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Man_Over_Game
2021-03-24, 10:46 AM
So I've been mulling it over in my head, but what exactly decides whether an RPG is good or not?


From what I've gathered, there are two distinct categories of needs from an RPG: Support of the Story, and Support of the Game.

4E DnD, for instance, had terrible story but generally excellent support of the game (which is why many people associate it as a board game instead of an RPG).

While RPGs like World of Darkness are tuned for story, and instead don't have much "game" to win (it's certainly not a combat-oriented game).

And 5e DnD sits in the middle by attempting both, but doesn't really have much support for doing both at the same time (for example, using illusions or skills in combat isn't covered at all).

3.5e, FATE and 13th Age try to sit in that middle as well, but can end up being bogging folks down in rules in order to make everything function together.


So what makes an RPG good? Or are there always major sacrifices in every system, and it's really just about finding the right players for the right game?

MoiMagnus
2021-03-24, 11:12 AM
I'd add a third axis:

How good of a teacher the rulebook is. It doesn't matter if you have the perfect rule set if the player misunderstand the rules or, even worst, build expectations that the game cannot fulfil. A good session is due much more to a good GM than a good rule set, but a good rulebook actually help the GM to be good.

Jason
2021-03-24, 11:29 AM
A good RPG is one that fulfills its basic mission: presenting a set of rules to let players tell stories in a particular genre.

RPGs are bad when they fail to understand the genre they are trying to simulate, when they have big holes in the rules, or when they are confusing and badly organized.

Beyond that it's a matter of group taste. Some groups love the rules crunch, others like heavy story with very little crunch, and you won't get very far trying to run Paranoia for a group that wants to play Call of Cthulhu.

Telok
2021-03-24, 01:11 PM
The ratio of fun/disappointment/investment. Which, admittedly, is a complex map and highly subjective.

Personally, for me, in my opinion, as I experienced it:

Starfinder was billed to me as a Pathfinder system adaptation of Star Trek/Star Wars style space opera. The DMs had 4 to 12 books to play and it was a PF adaptation, meaning you should plan a character build before starting. Except it was also billed to me as not needing a full plan character build. I doubted that but accepted it for trying things out, and built a character following the instructions in the book and just choosing options that sounded fun. That didn't work so well.

The game was fun despite the system, not because of it. The system didn't deliver the advertised benefits (the people who wanted to run it took the adverts at face value and were selling the game to me on that basis). Mechanically there were a number of disappointments and frustrations, not all of which were related to how it was advertised to me. It's a heavy investment system, significantly different from other ogl d20s in places with lots of options and books. It also has lots of different moving parts, taking a fair bit of head space to play. The last important bit is that as a system it doesn't do anything new or amazingly well, and there were some things it did quite badly.

Personally, for me, in my opinion, as I experienced it, Starfinder is not a good system. I wouldn't say its bad, just that the interest/costs ratio for me doesn't get high enough to warrant any space on my shelves or hard-drive. It hits the level of "will play with a really fun DM, will not play with a rookie or hardline DM, will never personally DM, will not spend money on".

Jay R
2021-03-24, 01:37 PM
No game is merely "good", and very few games are merely "bad". An RPG is good for a set of players if it allows those players to do what they want to do in an RPG.

Champions is great for me, because it allows any kind of superhero I want to design. It is not good for many players because they find the math to be a burden.

Original D&D is great for me, with the right DM, because it's not so much a game as a framework for the DM to build a game with.

D&D3.5e is good for people who want a near-infinite set of options; it's a poor game for people who get bogged down in too many rules.

Pendragon is good for players who love the Arthurian mythos as written in the Middle Ages, but it's difficult to get into for players who want a modern approach.

Toon, Paranoia, Flashing Blades and many other games are great for the people who love those settings, and are in sympathy with the presentation of those settings in the game system.

The game that is good for you may be bad for me, and vice versa.

clash
2021-03-24, 02:03 PM
An rpg is good if it does what is advertised. That's it.

So an rpg that claims "complex system for mystery and intrigue" better give me a mystery and intrigue focused game. It should be rules heavy but still playable and offer the experience it advertises. A game that advertises itself as a light weight slice of life, should be very easy to start and play and have comedic themes built into the rules.

