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SunderedWorldDM
2020-04-26, 09:40 PM
I have just a couple free questions I want to hear the Playground's thoughts on regarding both RPG rules and diegetic information in the game!

1) What should an RPG publisher/game designer/homebrewer do to help make their mechanics digestible and easy to understand? How do you structure and order of release of information to allow for easy, intuitive and quick comprehension? (I ask because I'm working on a major overhaul to the 5e spell system and I'm hitting a wall where my ideas all make sense in my head, but look disjointed and random and hard to parse out on paper.)

2) When you're running/playing in an RPG, how do you handle/feel about the flow of information, particularly when it comes to backstory and lore as well as big, significant reveals? How do you treat and use the flow of information as a commodity and a tool in your games, and players, what are some moments you feel your DM let you down or really did a good job with how (or when? or why?) they conveyed some key bit of information? (I ask because I'm running a rather complex campaign and I want to learn tip on how to not overwhelm my players and make sure that they're satisfied with the flow of information and how they're receiving it.)

Thanks!

PairO'Dice Lost
2020-04-27, 11:20 AM
1) What should an RPG publisher/game designer/homebrewer do to help make their mechanics digestible and easy to understand? How do you structure and order of release of information to allow for easy, intuitive and quick comprehension? (I ask because I'm working on a major overhaul to the 5e spell system and I'm hitting a wall where my ideas all make sense in my head, but look disjointed and random and hard to parse out on paper.)

The structure and order of system information like that isn't all that important, honestly. D&D-inspired RPGs have been doing this thing for years where they expect you to come up with a concept and then build a character based on that, but put races/classes/etc. near the front of the book, combat and magic near the back of the book, character inspiration somewhere in the middle, and setting information in an entirely separate book, and people have been getting by just fine, through inertia if nothing else.

The key thing is ease of reference. If you have a comprehensive index and glossary, well-defined terms with pointers to more information, consistent formatting to call out game-relevant terms, concise descriptions that separate rules text from flavor text, and so forth, ideally with a summary/introduction bit at the beginning with pointers to everything important, players will be able to pick whatever entry point they want (the casting classes, the magic fluff, the spell list, etc.) and get to anywhere else they need to from there.


2) When you're running/playing in an RPG, how do you handle/feel about the flow of information, particularly when it comes to backstory and lore as well as big, significant reveals? How do you treat and use the flow of information as a commodity and a tool in your games, and players, what are some moments you feel your DM let you down or really did a good job with how (or when? or why?) they conveyed some key bit of information? (I ask because I'm running a rather complex campaign and I want to learn tip on how to not overwhelm my players and make sure that they're satisfied with the flow of information and how they're receiving it.)

For background lore, I find that out-of-campaign materials and handouts are much better than exposition dumps. I make a campaign wiki for every campaign I run, and whenever the group runs into a new individual/faction/creature/plot point/etc. I give the minimal necessary rundown during the game and answer any upfront questions and then update the wiki between sessions with more background details for later reference.

For plot hooks and updates, I use lots of handouts like letters, diagrams, newspaper articles, and similar. If a contact sends the PCs a letter, it's much more memorable (both in the "cool in retrospect" sense and the "they'll recall this two sessions from now" sense) if they get an actual physical or digital letter in the character's own words with a fancy seal and such than if I just say "You get a letter that says X." Doing this also lets me hide side details in handouts as foreshadowing or give out minor setting details to make things come alive, and the players' desire to hunt for hints in said handouts helps with immersion and investment.

Spellweaver
2020-04-27, 12:06 PM
1) What should an RPG publisher/game designer/homebrewer do to help make their mechanics digestible and easy to understand?

Well, my big pet peeve is to make it simple plain text with no fancy fonts or spacing and no, NO artwork. The game mechanics should be like important instructions for anything else. But having the page on ''the attack option" where 3/4 th of the page is a dwarf swinging an axe, with the text in little packets around that dwarf is a bad idea.

Sidebars are helpful to explain things, even better the ''out of the rules" text.

Examples are a big one. But not just one example, like maybe three. And you don't need a ''five page adventure", where just a paragraph will do.

A mini adventure is a great idea, like a simple tower ruins, where you can play a character through it, and all the rules are full of easy rule helps and explanations.





