instead of moving game tokens around and getting bigger numbers.

This, very much this.

Arbane
2018-09-02, 03:10 PM
What other games and campaign concepts are out there and have you seen used that make combat something that happens on occasion but isn't the main measure of progress? Do you have any neat ideas you've head for alternative campaigns over the years?

Ryuutama, maybe? It's a Japanese fantasy game about traveling.

Black Jester
2018-09-02, 04:30 PM
Harnmaster has all the classic fantasy tropes you want, sometimes classic, sometimes a bit weird (like the hippopotamus sized, quite intelligent matriarchal swamp dragons or the god who may or may not live in a massive clay pit and create new, mostly monstrous life forms as an outlet for his creativity or his boredom), but the focus of the game is usually a bit different. The characters are not supposed to act outside of the feudal society, they are a part of it. As a result, the conflicts in the game that involve the players tend to be very personal, include a lot of politics on a relatively small scale, because that are the kind of problems the relatively ordinary characters in a HarnMaster game can reasonably solve. It is therefore for the most part, more of a low key game, often focusing on the character's relationship with each other (and their environment, families, friends, followers and foes (https://www.lythia.com/series/friends-foes-followers/).

In some regards, it is a difficult game to run and play, because it requires you to care about NPC and their fate a lot, and I think that many games actively try to train players to disregard this aspect of an RPG as a community simulator. When it works well, HarnMaster is an incredibly rewarding game, because the triumphs and losses are a lot more personal.

Yuki Akuma
2018-09-02, 04:52 PM
Have you ever heard of Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine?

It's a game that's more about character development through all sorts of narrative moments, not just through combat. Heck you can have entire campaigns where no one gets into a fight more important than 'school bullies attack!' or 'Martial Arts tournament to make your father proud!'.

Yora
2018-09-03, 12:00 AM
Ryuutama, maybe? It's a Japanese fantasy game about traveling.

Tell us more. That sounds interesting, but I have no idea how that might look like.

Pelle
2018-09-03, 03:58 AM
Call of Cthulhu?

SirBellias
2018-09-03, 11:09 AM
I mean, we do this in our 5e D&D game often enough. Our DM does experience for major accomplishments, and our characters being relatively sensible people (but not too sensible to explore) often try to accomplish things in the least violent way possible, and only a few of us aggressively loot things that we weren't actively searching for. The world is suffering, and actively adding to that by murdering its inhabitants isn't right to us.

That may also be because we have a very serious chance of character death every time we draw blades, but that's just realistic.

I did approve of Pendragon when our group played it (as little as we did) and try to incorporate some longterm effects and rules into my D&D games.

Cluedrew
2018-09-03, 02:31 PM
For me it is mostly the overexposed part. Well half of it. To me combat doesn't have a much intrinsic interest for me (not in role-playing, a war game is different because of its set up). Most of the interest then comes form stuff around combat. That stuff people tend to talk about from a high horse, about how yes you can role-play in combat. Yada yada. That is enough for about 2 combats per character.

By the 3rd combat I'm starting to feel like I have covered the fact my character is aggressive/defensive/canny, who they protect and who they will consider a major threat. After that it is wares down to just going through the motions.

But yeah, systems about other things or even nothing in particular are welcome. I've been through too many drawn out combats now.

Arbane
2018-09-03, 03:01 PM
Tell us more. That sounds interesting, but I have no idea how that might look like.

Here's a review of Ryuutama, (http://projects.inklesspen.com/fatal-and-friends/professorprof/ryuutama/) with some of the nice illustrations from the book.

I had a chance to play it a while back - basically, it's a bit like a hexcrawl, but generally with less random combat encounters (less does not mean none, we had a few tough fights!) and more dealing with things like getting lost, natural hazards, running out of supplies, and trying to make money (often by doing sidequests) to keep travelling. (The best treasure we found early on was an umbrella - a big help when it rained.)

Oh, and the GM is a character in the world who's collecting the story of your travels to feed the tale to a dragon.

The rules are pretty light - you have d4/6/8/10 for your four stats, you generally roll two stat dice for any challenge to beat a target number, higher is good. The GM is encouraged to improvise, and have the players invent details of the world.

One caveat: The kind of people who complain that 4th edition D&D is "too videogamey" will have an aneurysm if you try and get them to play this. Japanese RPG designers don't care much about "realism".

Drascin
2018-09-03, 04:57 PM
I have the advantage that one of my usual playgroups has basically never been a "kill them and take their stuff" kind of group, no matter the setting. In fact, generally we go to rather a lot of effort to minimize casualties even in combat-heavy games.

As for games not focused on combat, I need to reiterate what a person before said about Chuubo's Marvelous Wish Granting Engine. It's easily the weirdest game in my collection, and 100% Jenna Moran at her Jenna Moran-est, but this is a game where your sheet, rather than combat stats, involves things like your intended character arc, what reactions the character is expected to get out the table, a thing your character can never NOT do, and so on. Areas, instead of detailed maps, have sets of "properties", which basically inform the genre of things set in them. And such.

The tone of the fantasy is much more fairytale-ish/mythical than your average fantasy game, though. Whimsical might be a word for it. And it's very much not medieval fantasy. This is a game where the Sun is a star in the sky but is also a person, and she got killed, and now there is a new Sun, and her name is Jade Irinka - she's one of the sample characters for the basic "module" and you can play her. She probably goes to the same school as your character, if you make a teenage-ish one.

sktarq
2018-09-03, 05:01 PM
Okay been hacking away at this problem since 3.0 and some stuff that has worked for me.

Go very old school...if you look back in the O/AD&D eras there were all sorts of things that gave XP and they had a more liquid definition of "defeat". XP for all GP found for thieves etc. Go dig into these and see which ones you like, which ones you can use as a model etc. . .