Stonehead
2021-03-24, 04:32 PM
This is such a high level, existential question that it borders on no-longer being useful, but I still think it's an interesting one to talk about.

This goes a bit farther than just rpgs, but I'd like to suggest that there's a difference between rpgs that are "good", and rpgs that are "liked". And I'm not just trying to be elitist or draw up arbitrary distinctions, although it may come across that way. Sorry in advance.

Obviously, there's a difference between objective traits and subjective traits (ie: DnD is fun vs DnD is a fantasy game). I'm not going to pretend that's a revolutionary idea, but a lot of times on discussion boards like this, people get so caught up in subjectivity, that any useful discussion becomes impossible. Like, if a prospective game designer comes to a board, and asks what makes a sci-fi game good, at first there may be a few examples of things people like. Next, other people will say they don't like those examples, and propose some different ones. A few pages of discussion later, they settle on the fact that nothing is objectively good and nothing is objectively bad, it's all just a matter of taste. Meanwhile, the original question asker has gotten nothing useful from the discussion.

So how do we avoid that? One way is for the answerers to instead insist that their examples are in fact objectively good, and their opponents are either confused, or lying to themselves. Then, 10-20 pages of discussion later, a mod locks the board because things are getting hostile. That's even less useful than the first case.

I don't have a great answer, but being honest about our personal preferences, and distinguishing between different parts of rpgs might be somewhere to start.

Being honest is pretty straightforward. It's ok to like things that are bad, and I think it's best not to insist that they're good. Easy example, I love the new Godzilla movies, but I'll be the first person to tell you that they aren't good, in any reasonable usage of the word. The plots make no sense, the characters are a mess, but there are big monsters and it's cool when they fight each other. It's easier to find points of agreement when you break things down into more detail, and differentiate things you like, and things you think are "good".

Now, my second point I haven't really developed well enough to be shared, so it might be nonsense. If what I'm saying makes no sense, feel free to completely ignore it, or tell me how dumb I am, or what have you.
That being said, I think there's a difference between a game's goals, and its methods. Basically, its goals are what it sets out to do, and its methods are how it accomplishes its goals. There's some wiggle room here, but in general, its goals are going to be more subjective, and its methods are going to be more objective. So, as an oversimplified example, lets say I wanted to make a hypothetical game focused on roleplaying. "Getting in character", is a major goal of mine. If I add a section on the character sheet dedicated to the character's personality and backstory, that's a reasonable method to achieve my roleplaying goal. Incidentally, if I added a reaction lookup table, so that whenever my character talks to an npc, the dm rolls on a table to determine which pre-generated reaction the npc has, that method would not service my goal. It would make roleplaying harder (and you could argue that would make it a bad game). Whether or not the players like, or even care about, different goals will determine whether or not they like a particular system or not.

Staying with that same example, everybody wants slightly different things out of rpgs, so they're going to be looking for different goals, making that part more subjective. I'm not going to say totally subjective though. "That system that will not be named" has some goals that I'm comfortable calling objectively bad. In general though, you can't really object to someone saying they don't like Fate because they like tactical combat, or that they dislike Cyberpunk because they prefer fantasy.

I think methods are a lot closer to being objective. If I can use another film analogy, if a director wants a scene to be happy, he wouldn't use a dimly lit cool color pallet. Similarly, if someone says they hated a horror movie, because all the visible blood made it feel too romantic to them, it would be pretty easy to dismiss their opinion. Knowing what different rules will lead to different styles of games is part of what makes someone a good game designer.

Again though, there's some wiggle room. Take class-based systems for example. Having different classes is good at ensuring everyone in the party has a different role to fill, which diversifies the party, and makes everyone feel like they have something useful to contribute. Some people will argue however, that class-based systems limit the diversity of the party, because it forces the characters into prepackaged boxes. And I can't just say these people are wrong for feeling that way.

I think the reason for this is that the design of a system is a lot more complicated than one layer of goals, supported by one layer of methods. In reality, there are countless instrumental goals, whose purpose is to fulfill higher goals. Using the same example, I would say that class-based characters lead to a lack of overlap in character abilities, which then leads to cast diversity. Class-less characters lead to a higher granularity of customization, which also leads to cast diversity. So then, whether or not character classes lead to cast diversity will depend on whether the players value disjoint ability sets, or higher customization more.