2) When you're running/playing in an RPG, how do you handle/feel about the flow of information, particularly when it comes to backstory and lore as well as big, significant reveals?


I love story and go for the overload story experience. My game works best with that type of player too.

I like to spread out story, lore and information slowly.....but then I also plan on a long game....like "ok, we will meet every week to play the game forever (unless a global pandemic hits...)" and not the casual "ok, we will play a time or two until everyone gets bored then do something else".

SunderedWorldDM
2020-04-27, 02:18 PM
The structure and order of system information like that isn't all that important, honestly. D&D-inspired RPGs have been doing this thing for years where they expect you to come up with a concept and then build a character based on that, but put races/classes/etc. near the front of the book, combat and magic near the back of the book, character inspiration somewhere in the middle, and setting information in an entirely separate book, and people have been getting by just fine, through inertia if nothing else.

The key thing is ease of reference. If you have a comprehensive index and glossary, well-defined terms with pointers to more information, consistent formatting to call out game-relevant terms, concise descriptions that separate rules text from flavor text, and so forth, ideally with a summary/introduction bit at the beginning with pointers to everything important, players will be able to pick whatever entry point they want (the casting classes, the magic fluff, the spell list, etc.) and get to anywhere else they need to from there.
Good to know, thanks. I'm trying to do that with this, but what's really making me struggle is when to introduce what information: I have plenty of easy-to-digest tables and lists and examples and blocks of mechanical text, but I can't find a rhythm where the flow of information is really easy to follow and intuitive: for example, where do I put the list of each spellcasting class with associated mechanics, before or after the glossary explaining those mechanics? And should I put the example spellcaster between those or after those or before those, and where does this table go, and how should the doodad reference the blah blah blah? All of those sorts of nuances are what's evading me.



For background lore, I find that out-of-campaign materials and handouts are much better than exposition dumps. I make a campaign wiki for every campaign I run, and whenever the group runs into a new individual/faction/creature/plot point/etc. I give the minimal necessary rundown during the game and answer any upfront questions and then update the wiki between sessions with more background details for later reference.

For plot hooks and updates, I use lots of handouts like letters, diagrams, newspaper articles, and similar. If a contact sends the PCs a letter, it's much more memorable (both in the "cool in retrospect" sense and the "they'll recall this two sessions from now" sense) if they get an actual physical or digital letter in the character's own words with a fancy seal and such than if I just say "You get a letter that says X." Doing this also lets me hide side details in handouts as foreshadowing or give out minor setting details to make things come alive, and the players' desire to hunt for hints in said handouts helps with immersion and investment.
I love the idea of handouts! Maybe running an online game will make it easier: give them a well-formatted Google Doc to make it look like a parchment letter instead of having to age the paper with coffee and write out the calligraphy by hand and such.


Well, my big pet peeve is to make it simple plain text with no fancy fonts or spacing and no, NO artwork. The game mechanics should be like important instructions for anything else. But having the page on ''the attack option" where 3/4 th of the page is a dwarf swinging an axe, with the text in little packets around that dwarf is a bad idea.

Sidebars are helpful to explain things, even better the ''out of the rules" text.

Examples are a big one. But not just one example, like maybe three. And you don't need a ''five page adventure", where just a paragraph will do.

A mini adventure is a great idea, like a simple tower ruins, where you can play a character through it, and all the rules are full of easy rule helps and explanations.
All great ideas, especially with the bit on brevity! And a sample adventure is a great idea, I may even be able to use it to explain my magic system.


I love story and go for the overload story experience. My game works best with that type of player too.

I like to spread out story, lore and information slowly.....but then I also plan on a long game....like "ok, we will meet every week to play the game forever (unless a global pandemic hits...)" and not the casual "ok, we will play a time or two until everyone gets bored then do something else".
Me too, that's how I go about things. Though I'm more pragmatic and tend to do a lot of front-loading to get the plot rolls moving and get into the real bulk of the campaign as soon as I can. One of my biggest beef with WotC adventures is that you only get to the things that are on the cover, that make you excited to run the adventure, after a couple levels of play, which could be months. When I use modules as inspiration, I always work to get people into what they want as quickly as possible. No one wants to wait three months before a giant attack in SKT, and no one wants to mess around with a dragon cult in a village in RoT.