As for plans for something...general ones...think about how "tough" each thing should be and give it a CR...when they can satisfy the requirement give them the XP earned from that marker...lower or eliminate XP from "defeating" opponents in the meantime (so a bypass/charming/creating an alliance saves table time and risk rather than the immediate gain of GP&XP that killing them would)

I like the WOD system because killing doesn't help you. And while the baseline system is modern it has medieval versions....and mortal versions (not playing a vampire, werewolf, lost, or mage) ...and lesser mages/psychics for your magic users... then the ST basically runs XP based on how well the session goes and arc completions.

Epimethee
2018-09-03, 05:50 PM
The thing, in Pendragon is that you are not a player in a party: you are an agent in a specific cultural setting, heavily described and widely known. Ok, you can be an errand knight but you are still inscribed in the arthurian context. The rules try to represent exactly that: what would an arthurian character live.
In a way, it seem limiting. But it give you an easy way to find internal motivations as a player. That make the mechanical reward less interesting and the narratives ones more enjoyable. But you have to inscribe the players into a context if they want to find something inside themselves.

Conan and such, like most of the parties, are the ultimate outsiders, the culture they emanate from is only or mostly a flavor as they travel across the world. That seem less limiting, the are not enclosed to a single cultural or geographical space, but that's only one kind of relationship with their surrounding, a kind of constant discovery. So they mostly need outside influence to act, even if the player wrote twenty pages of backstory. If you change this perspective you can go a long way to change also what incentive the players could reach for.

In a way that's what Kingmaker does, taking outsiders and bringing them deeper and deeper inside a single territory that they are able to shape, developing more and more links between the players and the place around them, shifting the goal from personnel one to collectives.

As you quoted Pendragon, you may also like another Greg Stafford creation, Glorantha, and particularly is incarnation in Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes. Ok, the rules are somewhat contentious and they may not be totally perfect (albeit the last version is really playable and enjoyable). And the universe is old and crazy, heavily mythological with complex pantheons, and some books are as readable as actual ancient sources, I mean dry and repetitive, but full of background, almost endlessly.

Still in Kingdom of Heroes the focus is clearly on the community, with rules to create a clan rooted in mythology and with a specific history coherent with the main history of the Orlanthi peoples, the culture in which the book is set. The players are part of the community, they were raised there, they are assumed to know the peoples and the cultural rules.Their first goals would mostly take place around this local part of the setting, deepening this relationship.
Of course, you could go adventuring (and the world is full of different cultures and Wonderfull peoples), but I tend to also role-play (more or less heavily) some commons activities, sheep herding, some religious celebrations or the day of the market, some raids also as it is a cultural staple of the Orlanthis.
All those mundane things make the links between the players and the background stronger and rapidly some players would find internal motivations to act, as they can perceive the impact of their actions in a well known setting. Thus also travelling around the world make more sense in the end.

As for fighting, "Violence is always an option" but "there is always another way" are the two main rules of the Orlanthi culture.

One of the thing that is highly contentious in this version of the rule is that the resolution system treat as the same type of contest any dramatic situation, from a fight to a trial or a race. Accordingly, every ability may be as important as any other, and may potentially be used in any circumstance.

So it may thick a lot of your boxes.

ATHATH
2018-09-03, 08:45 PM
If it doesn't have to be a fantasy game, have you tried Shadowrun? Progression is obtained by completing jobs/objectives (and stealing stuff), and killing people all willy nilly is almost always a bad idea, as the cops will likely rapidly descend upon you and kick your arse five ways to Sunday.

You mentioned needing a direction/something to do other than combat; Shadowrun provides that in the form of the missions and jobs you're taking. I think the published modules for Shadowrun (or the Shadowrun games, many of which are available on Steam (I recommend Shadowrun: Dragonfall, although I've heard good things about Shadowrun: Hong Kong)) might have some plots/plot points that you can steal.

RazorChain
2018-09-03, 10:25 PM
Maybe it's getting older, having been overexposed, or just getting more refined in my tastes, but these last years I have found myself increasingly disinterested in the classic tales of fantasy adventurers. I love Conan and slaying a dragon and gaining its huge treasure are certainly great fun. But tales of mighty warriors and great battles against overwhelming foes have become rather stale to me. Been there, done that, and it doesn't generally reach the depths that I think both fantasy and RPGs are capable of.

There are plenty of games that are very different and don't have you play medievalesque warriors and wizarda, but I actually still really like settings of the high fantasy type, with dragons, elves, and giants. However, when you look into fantasy RPGs, they tend to lean very much towards fighting monsters and soldiers and improving your armory.

The focus of the game is up to the GM or the group to decide. There are myriad of fantasy systems out there and you don't have to fall into the D&D trend. Mechanical progression in RPG's is mostly an illusion anyway at least in regards to combat. It's like when my group was playing Cyberpunk. We got ourselves bigger guns, then the enemies had better armor. Then we got ourselves better armor and met enemies with bigger guns.

One time we played a coming of age tale that was focused around our characters village and strange happenings. It was a short campaign, around 15 sessions, that focused on the village and it's inhabitant and we were playing young teens until they grew up with maybe 3 sessions for each year.

Then we played a game about the PC's reclaiming their barony from the clutches of the Dread Lords. The game was focused on that, clear goal from the start and the rest was a sandbox. That game went in a totally unexpected direction when the PC's sailed to the next continent and one of the PC's wooed and married the daughter of Megos Strategos of the Achilleans and they went back with his bodyguard of 300 "spartan" warriors and managed to sneak them along paths known to the PC's to the Barons castle, use the escape tunnel to sneak in and take the castle by force.