Sorry, I know that was long, thanks for reading to the end. I'm sure no one really cares about my personal philosophy of game design, but these ideas have been bouncing around in my head for a while. I didn't really answer the original question, but I at least proposed a framework in which we could think about answering it a little more precisely.

Man_Over_Game
2021-03-24, 04:52 PM
This is such a high level, existential question that it borders on no-longer being useful, but I still think it's an interesting one to talk about.

...

Sorry, I know that was long, thanks for reading to the end. I'm sure no one really cares about my personal philosophy of game design, but these ideas have been bouncing around in my head for a while. I didn't really answer the original question, but I at least proposed a framework in which we could think about answering it a little more precisely.

You make some very valid points. Perhaps what I need to do instead is change the question into a goal-oriented one, with explicit needs and fulfillments.

Like an RPG request thread. Do we have one of those?

Composer99
2021-03-24, 07:00 PM
I guess it comes down to return on investment.

That's probably closest you can get to an objective, or at least player-agnostic, metric of whether a game is good or not.

What do players (including the player in a DM/GM/Storyteller/whatever-the-title-is role) have to invest in a game?
- Time is one thing: time learning the rules; time playing the chargen minigame; time planning game sessions; time arguing over or looking up rules during a session.
- Emotional investment/buy-in is another (maybe).
- The cognitive demands of learning the game is another. This relates to time, but is also its own thing. Games that have more demanding mechanics just require more investment of players' cognitive resources.

What do players get out of it?
- Fun/enjoyment, insofar as this can be separated into fun/enjoyment to be had from the game itself versus fun/enjoyment from being at a particular table with other players.
- A sense of fulfillment/satisfaction, insofar as this is distinct from fun (maybe).
- As a negative, disappointment - that the game was unable to fulfill their particular fantasy for their character (insofar as that fantasy ought to have been realisable in that game), that some feature or mechanic that looked cool did not turn out to be so, that sort of thing

As long as the ratio of (positive return - negative return):investment is greater than 1, the game is good (although some are probably better than others). A game might be considered mediocre if that ratio is between 0 and 1. A game is bad if the ratio is 0 or less (because the returns are sufficiently negative).

Another thing to consider is a game's "universality", you might say. A game is better if it has "universality" - by which I mean that there is something in that game for any player whose preferences match the game's genre/theme/mechanics/default setting flavour. It is, of course, no strike against a game if there is a preference mismatch.

I suspect most RPGs as designed either have or have the potential to have "universality", but I think including the concept among our criteria does help deal with games such as That Game (that Stonehouse refers to obliquely), which was apparently designed not only to not have "universality", but in fact to be against "universality".

Whether "universality" ought to be considered on its own, or embedded in the "returns" of the game, I could not say. There may be other concepts that are similar to "universality", but my brain hurts too much right now to come up with any.

I think those are a decent conceptual basis for thinking about what makes an RPG good (or not).

Now, quantifying all of this - there's the rub. I'm not sure it's possible.

Stonehead
2021-03-24, 07:53 PM
Sort of related to that universality point, I wonder what the relationship between a game being good, and people liking it. I don't think it'd be controversial to say that in general, people like good games more than bad games, but I don't know if they overlap perfectly.

If a game being good is directly related to how many people like it (or would like it were all systems marketed the same), then there would be some weird conclusions. Like, imagine a game set in prohibition-era United States. Definitely not the most popular setting, but one that could have some interesting games. If that game switched genres to be a fantasy game (probably the most popular genre), would it have become a "better" game? And if being liked, and being good are different, is it possible to distinguish between them?

Not claiming anything one way or the other, but it's interesting to think about.

MoiMagnus
2021-03-25, 05:11 AM
On universality:

A good game is a game which is loved by its players, but IMO it doesn't really matter for the quality of the game if this set of players is large or small. (It is a good product if moreover it's player base is large.)

As a consequence, a game should either be universal enough so that every players at tables picking it find something to love, or be advertised in such a way that only tables that will love it start a campaign (or a balance of the two).