Quertus
2020-04-27, 03:34 PM
1) Were I to write my own RPG…

A) I would upcase any Key Words. I would use these Key Words consistently, so that they always had the same meaning. In fact, since they clearly have a meaning, I might even bother with defining them.

B) I would include explicit "Rules As Intended"; that is, you wouldn't have to wonder what the designer intended, as it would be explicitly stated. Somewhere. (If they're playing for a hard copy, I would keep the inline RAI discussions minimal, to save on print costs)

C) when someone pointed out an aberration in the rules, I would clarify and/or fix ("no, I actually intended 'drown healing', to represent that scene where Fezzik revives Inigo. However, if you really *want* to remove that level of Awesome from your game, replace the text of drowning with the following:…" or "… yeah, maybe Daern's Instant Fortress shouldn't do 10d10 points of dawizzard; I'll fix it in errata".

D) as others have said, little is more important than the index. If you must make Soylent Green references in your index, fine - just, you know, make sure that the actual *quality* exists before you start adding in art. It really doesn't matter to me whether or not the operation was successful *if the patient is dead*.

E) I would go back through the Playground, and make the opening page contain some of the best advice. Then I'd make a sparkly page in the middle, with similar purpose.

2) This is a big topic. And I lost my first reply to a phone "hiccup". Short version is, there's layers of understanding, from "data" to "wisdom". Knowing which layer to operate at at any given moment, and how - and, perhaps more importantly, whether - to deal with misunderstandings, and knowing how to configure your game to optimize your ability to recognize misunderstandings in the first place are the key factors here.

PairO'Dice Lost
2020-04-27, 03:41 PM
Good to know, thanks. I'm trying to do that with this, but what's really making me struggle is when to introduce what information: I have plenty of easy-to-digest tables and lists and examples and blocks of mechanical text, but I can't find a rhythm where the flow of information is really easy to follow and intuitive: for example, where do I put the list of each spellcasting class with associated mechanics, before or after the glossary explaining those mechanics? And should I put the example spellcaster between those or after those or before those, and where does this table go, and how should the doodad reference the blah blah blah? All of those sorts of nuances are what's evading me.

Think of things in terms of how a player would approach building a character in the standard rules. If you want to build an arcane caster, you'd first look at the class descriptions to get a basic idea of mechanics and themes, then probably check the spell lists to see what you can do. If you have any questions as to how certain things work, you'd check the "how do I spellcasting" section in the magic chapter; if you have any questions about definitions, you'd check the glossary. And so on.

Another way to think of it is organizing everything by commonality of reference. A wizard is going to need to reference class stuff all the time, because he's a wizard all the time, so group that together up front; he'll need to reference spell stuff less frequently, because he doesn't know all the spells and doesn't use all the spells he knows all the time, so group that together but it can be elsewhere in the writeup; he'll need to reference arcane minutiae very infrequently, usually just when there's an edge-case spell or class feature interaction, so that can be scattered around where it makes sense and he can use the index to find it; and so forth.

It's kind of hard to be more specific than that without knowing what your revision consists of. If you want to do an unfiltered brain-dump of everything you have (section headers and table names and such, not all the actual material), we can help you arrange things appropriately.


I love the idea of handouts! Maybe running an online game will make it easier: give them a well-formatted Google Doc to make it look like a parchment letter instead of having to age the paper with coffee and write out the calligraphy by hand and such.

I use PDFs, personally, because you don't have to worry about it rendering differently on different-sized screens or with different font renderers and such, you can just find one "aged parchment" background you like and just use that for all your handouts, and you can attach them more easily to wikis and group chats and such.

SunderedWorldDM
2020-04-27, 03:54 PM
1) Were I to write my own RPG…

A) I would upcase any Key Words. I would use these Key Words consistently, so that they always had the same meaning. In fact, since they clearly have a meaning, I might even bother with defining them.
Wow, that is in fact EXACTLY what I am doing, with the added layer of certain special effects having special formatting (Spells are Always Italicized, "Tags are in Quotes"). I find that's going a long way towards keeping things straight. (Though it's hard to train myself to always capitalize Spells...)