Then we had one game where the PC's were a team of agents that was sent to a medieval planet to advance the technology there. They had to pose as natives and do it according to the standards of the United Universe. This was basically a sandbox where the players had fun "inventing" stuff and living out a fantasy where you would be in a medieval world with all the knowledge you have today.

Personally I like to run games of the smaller scale than in D&D where "progression curve" isn't as steep like a zero to superhero. This is because I like to focus on the characters and their goals and ambitions. I call this character driven games as the game is centered around the characters. Now some may scoff and say that all games center on the PC's which is true but it only centers on them going into dungeons, killing and getting loot, then they go to some guy that gives the a quest so they can kill some more for more loot.

What if the players come up with the adventures at the start of the game? Instead of focus on some external quest, how about focusing on internal quests that the players come up with when they make their characters? Instead of those being some side quests then the focus of the game becomes the characters goals. One wants to find his missing twin sister, who vanished the night their father was murdered. Another wants to get rid of the bandits that targets the convoys of his merchant family exclusively. The next wants to avenge the death of his master who was betrayed by another pupil. Then one who is faery blooded wants to find out who her father is and discover the extent of her faerie powers. One wants to lift a curse that was placed one him. This is the game I have been running for a two and a half years and as the players are not only invested in their own stories but also their fellow players, we could probably keep on going for the next two years. I made each player come up with at least 3 NPC's that are connected to their character, in total they made probably 5 to 15 each, ranging from friends, rivals, family to curious aquaintances. So when their rivals or enemies are up to something then they are invested from the start or when their friends and family are in trouble or need help then the PC's make it their business to help. So far I've had only one proper dungeon crawl, sure they have infiltrated fortresses, fought in castles, explored some caves but the focus isn't on combat, we have maybe 1 fight on average per 6 hour session.

I also just award XP for progression...or just for nothing at all, so there is no mechanical reward for doing what they do, also in 2 and a half year we have been playing they have got 3 magic items, they have no money at the moment after a clever ploy by one of the PCs adversary that left them in serious debt.....to him.

Wraith
2018-09-04, 02:55 AM
What other games and campaign concepts are out there and have you seen used that make combat something that happens on occasion but isn't the main measure of progress? Do you have any neat ideas you've head for alternative campaigns over the years?

Mouseguard has a strange but interesting system where they use Conflict instead of 'combat'.

What this essentially means is that they have a 'combat' system, but it's used to resolve any kind of skill check rather than specifically fighting; winning an argument or haggling over the price of an item is a Conflict and would be resolved in exactly the same manner as a fist-fight; the characters would just use their social/intelligence stats in place of their physical ones, and the Storyteller gets to narrate the outcome of the argument based on how many points each side scores throughout, rather than just "you win because the other guy loses".

It can make things a bit long-winded if you try to enact a Conflict over every single disagreement and vaguely competitive event, but in principle you can run an entire campaign with plenty of 'combat' without ever having to spill blood or physically harm anyone.

...And you probably should do that, more often than not. Mouseguard is the kind of setting where the players can get messed up by a rat, and owls are literally death incarnate, so avoiding a fight tends to be a good idea regardless. :smalltongue:

Malphegor
2018-09-04, 04:06 PM
I’ve always wanted to run play D&D in a modern setting with superhero characters to cure setting boredom. Mechanically I feel 3.5 can handle it with the following rules:

1. Your character must have a theme that fits with a modern superhero setting’s world. Spells, feats, etc need DM signoff. For the most part.
2. There will be dangerous amounts of homebrew involved which may or may get retconned in and out as we go
3. If you want to use your superpower (typically at level 1 you get a castX/day version of a spell or actionable ability of some sort as a freebie, with more uses as you level) in a different way to RAW, generally it’ll be a DC15 roll to learn how to do that if there is no other way to do it that can’t be reflavoured. Improvisation on the fly would be interesting.
4. Where fantasy based rules is incompatible or insufficient, we will kludge rules from guesstimations off mechanics and approximate ‘lets try this’ness

My main worry is that it would become slow to translate the game on the fly into a different one, plus it might limit players too much

Yuki Akuma
2018-09-04, 04:21 PM
I’ve always wanted to run play D&D in a modern setting with superhero characters to cure setting boredom. Mechanically I feel 3.5 can handle it with the following rules:

1. Your character must have a theme that fits with a modern superhero setting’s world. Spells, feats, etc need DM signoff. For the most part.
2. There will be dangerous amounts of homebrew involved which may or may get retconned in and out as we go
3. If you want to use your superpower (typically at level 1 you get a castX/day version of a spell or actionable ability of some sort as a freebie, with more uses as you level) in a different way to RAW, generally it’ll be a DC15 roll to learn how to do that if there is no other way to do it that can’t be reflavoured. Improvisation on the fly would be interesting.
4. Where fantasy based rules is incompatible or insufficient, we will kludge rules from guesstimations off mechanics and approximate ‘lets try this’ness

My main worry is that it would become slow to translate the game on the fly into a different one, plus it might limit players too much

At this point you might as well just play Mutants and Masterminds.

Kyrell1978
2018-09-04, 06:13 PM
At this point you might as well just play Mutants and Masterminds.

I'd second that as well as throwing in heroes unlimited (although that's a slightly different system).

Arbane
2018-09-04, 08:02 PM
At this point you might as well just play Mutants and Masterminds.

Definitely a change from D&D - superheroes generally don't kill people and take their stuff, aside from the Punisher. (They may do one or the other, depending on subgenre, but usually not both.)