On theme vs quality of the game:

Every RPG or boardgame has an underlying "abstract game" where you remove all its theme.
+ This abstract gameplay can be good or bad by itself.
+ The theme can serve the gameplay by having the intuition of the players help them to remember the rules and their interactions (monsters are powerful, insects are individually weak, etc).
+ At the contrary, the theme can disturb the gameplay by having "optimal strategies" look stupid and unintuitive (e.g., the best way to run your ancient tribe it to let your peoples starve and never produce any food, because there is no actual death in the game, just negative points for not feeding them)
+ In the case of a RPG, the theme is both the most important and the least important part. It is the most important part because RPGs is at is core a story building game. It is the least important because whatever is written in the book will often be overshadowed by whatever the players and GM bring to the table.

Quertus
2021-03-25, 06:26 AM
It must worship a Good deity.

Suppose Monopoly wasn't fun, but was the best teacher of capitalism. Would it be good? I would say "yes", but it wouldn't be a good game.

So, for something to be a good RPG, it first and foremost must be an RPG. So that rules out 4e. But it can't just be an RPG, *and* be good - it must be good at being an RPG.

But what does that mean?

Well, "RPG" is short for "Role-Playing Game". One would expect, at a minimum, that the system would not be a detriment to role-playing, or to the game.

Others have already covered many of ways that the system can fail. There are a lot. If the rules or hype mislead regarding how to play the game. If the complexity of the rules and required investment does not provide a commensurate reward. If the rules and the fiction are significantly out of sync. If the gameplay loop itself is dysfunctional. If the system is inherently toxic. To give a few examples.

Beyond that, it's a question of *who* it is good for. To continue to pick on 4e, 4e Forgotten Realms was "Forgotten Realms, for people who hate the Forgotten Realms". That was a really poor choice. Beyond such considerations, though, it's mostly a question of, "what makes a game good for this group?".

So, let's look at a few examples of what has made games good or bad for me, personally.

ShadowRun

Pros: ShadowRun was a great game for me because it had plenty of interesting rules and subsystems to explore. It had a fun character creation minigame. It had tables full of cool gear. It had a spell creation system. In earlier editions, at least, it made fast characters seem fast in a way unparalleled by other systems.

Cons: ShadowRun was a terrible system for me primarily because it handled spotlight sharing by saying, "for x players, you get to play 1/x of the time". It also lacked an "invention" system to parallel the spell creation system. The skill defaulting system was… meh, additional complexity for minimal gain. And there were a few places where the mechanics encouraged mechanically "bad" actions (the strongest possible character was the character with the lowest Strength, the ____est possible character was the character with the lowest ____).

WoD Mage

Pros: conceptually awesome! Sphere system was interesting.

Cons: the core mechanics were laughable. The mechanics and crunch did not match the fluff or "intent" of the system.

3e D&D

Pros: so many rules - little need for rule 0. So much content - little need to homebrew. Homebrew encouraged.

Cons: too much focus on balance. Too much focus on balance… by people who were not good at balance. To little "wow, cool!". Too many unspoken assumptions. Really hard to make a character organically / without planning out a "build" before the game even begins (in addition to the obvious, this is a source of conflict between the rules and the fiction).

dtd40k7e

Pros: excellent for fueling my creativity. "Roll and Keep" mechanic is interesting. Exploding dice add to tension. Fun fluff, that doesn't get in the way of the crunch.

Cons: character creation feels too complex for the benefits. Class system offers too little crossover potential. Feels too much like "one trick pony" is the optimal play. Needs better (more extensive) tables. Limited potential for growth. Perhaps most of all, "raises" system feels horrifically underutilized.

Yora
2021-03-25, 06:47 AM
An rpg is good if it does what is advertised. That's it.

A good game needs to have mechanics that lead to situations and behaviors by the players that math the kind of fiction the game is supposed to evoke.

Telok
2021-03-25, 12:31 PM
Suppose Monopoly wasn't fun, but was the best teacher of capitalism. Would it be good? I would say "yes", but it wouldn't be a good game.

...stuff...

dtd40k7e....
...Cons: character creation feels too complex for the benefits. Class system offers too little crossover potential. Feels too much like "one trick pony" is the optimal play. Needs better (more extensive) tables. Limited potential for growth. Perhaps most of all, "raises" system feels horrifically underutilized.