B) I would include explicit "Rules As Intended"; that is, you wouldn't have to wonder what the designer intended, as it would be explicitly stated. Somewhere. (If they're playing for a hard copy, I would keep the inline RAI discussions minimal, to save on print costs)
A great idea.


C) when someone pointed out an aberration in the rules, I would clarify and/or fix ("no, I actually intended 'drown healing', to represent that scene where Fezzik revives Inigo. However, if you really *want* to remove that level of Awesome from your game, replace the text of drowning with the following:…" or "… yeah, maybe Daern's Instant Fortress shouldn't do 10d10 points of dawizzard; I'll fix it in errata".
As all homebrewers should... yes yes, keen idea.


D) as others have said, little is more important than the index. If you must make Soylent Green references in your index, fine - just, you know, make sure that the actual *quality* exists before you start adding in art. It really doesn't matter to me whether or not the operation was successful *if the patient is dead*.
A good, clean index. Got it.


E) I would go back through the Playground, and make the opening page contain some of the best advice. Then I'd make a sparkly page in the middle, with similar purpose.
Alrighty. Not as applicable to a new 5e spell system, but I bet I can do that and make it meaningful.


2) This is a big topic. And I lost my first reply to a phone "hiccup". Short version is, there's layers of understanding, from "data" to "wisdom". Knowing which layer to operate at at any given moment, and how - and, perhaps more importantly, whether - to deal with misunderstandings, and knowing how to configure your game to optimize your ability to recognize misunderstandings in the first place are the key factors here.
Ooh, seems like a lot of juicy stuff got left out- care to expand?


Think of things in terms of how a player would approach building a character in the standard rules. If you want to build an arcane caster, you'd first look at the class descriptions to get a basic idea of mechanics and themes, then probably check the spell lists to see what you can do. If you have any questions as to how certain things work, you'd check the "how do I spellcasting" section in the magic chapter; if you have any questions about definitions, you'd check the glossary. And so on.
Oh, that's interesting- so follow the flow someone would use when making a character. I didn't think about it that way, that'll make things flow a lot better.


Another way to think of it is organizing everything by commonality of reference. A wizard is going to need to reference class stuff all the time, because he's a wizard all the time, so group that together up front; he'll need to reference spell stuff less frequently, because he doesn't know all the spells and doesn't use all the spells he knows all the time, so group that together but it can be elsewhere in the writeup; he'll need to reference arcane minutiae very infrequently, usually just when there's an edge-case spell or class feature interaction, so that can be scattered around where it makes sense and he can use the index to find it; and so forth.
Okay, okay, gotcha gotcha. So also think about order of importance and significance of use- multiclassing stuff can be in the middle of nowhere, but the new class ability for the wizard can't be.


t's kind of hard to be more specific than that without knowing what your revision consists of. If you want to do an unfiltered brain-dump of everything you have (section headers and table names and such, not all the actual material), we can help you arrange things appropriately.
I have a thread in the Homebrew tab where I'm sort of doing those sorts of things, if you want to check it out, but until I get all the fiddly numbers down and all the information a DM will need actually recorded and not in my head, I won't put out a "master published edition" for editing critique. Though if you're interested in the really rough, sketchy homebrew itself (spoiler: there's no more spell lists, or even spells, kind of), then by all means check it out!

As far as headers go, here's a short list:
-Basic walkthrough (I've qritten out the system as if I'm talking to a new player)
-Glossary of important terms (things like "what is a Caster Bonus?" or "what does a Repository do?")
-List of each class with important traits (full caster, Tags, all that jazz)
-Table with Mana Points per level for full/half/third casters
-Adjudicating a Spell (guidelines for a DM making sense of what a Spell does)
-Multiclassing rules
-Example 3rd level character
-Example combat situation with that character
-Example leveling up (currently an example of leveling into a multiclass)
-Perhaps an example adventure with sample character? Maybe like "here's how you can use your Spells in unusual ways" and "here's an example of what would happen if you found a scroll and tried to learn it"
-A handy guide, "How Many Spells Should I Know Right This Second?"
-A new trait that some classes get, Sundry Lore

That's all I have now, though as the project becomes more evolved, more things will inevitably arise.