The hard part is getting all the players on the same page as to what SORT of superheroes they are supposed to be, so you don't get a team of Mary Marvel, Ben Grimm, Promethea, Deadpool and BLOODWULF THE EVISCERATOR.

Or worse, 5 Moody Loners.

Yora
2018-09-05, 12:50 AM
I think even more important than rules is establishing "Who is your PC and what does he do?" To give the players references from fiction as to by what logic characters set goals and make plans, interact with NPCs and react to danger. The Treasure Hunter and Monster Slayer for Hire ("monsters/bandits threaten our village/city/kingdom, please get rid of them for us") are well established and need no introduction or pointers. As GM you merely have to point at a dungeon and say "there is your target, go get it". Ideally a bit more elaborate, but it's obvious what the PCs are trying to accomplish.

There are a few other archetypes in RPGs, but I find it challenging to translate them into high fantasy environments that come with certain expectations how society works.

I think translating Call of Cthulhu should probably be quite straightforward. With a setting that is more medieval and does not have large numbers of big scary monsters roaming around, the absense of powerful heroes is logical and it makes sense for civilians to go after hidden supernatural threats. One could even play a captain of the guard or a priest, if you can get across that this is not a setting in which every priest casts lots of spells and veteran warriors routinely kill ogres and manticores. The power level of Middle Earth should be a great match for that.

If I understand it right (maybe not), the setup assumed by Apocaypse World is centered around one or a few small settlements in a lawless frontier plagued by violent gangs and a permanent scarcity of resources. The job of the players is simply to stay alive despite the danger and chaos around them, and perhaps to find ways to prosper and rise above the misery. (It's a strange rulebook and doesn't outright say so, but I think that's what's assumed.)
This also translates easily enough to any world where there is no government in control and villages are under threat by scarcity, bandits, and strange things coming from the wildeness. Players should grasp easily enough what kind of people they are playing and what they will be doing.
One example of attempting to emulate the fiction of such a game (though actually being completely linear and scripted) is Dragon Age II. This is a game set in a world with elves, dwarves, dragons, wizards, undead, and demons, but the story is about a noname who arrives with nothing in a city whose government is failing and where madmen and fanatics are taking over the street. And over the course of several years the party works to expose and break up these threats to the peace and the hero rises to become a popular community leader. Now the combat system consists of killing dozens and hundreds of faceless bandits over and over and emptying endless numbers of barrels and chests standing around everywhere. But when you take away this senseless padding and look just at the plot, the behavior of the characters does match.
It also should work perfectly in a Dark Sun campaign. Though obviously this one was designed to be the postapocalyptic version of a generic D&D world.

NichG
2018-09-05, 02:49 AM
I tend to run campaigns where the ultimate goals end up being about changing fundamental aspects of what it means to exist in some form or other. In the fantasy context, these tend to correspond to fictional stories about the industrial revolution (e.g. 'we had this stereotypical fantasy kingdom, but then someone introduced sanitation, the printing press, mass production, automation, and modern medicine - what does the transition look like?'). But it could also be mythological things like the sorts of stories about how the seasons came to be. I've had arcs of campaigns such as 'The embodiment of Death died, and the other gods are still busy looking for a replacement. What are you guys going to do about it?' or 'Conservation of detail is a real in-setting phenomenon and as a natural resource it's being stretched thin by growing populations and elaborate multiverse type settings, go do something about it.' or 'The powers of Fate got a little overzealous and now causality has been inverted: it is now the future which determines the past. You're the people who were alive during the moment the flip happened, the last beings in the universe with real agency, as both directions of time are both future and past to you. Go meddle in your own timeline to create the world you want to see.'

That said, I have difficulty figuring out how to scale this stuff down. If I specify cosmic, impossible problems and then let the players have cosmic, impossible powers, then there's a tension that sustains the game in the form of the 'what would we need to solve this obviously impossible thing (and how do we get it, and are we willing to live in a world where its a thing)?' puzzle. That tension replaces the usual 'are we going to win?' tension of a combat or other sort of overt adversarial conflict. For smaller scale things, I don't feel like I have as many options to use which still have interesting moments of agency. A lot of the person-scale fiction that isn't about conflict ends up being about perseverance under adversity, which doesn't convert well to a game format.

I do tend to like heists and mysteries for the smaller scale, but they both require a bit too much prep in order to make them the bread and butter of an entire campaign.

Yora
2018-09-05, 06:52 AM
My lofty vision is a campaign in which people avoid the unexplored wilderness because they know that its the home of strange and dangerous spirits that are really the masters of the world. But when the PCs get there, they realize they had not even the slightest clue how strange and dangerous the vast majority of the world really is, and how small the familiar safety of their homelands.

The best approach I can think of is to instruct the players to create characters who think "There is something out there in the trees beyond the river. And it worries me."

One option is to go full out unplanned storygame sandbox as is suggested in Apocalypse World and just riff off whatever crazy theories the players chatter about during play. But that has me really afraid of it all ending up like X-Files or Lost with everything getting swamped in an incomprehensible and inconsistent mess. Though on the other hand, you can never come up in advance with something as compelling as what the players conjecture while rilling each other up in panic.

Filraen
2018-09-06, 04:50 PM
I'm really enjoying running a Curse of Strahd 5e campaign right now, with a group of mostly new players who are much more invested in storylines than they are in killing things. I've pegged leveling up to milestones rather than XP or combat encounters... which is great because they've talked their way out of or ran away from every single potential combat encounter save two really easy random ones. I also have a strong bent towards collaborative storytelling so this works well for all involved. Sure, they're probably going to have an epic battle at the very end (if they survive) but it'll be all the more satisfying for everything they're going to learn about the land, its people, and their parts in it.