I use PDFs, personally, because you don't have to worry about it rendering differently on different-sized screens or with different font renderers and such, you can just find one "aged parchment" background you like and just use that for all your handouts, and you can attach them more easily to wikis and group chats and such.
Oh, that's another keen idea. Seems like it would be easier than a google doc, you're right.

Telok
2020-04-27, 05:00 PM
Compare, contrast, take the best, scrap the worst.

I found it... eye opening... to sit down with three editions of PH & DMG to look at how rule writing had changed.

Do things like ask "what are the cleric fire spells, what do they do, how do they compare to druid fire spells", then pay attention to how much page flipping you do and how easy it is to use the lists. Try figuring out what happens if pcs riding pegasi fight goblins riding giant vampire bats and see what was easier to comprehend. The party is going to trek across a desert hire a sage who knows and acient language and take a boat to an island, then see what the books tell the players and the DM and figure out what questions each one leaves unanswered.

SunderedWorldDM
2020-04-27, 06:22 PM
Compare, contrast, take the best, scrap the worst.

I found it... eye opening... to sit down with three editions of PH & DMG to look at how rule writing had changed.

Do things like ask "what are the cleric fire spells, what do they do, how do they compare to druid fire spells", then pay attention to how much page flipping you do and how easy it is to use the lists. Try figuring out what happens if pcs riding pegasi fight goblins riding giant vampire bats and see what was easier to comprehend. The party is going to trek across a desert hire a sage who knows and acient language and take a boat to an island, then see what the books tell the players and the DM and figure out what questions each one leaves unanswered.
That's a fantastic idea, but sadly, the best I got is 2 editions of the DMG, and they're wildly different. Care to give a Hightlight Reel of what you learned?

PairO'Dice Lost
2020-04-27, 09:09 PM
As far as headers go, here's a short list:
-Basic walkthrough (I've qritten out the system as if I'm talking to a new player)
-Glossary of important terms (things like "what is a Caster Bonus?" or "what does a Repository do?")
-List of each class with important traits (full caster, Tags, all that jazz)
-Table with Mana Points per level for full/half/third casters
-Adjudicating a Spell (guidelines for a DM making sense of what a Spell does)
-Multiclassing rules
-Example 3rd level character
-Example combat situation with that character
-Example leveling up (currently an example of leveling into a multiclass)
-Perhaps an example adventure with sample character? Maybe like "here's how you can use your Spells in unusual ways" and "here's an example of what would happen if you found a scroll and tried to learn it"
-A handy guide, "How Many Spells Should I Know Right This Second?"
-A new trait that some classes get, Sundry Lore

That's all I have now, though as the project becomes more evolved, more things will inevitably arise.

Here's how I would arrange all that:

1) Player section
- Basic walkthrough
- Basic magic mechanics
- Sample character(s)
- Sample encounters from the player side (creativity/tactics advice)

2) Character section
- Class lists and traits
- Mana tables
- Multiclassing rules
- Guide to leveling characters

3) Mechanics section
- Detailed magic mechanics
- Advice on magic use

4) Reference section
- Glossary and explanations
- Spell adjudication guidelines
- Sample encounters from the DM side (rule/scenario advice)

The reasons for that layout are thus:

1) The ordering allows a newbie to easily get the hang of things if they just start reading from the beginning. It starts with a general idea of what they're getting into, explains how the magic works, and goes over possible character concepts and uses of magic, since you want to hook people early on. The next section puts rules to the previous explanations by showing them different ways to manipulate magic (the classes), explains their resources (which comes after classes because most people decide whether they want to be a wizard or gish first, they don't look at resource tables to decide that), and then explains how to combine all of that with multiple classes and plan for the future.

Once they know what kind of magic they'll be working with, they get the nitty-gritty details of the magic system, which isn't too overwhelming because they know what their own character can do and can focus on those parts primarily. All of that will probably bring up questions about edge cases and complexity, which the next section answers in various ways. Finally, the player can see the kinds of challenges they might go up against, having synthesized what came before, and be ready to play.

2) The sections organize everything by complexity and referenceability. You have the walkthrough (which only needs to be read once), character creation stuff (which will need to be referenced a lot, but mostly during leveling), new player stuff (which newbies will reference a lot during downtime and experienced players probably won't reference much), in-play stuff (which will need to be referenced a lot during play), and DM-facing stuff (which players will rarely need to reference but DMs will).