I tend to incentivize non-combat solutions and make social interplay interesting by calling on checks regularly when they are trying to do something where failure will make a difference in outcome. ("Please make a persuasion check to mollify the baron who caught you sneaking into his mansion.") However, if they're just trying to do something where they could do it over and over again enough to succeed, and success or failure won't make a difference in the outcome, then I tend to just narrate what they did and not have people rolling unnecessarily all the time. (Strategy props to the Angry GM blog.)

I realize this can strike some as over-lenient with regards to the rules, but like I said, my players are more invested in the storytelling and character-playing aspects, which seems to be within your interest as well. I would echo the above in that it can depend on who you're playing with. But also, letting players know or dropping obvious hints that combat is... not the best way to solve things. (Like making their kills have severe consequences. Oh, that goblin horde you wiped out two sessions ago? Great, now you've triggered full-scale raids on the nearby villages. Why does this sound familiar... don't mind me, just finished re-reading "Why the Paladin Got His Scar".)

I like your lofty vision. That sounds like something that might be a lot of fun if you're okay improvising a lot. In my experience, stories can come together surprisingly well even if you don't plan things out beforehand. I may or may not be a Nanowrimo veteran.

Koo Rehtorb
2018-09-06, 05:04 PM
I'm really enjoying running a Curse of Strahd 5e campaign right now, with a group of mostly new players who are much more invested in storylines than they are in killing things. I've pegged leveling up to milestones rather than XP or combat encounters... which is great because they've talked their way out of or ran away from every single potential combat encounter save two really easy random ones. I also have a strong bent towards collaborative storytelling so this works well for all involved. Sure, they're probably going to have an epic battle at the very end (if they survive) but it'll be all the more satisfying for everything they're going to learn about the land, its people, and their parts in it.

I tend to incentivize non-combat solutions and make social interplay interesting by calling on checks regularly when they are trying to do something where failure will make a difference in outcome. ("Please make a persuasion check to mollify the baron who caught you sneaking into his mansion.") However, if they're just trying to do something where they could do it over and over again enough to succeed, and success or failure won't make a difference in the outcome, then I tend to just narrate what they did and not have people rolling unnecessarily all the time. (Strategy props to the Angry GM blog.)

Might I suggest trying a system that actively supports what you're doing here instead of fighting you on it? D&D in general, and 3-5e in particular, are designed for fighting things.

Mordar
2018-09-06, 05:20 PM
Since you've mentioned Pendragon, and are clearly at least open to the idea of reshaping Call of C'thulhu...there is something that might provide another middle ground option.

The Stormbringer/Elric game from (initially) Chaosium and later Mongoose offers a much less Murderhobo style game against the backdrop of an established world (though probably not familiar to many players, especially the sub-40 year old set) that is rife with political opportunity and still uncivilized enough to provide for exploration. The system - particularly the chaosium version - lends itself to improvement by means other than stabbing goblins in the head...but your more combat-seeking players can still have enough fighting to be entertained.

- M

PhoenixPhyre
2018-09-06, 05:28 PM
Honestly, the only combat/loot focused people I've played with have been the grognards. All the new players have been focused on making a mark on the world. And that's playing bog-standard 5e D&D.

It's much more about the culture of the table in my experience rather than the exact rule system.



I tend to incentivize non-combat solutions and make social interplay interesting by calling on checks regularly when they are trying to do something where failure will make a difference in outcome. ("Please make a persuasion check to mollify the baron who caught you sneaking into his mansion.") However, if they're just trying to do something where they could do it over and over again enough to succeed, and success or failure won't make a difference in the outcome, then I tend to just narrate what they did and not have people rolling unnecessarily all the time. (Strategy props to the Angry GM blog.)


This isn't just an Angry GM thing--this is the exact advice in the 5e DMG. Checks are supposed to only be called for things where

a) there's a decent chance of failure (but it's not guaranteed)
b) failure is interesting

The DM is supposed to tread the middle ground between "roll for everything" and "roll to persuade the DM"-style whim-based decision-making.

SimonMoon6
2018-09-07, 06:58 AM
TORG was an interesting game system that really pushed for the "cinematic" play style.

However, it is fairly heavily tied into its particular setting.

Zombimode
2018-09-07, 09:15 AM
Which is where I think that the system really matters. D&D is based on the core premise of "defeat enemy, gain XP, get advancement". This doesn't really lend itself to a campaign where the story takes two or three year long breaks on a regular basis.

I have no idea how you can reach this conclusion.

"defeat enemy overcame challenge, gain XP, get advancement" is an underlying structure for the game Portion of the RPG package. The first to parts are not even neccesary for D&D, as "you Level up when the GM says so" is a workable method.
Sure, overcoming challanges and getting some kind of advancement influence the type of stories that emerge during play. It does not however prevent the roleplay of actual characters (instead of gamepieces) or sophisticated stories or settings.

If you think that changing System or modifying Systems will (by itself) lead to a more mature roleplaying experience, you are deluding yourself.

The system matters very, very little. It is just a description layer. Ist influence is dwarfed by:
- the conceptual layer of both a) the Setting, and b) the narrative, which includes the GMs ability to execute their ideas
- the willingnes and ability of the Players interact with their own character, other Players characters, the Setting and the narrative. This is influence by the Players interrest in any of these.

All of this is independent of the description layer.

System is important, but it matters (only) a the preferencial layer. If you don't like interacting through the interface provided by the System, the quality of your roleplaying will be decreased. Same for the reverse.


If you still think that, lets say D&D (any Edition/the Edition you are mostly concerned with), somehow prevents mature characters/settings/naratives, take any CRPG that would fit your idea of a good PnP experience (taking the differences of the media into account, of course). Then ask yourself if switching the gamesystem to something else would Change anything about the characters, the Setting or the narrative.


The reason why I argue so vehemently against the notion of "D&D is a bad System for more mature themes, characters and Settings" is that it simply does not match my experience with D&D and other system in the last 14 years.

gkathellar
2018-09-07, 09:23 AM
Take a look at Legends of the Wulin. It's unusual in that it wants to replicate the narrative and poetic aspects of wuxia, rather than just having people do a lot of flips, so it gets ... weird (bonus points for being a Jenna Moran game).

For example, when you successfully attack someone, rather than doing damage, you cause "ripples." Ripples can describe physical wounds, but also things like spiritual imbalances and emotional turmoil, and the whole system of resolving them gets incredibly ad-hoc and bizarre.

I'm not necessarily recommending LotW as a game, to be clear, although it is very cool, but it's worth looking at just for the sheer strangeness of its ideas, given that it's a game built around an action subgenre.

Yora
2018-09-07, 09:59 AM
The Stormbringer/Elric game from (initially) Chaosium and later Mongoose offers a much less Murderhobo style game against the backdrop of an established world (though probably not familiar to many players, especially the sub-40 year old set) that is rife with political opportunity and still uncivilized enough to provide for exploration.


TORG was an interesting game system that really pushed for the "cinematic" play style.


Take a look at Legends of the Wulin. It's unusual in that it wants to replicate the narrative and poetic aspects of wuxia, rather than just having people do a lot of flips, so it gets ... weird

Please share with us what type of characters player play in the game, what they commonly do, and how the system gives them incentives to play in its specific style.

Koo Rehtorb
2018-09-07, 10:33 AM
The reason why I argue so vehemently against the notion of "D&D is a bad System for more mature themes, characters and Settings" is that it simply does not match my experience with D&D and other system in the last 14 years.

You can roleplay in anything. That doesn't make it a good system to facilitate such. You could roleplay in Monopoly if you want to, and if everyone is dedicated and committed to it then it might even be good roleplay. That doesn't mean you probably wouldn't have an easier and better time roleplaying in something that actually supports it.

gkathellar
2018-09-07, 12:08 PM
Blades in the Dark is another very non-murderhobo system. Shut Up & Sit Down has a good review/write up of it here. (https://www.shutupandsitdown.com/rpg-review-blades-in-the-dark/)


Please share with us what type of characters player play in the game, what they commonly do, and how the system gives them incentives to play in its specific style.

Sure. Legends of the Wulin is a mid-magic wuxia game that gets pretty heavily into Chinese folklore and cosmology (including, semi-notoriously, a bit of weird Taoist sex magic) without ever really involving gods or immortals or whatever.

The game mostly eschews attributes or combat-specific stats in favor of abilities granted by kung-fu, special equipment, one's personal virtues (including socially acceptable virtues like honor and also "dark virtues," like individualism because this is trying to be authentic), and a line-up of positive and negative conditions (which include things like hyperactive chi, physical wounds, emotional conflict, etc). A lot of focus goes into description as a source of mechanics - for instance, every set of physical techniques (an "external style") loses its bonuses against certain types of attack and defense, encouraging the opponent to try to determine those weaknesses and seek them out. There's no HP system at all, and instead, attacks cause ripples which then cause certain penalizing conditions - or just Defeat Means Frienship!

All characters with stats are reasonably skilled kung-fu practitioners, but PCs also have a class (Warrior, Doctor, Priest, Courtier, or Scholar) which grants them access to various "secret arts" related to their profession. Everyone starts with one external and one internal style, the latter of which you develop to learn cool moves from. As you learn more and stronger kung fu, your chi gets stronger, which includes normal chi, various types of elemental chi required to power elemental kung fu, "corrupt" chi that's super-versatile but EVIL, and enlightened chi, which is really expensive but the strongest chi of all. There's a very loose leveling system built around a point-system, in which one's overall power, or rank, is determined by total "destiny" accumulated, and that destiny is in turn spent on particular things, including skills, kung fu, more secrets arts, and "lore sheets."

Lore sheets are basically packages of in-character knowledge and connections to the world bought piecemeal or as a whole - for example, the "Heavenly Sword Society" lore sheet might provide knowledge of secret kung fu, organizational clout with the society, apprenticeship with a famous sword master, ownership (provisional or permanent) of one of the society's famous blades, or access to a special virtue. Other lore sheets might include institutions like "the Imperial Army," religious affiliations like "Taoism," or "Buddhism," or initiation into secret knowledge.

LotW is not a well-organized system, and it has a few problems, but it's also really interesting for just how heavily it leans on its genre for mechanical inspiration, rather than the old RPG standbys. It also stresses true hearts and loyalty and shouting a lot about true hearts and loyalty, so, you know, I like that.

SimonMoon6
2018-09-07, 12:53 PM
Re: TORG


Please share with us what type of characters player play in the game, what they commonly do, and how the system gives them incentives to play in its specific style.

Describing TORG? This could take a while.

The kinds of characters that play in the game? Lots of different types.

It's best to describe the setting first. It is modern day (well back in the 1980s or 1990s) Earth. Then, some invaders from other universes arrive. As they do so, they overwrite our reality with their reality. In North America, the invaders are from a primitive dinosaur-based world. In England, the invaders are from a generic fantasy world. In Egypt, the invaders are from a "pulp heroes" world. In Japan, the invaders are from a "generic Japanese stuff" world. In Indonesia, the invaders are from a horror world. In France, the invaders are from an evil religious world that got co-opted by a cyberpunk world, creating an invading force of religious cyberpunk characters, led by the "Cyberpope".