This breaks things nicely into "primarily downtime reference" (1 and 2) and "primarily in-play reference" (3 and 4) sections, to limit the necessary physical or virtual page-flipping, and the "outer" halves of each (1 and 4) are less likely to be referenced with more play experience, meaning that a player can easily open the printout/PDF/etc. to somewhere in the middle and move around from there to find what they need rather than having to hunt around for lots of different pages,

SunderedWorldDM
2020-04-27, 10:58 PM
Here's how I would arrange all that:

1) Player section
- Basic walkthrough
- Basic magic mechanics
- Sample character(s)
- Sample encounters from the player side (creativity/tactics advice)

2) Character section
- Class lists and traits
- Mana tables
- Multiclassing rules
- Guide to leveling characters

3) Mechanics section
- Detailed magic mechanics
- Advice on magic use

4) Reference section
- Glossary and explanations
- Spell adjudication guidelines
- Sample encounters from the DM side (rule/scenario advice)

What would "Basic Casting Mechanics" include, in this case? I know you don't know the system, but where should I draw the line? Should I explain everything here, just the things that all casters need to know, only the core casting mechanic (spend Mana Points to cast spells), what?


The reasons for that layout are thus:

1) The ordering allows a newbie to easily get the hang of things if they just start reading from the beginning. It starts with a general idea of what they're getting into, explains how the magic works, and goes over possible character concepts and uses of magic, since you want to hook people early on. The next section puts rules to the previous explanations by showing them different ways to manipulate magic (the classes), explains their resources (which comes after classes because most people decide whether they want to be a wizard or gish first, they don't look at resource tables to decide that), and then explains how to combine all of that with multiple classes and plan for the future.

Once they know what kind of magic they'll be working with, they get the nitty-gritty details of the magic system, which isn't too overwhelming because they know what their own character can do and can focus on those parts primarily. All of that will probably bring up questions about edge cases and complexity, which the next section answers in various ways. Finally, the player can see the kinds of challenges they might go up against, having synthesized what came before, and be ready to play.
Great! Makes a lot of sense.


2) The sections organize everything by complexity and referenceability. You have the walkthrough (which only needs to be read once), character creation stuff (which will need to be referenced a lot, but mostly during leveling), new player stuff (which newbies will reference a lot during downtime and experienced players probably won't reference much), in-play stuff (which will need to be referenced a lot during play), and DM-facing stuff (which players will rarely need to reference but DMs will).

This breaks things nicely into "primarily downtime reference" (1 and 2) and "primarily in-play reference" (3 and 4) sections, to limit the necessary physical or virtual page-flipping, and the "outer" halves of each (1 and 4) are less likely to be referenced with more play experience, meaning that a player can easily open the printout/PDF/etc. to somewhere in the middle and move around from there to find what they need rather than having to hunt around for lots of different pages,
Killer. I'll be sure to reformat it something pretty close this. I really appreciate it!

PairO'Dice Lost
2020-04-27, 11:17 PM
What would "Basic Casting Mechanics" include, in this case? I know you don't know the system, but where should I draw the line? Should I explain everything here, just the things that all casters need to know, only the core casting mechanic (spend Mana Points to cast spells), what?

The equivalent of Vancian magic's "you know a bunch of spells and learn more as you level or copy scrolls into your spellbook, you prepare a subset of those each day after sleeping, each prepared spell is cast exactly once, power level generally scales by your level" or 3e psionics' "you know a bunch of powers at a given level, you spend power points to manifest powers, more points equals more oomph, you can gain psionic focus and either hold it or expend it to use certain feats."

Basically, just enough detail that whenever they see a term for the first time in a class feature writeup or see the equivalent of a number in a Spells per Day column that they know what that vaguely means without having to read a bunch of in-depth mechanics up front or flip to the mechanics or glossary sections for an explanation every time.

SunderedWorldDM
2020-04-27, 11:29 PM
The equivalent of Vancian magic's "you know a bunch of spells and learn more as you level or copy scrolls into your spellbook, you prepare a subset of those each day after sleeping, each prepared spell is cast exactly once, power level generally scales by your level" or 3e psionics' "you know a bunch of powers at a given level, you spend power points to manifest powers, more points equals more oomph, you can gain psionic focus and either hold it or expend it to use certain feats."