Some people of Earth are rewritten by the local invading forces, becoming like characters from those worlds. The PCs are heroes who can resist changes in their reality. The PCs might be people from Earth, they might be people from Earth who were changed by the invading forces, or they might be good guys from those invading worlds who are here to help.

The overall goal of the PCs is to kick out the invaders. That's easier said than done, not just because the invaders are powerful and have huge armies. They can overwrite our reality through planting certain items called "stelae". When three stelae form a triangle, the invading reality's rules come rushing into the land inside the triangle. So, the PCs want to pull up the stelae and remove them, but there's a catch: that would cause the original reality to rush back, but if a person has their reality changed twice in this way (once by the invaders, once by kicking out the invaders), then they DIE. They just die. So, pure brute force won't work (even if the stelae can be found, which is another area of difficulty). However, people who have heard the great stories of the victories of the PCs can regain some of their own reality safely, so one goal of the PCs is to accomplish great goals and then tell everyone about it (and, yes, there are game mechanics for all of this).

But that's all long term goal stuff. In the short term, the PCs are trying to stop whatever current evil plans the badguys might be up to. (This is your "what they commonly do".) That might involve espionage, searching for clues, or talking to local magistrates. But, of course, there's also fighting because, you know, it is a role-playing game. Still, the use of non-combat skills is often just as important (or more) as combat, and the rules even try to make the use of such skills during an encounter dramatically interesting. Most "important" skill checks (like disarming a bomb before it goes off) will have four parts to success, generically labelled parts A, B, C, and D, but specific skill checks would have specific results for each part (like A: open the bomb case, B: decide which wire to cut, C: cut the wire... that sort of thing). Then, the deck of cards that comes with the game will allow you to try each part at different parts of the encounter (though you can try something that the deck doesn't allow, with a penalty).

A big part of the game is using the kinds of skills that we might think of as Charisma-based skill during combat. Maybe you try to "trick" the opponent in combat ("look over there!", "He's the impostor, not me", etc.). That's just one of many such skills you might use. The deck makes this a big part of combat, as each round, you will get a bonus when using a certain one of those skills and, if you're already good at such a skill, you often might as well try. These sorts of checks can have a variety of impacts on combat, usually small but often worthwhile.

I hope that's answered enough of your questions. I could go on forever...

Mordar
2018-09-07, 03:29 PM
Please share with us what type of characters player play in the game, what they commonly do, and how the system gives them incentives to play in its specific style.

Characters: Very low magic "fantasy" characters (can you say low magic and fantasy together?). Priests and wizard types are EXTREMELY rare, even for PCs. Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser would fit well here (even though they had wizardly patrons) as would Marco Polo, Sinbad, the Dread Pirate Roberts, Aragorn and Jason (of the Argonauts, not of the Friday the 13ths). From a personal perspective, I liked my traveling merchant and alchemist (more herbalist) characters.

What they do: Stormbringer supports standard fRPG play with the notable caveat that healing is not at D&D levels, so groups need to take care to not have the 4 big encounters per game day mentality. It also better supports (in my opinion) investigative, exploratory, and social play from a mechanical perspective. You can spend your game days searching for rare herbs for a special potion that will make you wealthy (while your erstwhile friend and bodyguard helps you), and you can arrange and manage a trade expedition across the sea. Yup, you'll probably find brigands, pirates, monsters and spies in the way of your goals, so you'll have to fight them too.

Yes, you can do all those things in all games. But Stormbringer (like Call of C'thulhu) uses a broad skill system that can encourage diversity in non-combat skills and rewards that diversity by its methodology of improvement. Instead of a system built on the idea of garnering EXP by offing opponents and taking their stuff (which, yes, you can handwave away or embrace the "obstacles" rules) and leveling up to new spells, feats and abilities, Stormbringer is a non-level based game where you improve the things you work on improving within the game. You get better at Bargain by bargaining, Performing by performing, and Club by clubbing, if you will. Furthermore, all the skills are handled in the same fashion, and while combat does get special attention, it is not at the same disproportionate level as say D&D.

Combined with the more limited ability to absorb damage/magic it away and earth-shattering PC spells flying about by level 5, the non-level nature and skill-based system do not encourage murderhobo or dungeon grind game play. In effect, it takes away the traditional drive to kill and loot as the dominating path to improvement and puts it on much more equal footing with other motivations. Thus it takes a lot less shoe-horning to make a mercantile game, or a political intrigue game, work in Stormbringer than it does in some other games. But you can still play a cool elemental gods vs. demons vs. Chaos gods game if you want to!

tl;dr: There are no levels, skill treatment and granularity allow non-combat skills to shine equally brightly, and limited magic limits chain-combat potential. Thus non-combat play isn't disincentivized.

- M

Arbane
2018-09-07, 05:32 PM
Stormbringer is _low_ fantasy?

Player characters can be demon-summoning sorcerers right out of the gate, the gods take a (semi-)active interest in what PCs are up to, the whole world is locked in a titanic struggle between Law and Chaos (Moorcock's works are one place Gygax nicked that from, the other is Poul Anderson) and travelling to alternate dimensions is possible, if not commonplace.

Mordar
2018-09-07, 06:58 PM
Stormbringer is _low_ fantasy?

Player characters can be demon-summoning sorcerers right out of the gate, the gods take a (semi-)active interest in what PCs are up to, the whole world is locked in a titanic struggle between Law and Chaos (Moorcock's works are one place Gygax nicked that from, the other is Poul Anderson) and travelling to alternate dimensions is possible, if not commonplace.

That's why I struggled with the naming convention. There is very potent magic in the world, but it isn't commonplace. There aren't magic shops selling scrolls and potions of miraculous things. You won't find a suit of +2 Chain Mail in a dungeon ready to wear, and your characters aren't shooting lightning bolts or curing grievous injuries with a touch. You could make your game more magical...allowing greater choice in profession, skewing attributes...but even then, it still isn't the same as a D&D Wizard/Cleric.

Yes, you could be able to summon some elementals out of the gate, but they are not great powers (initially), and certainly not with any great frequency. Properly following character creation methodology the chances of being a Priest/Sorcerer capable of such feats is about as likely as having Psionics in AD&D, perhaps slightly better. Sure, they put the "summoning" skill on the character sheet...but none of the characters in the two games I played got to use it.

As far as the Gods and dimension hopping (and even the whole priest/sorcerer thing) is concerned, if you use the tables to determine place of origin, those mostly only matter if you were one of the 5% of characters that were Melnibonean or Pan Tangian. Most of the Young Kingdom types didn't have to worry about such things. Maybe 10% of the non-Melnibonean/Pan Tangers were nobles or priests, and to be able to summon you still needed a pretty good Int and Pow. As far as the Godly struggles go...well, sure, but they seldom touch the lives of normal mortals. It is akin to playing Call of C'thulhu during the Great War or WWII...it forms the backdrop and perhaps influences stories, but your characters aren't intended to face the Kaiser or have tea with Mussolini.

- M

Cluedrew
2018-09-07, 09:02 PM
The reason why I argue so vehemently against the notion of "D&D is a bad System for more mature themes, characters and Settings" is that it simply does not match my experience with D&D and other system in the last 14 years.My early role-playing experience was freeform, take turns saying stuff and pretty much the only rule is to keep things consistent. I'm not sure what you mean by "mature" (you could have given it a E for Everyone rating) but we told lots of stories about character interactions, politics, "phycology", hacking and report cards. You don't really need support to do these things, you can do them on your own.

In fact D&D's attempts to provide support for these things have been such that I have seen arguments that it is impossible for a system to do better than simply get out of the way and let people free-form. (From people who had played other systems as well, so it isn't just D&D.) D&D basically has three systems in it: combat, spell casting and everything else. The everything else system is stretched rather thin. Of course if you find that it does do enough, I would like to hear about it. I'm really into system design and different perspectives are great.

I do agree with your other point though, system alone isn't going to make a change. But I think it could help.

Friv
2018-09-08, 12:27 AM
The system matters very, very little. It is just a description layer. Ist influence is dwarfed by:
- the conceptual layer of both a) the Setting, and b) the narrative, which includes the GMs ability to execute their ideas
- the willingnes and ability of the Players interact with their own character, other Players characters, the Setting and the narrative. This is influence by the Players interrest in any of these.

All of this is independent of the description layer.

How familiar are you with newer RPGs, especially those outside the largest publishers? There are a vast array of games out there for whom the system and setting are interwoven to the degree that they are effectively impossible to pull apart without substantial houseruling. A good system should support a desired style of play, and provide backing for the narratives that it suggests.

D&D provides a very specific system that supports a fairly specific playstyle. Just because you can use it for other styles doesn't mean that it does them as well as a game designed for them.

GunDragon
2018-09-08, 12:35 AM
I’ve always wanted to run play D&D in a modern setting with superhero characters to cure setting boredom. Mechanically I feel 3.5 can handle it with the following rules:

1. Your character must have a theme that fits with a modern superhero setting’s world. Spells, feats, etc need DM signoff. For the most part.
2. There will be dangerous amounts of homebrew involved which may or may get retconned in and out as we go
3. If you want to use your superpower (typically at level 1 you get a castX/day version of a spell or actionable ability of some sort as a freebie, with more uses as you level) in a different way to RAW, generally it’ll be a DC15 roll to learn how to do that if there is no other way to do it that can’t be reflavoured. Improvisation on the fly would be interesting.
4. Where fantasy based rules is incompatible or insufficient, we will kludge rules from guesstimations off mechanics and approximate ‘lets try this’ness

My main worry is that it would become slow to translate the game on the fly into a different one, plus it might limit players too much

I tried running a game like that using Pathfinder a couple of times. On both accounts, it was an absolute disaster.

NichG
2018-09-08, 02:17 AM
How familiar are you with newer RPGs, especially those outside the largest publishers? There are a vast array of games out there for whom the system and setting are interwoven to the degree that they are effectively impossible to pull apart without substantial houseruling. A good system should support a desired style of play, and provide backing for the narratives that it suggests.

D&D provides a very specific system that supports a fairly specific playstyle. Just because you can use it for other styles doesn't mean that it does them as well as a game designed for them.

D&D has a sort of hierarchical structure and diversity of hooks that honestly I rarely see in concept-systems which try to express a certain genre. A lot of those concept games end up falling on the side of being too general or too specific. D&D, perhaps because of its incoherent development history, seems often to fail more gracefully when homebrew is factored in.

E.g. to add bureaucratic power struggles over the fate of humanity to Last Stand, a game about fighting Kaiju, I'd have to graft on a totally disconnected subsystem from scratch that interprets throwaway fluff statements about battle powers and decides which if any should transfer to human interaction. To add a kingdom management element or a logistics puzzle to Fate I'm going to end up fighting the 'everything is an Aspect' design philosophy which is otherwise uniformly applied.

With D&D, the game structure can sort of be fine-grained or coarse-grained conditionally, and abilities sort of work across levels. E.g. I can still figure out how much Wall of Stone helps someone construct a palace even if it wasn't really made for that purpose. So if I make a subsystem about disaster management in typhoons and tsunamis, there's still stuff in the base system that connects despite not being designed for it.

I don't think it's impossible for concept games to have that property, but it doesn't seem to be something that most niche designers explicitly try to achieve.