Basically, just enough detail that whenever they see a term for the first time in a class feature writeup or see the equivalent of a number in a Spells per Day column that they know what that vaguely means without having to read a bunch of in-depth mechanics up front or flip to the mechanics or glossary sections for an explanation every time.
Neat-o. That's already encapsulated in the introduction, so that's really convenient.

When it's formatted and presentable, I'll put up a new thread in Homebrew for it and give you appropriate credit for the formatting assistance! Thanks so much. (Though of course, I'm still excited to hear what everyone else has to say on the matter, as even with this layout there's probably much to be improved!)

Telok
2020-04-28, 11:47 AM
That's a fantastic idea, but sadly, the best I got is 2 editions of the DMG, and they're wildly different. Care to give a Hightlight Reel of what you learned?
Part of the point is that the D&D books are so different at times, but they really (should) cover the same stuff.

Oog. It's been a long time. I'll see what I remember.

Ad&d DMG discussed probability, bell curves, and how different rolling methods in char gen could change a game. Nobody else did. Ad&d DMG discussed details some of the more problematic spells. Ad&d did castles sieges, troops, sages, and assassinations. 3e did build your own world and demographics, plus prestatted npcs to use. 4e DMG consolidated 3e multi-roll skill encounters but screwed the math up (these are all first printing books, supposedly the 4e got fixed a few years later) making long/hard tests easier to win than short/easy tests. Underwater activity was covered best in ad&d, 3e was annoying, and 4e basically didn't.

PH wise the ad&d spell lists were small enough that trends were noticable and comparison wasn't hard. 3e spell lists had that nice summary but many pages of spells, making alphabetical order a decent choice. 4e most of the book was "spells" and trying to compare fighter to ranger was a real pain of page flipping.

Ad&d proficency was 'no-penalty' or permission, fighters would be better with non-prof weapons than mages with prof weapons pretty early. 3e skills did better/worse early that morphed into yes/no at higher levels. 4e prof was a modest bonus unless feat/race/stuff stacked to +11 over the rest of the party, and the DCs rolled against scaled with level. Played straight you only truely cared about rolling high.

I got the feeling that things went from group & campaign & permission, through options & world & bonuses, to individuals & encounters & dice>player.

SunderedWorldDM
2020-04-28, 03:01 PM
Part of the point is that the D&D books are so different at times, but they really (should) cover the same stuff.

Oog. It's been a long time. I'll see what I remember.

Ad&d DMG discussed probability, bell curves, and how different rolling methods in char gen could change a game. Nobody else did. Ad&d DMG discussed details some of the more problematic spells. Ad&d did castles sieges, troops, sages, and assassinations. 3e did build your own world and demographics, plus prestatted npcs to use. 4e DMG consolidated 3e multi-roll skill encounters but screwed the math up (these are all first printing books, supposedly the 4e got fixed a few years later) making long/hard tests easier to win than short/easy tests. Underwater activity was covered best in ad&d, 3e was annoying, and 4e basically didn't.

PH wise the ad&d spell lists were small enough that trends were noticable and comparison wasn't hard. 3e spell lists had that nice summary but many pages of spells, making alphabetical order a decent choice. 4e most of the book was "spells" and trying to compare fighter to ranger was a real pain of page flipping.

Ad&d proficency was 'no-penalty' or permission, fighters would be better with non-prof weapons than mages with prof weapons pretty early. 3e skills did better/worse early that morphed into yes/no at higher levels. 4e prof was a modest bonus unless feat/race/stuff stacked to +11 over the rest of the party, and the DCs rolled against scaled with level. Played straight you only truely cared about rolling high.

I got the feeling that things went from group & campaign & permission, through options & world & bonuses, to individuals & encounters & dice>player.
Thanks a lot, this is helpful. If I decide to pile together my house rules into an RPG, I'll be sure to use these techniques.

SunderedWorldDM
2020-04-28, 05:29 PM
A note to anyone interested, I've finished the first draft of the spell system! Here it is, if you want to take a look. https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?611246-PEACH-my-new-freeform-spell-system-for-5e-(SWDM-System)