As I recall Monopoly wasn't originally desdesigned to be "fun" but to teach about how unfettered capitalism tended to result in monopolies. Sort of a "what it says on the tin" thing. Not being designed "fun first" is why almost nobody plays it be the rules, instead changing stuff to make it "more fun".

Whether it's a good game probably depends on what you're using the game for. I doubt many participants in, say, RL military arctic winter war games are having much fun. But then, the infantry having fun slogging around in -20 degree blizzard conditions wasn't the point anyways.

That said, I'm pretty sure we're all in RPGs for the fun. While that means fun is a possible metric I think we have to be aware of our individual prejudices on what is or is not fun. Those who dislike comedy RPGs will probably not find Toon any fun. Those who are passionate about mechanical rules & options balance will likely find Rifts offensive. Those who assume games run by a DM using modern best practices will weigh things differently than those who assume naive tabula rasa DMs who play by the book.

I threw together a quick form to play with a weighting system. Just to see if I could make something that quantified how I felt about different systems. Its ok, but there's tons of subjectivity. Its probably only useful for individuals comparing games, not multi-person comparisons. Maybe if I add an 'expectations column'. Eh, difficult stuff to quantify.

Quertus: Go throw your DtD concerns in the thread on the others games board. I'm hoping by next week or two to throw up a preliminary text revision of book one. There's still time to get changes in.

Stonehead
2021-03-25, 12:50 PM
An rpg is good if it does what is advertised. That's it.

So an rpg that claims "complex system for mystery and intrigue" better give me a mystery and intrigue focused game. It should be rules heavy but still playable and offer the experience it advertises. A game that advertises itself as a light weight slice of life, should be very easy to start and play and have comedic themes built into the rules.

Surely there's a bit more to talk about than just "A good rpg does what it does good", right? If the question is "what makes an rpg good", don't we have to talk about how they do what they advertise? Especially when people disagree on whether or not it does that well.

Maybe an example would make this easier. Take Scion for example, the players play as demi-gods with their own domains, and so part of the system is that you have to roll whenever you try to act against your "nature", and if you fail, your character can't do that action, or may even do a different one instead. This type of "character hijacking" so to speak is somewhat common in more rp-heavy, rules-lite systems. It's purpose seems to be to encourage role-playing, by ensuring that characters are always acting in-character, but to some, it does the opposite. Some people say it ruins role playing by taking the power to decide your character's actions out of the hands of the player.

So then, the question has to be asked: If Scion is advertised as an rp-heavy, character-driven system, does it do what is advertised? IMO the reason that question is hard to answer is why the topic of this thread is a more complicated issue.

Sneak Dog
2021-03-25, 01:18 PM
Well-written. You can't play RAW, you interpret the rules. You (almost) can't play RAI. Nobody knows the intent of the rules and TTRPG's just get too big and complicated for even the writers to keep track.
Regardless, a game needs to explain its rules as clearly and simply as possible. Both for people learning the system and for people looking up rules during play. This is hard.

Good fiction. An RPG will have mechanics which promote certain behaviours. This results in a theme and feel. Promote a good theme and feel, write it into your RPG's fiction, advertise it and write the rules to result in it. It is very statisfying when fiction and rules support eachother. Also, a setting written on the theme and feel can help introduce the RPG and be interesting on its own.
Sometimes rules break, hard. They create the tippyverse, or make what was supposed to be a dark serious struggle a powertrip. Or they just promote weird behaviours like ignoring armour because it doesn't actually help so nobody sane wears armour anymore and there goes the setting's elite plate-armoured knight order's reputation.

Rules to facilitate playstyles I enjoy. I like customising characters, playing awesome martial characters and having some options to act in each major activity of play. Not to mention progression being exciting. Exclusive niche protection, mage-only gameplay? Not for me, bad RPG, yep.


Resources. You buy a whole dang TTRPG, and there's no bestiary, let alone an introductory adventure? You now have to design these yourself?! Humbug, preposterous I say!

Man_Over_Game
2021-03-25, 01:51 PM
Rules to facilitate playstyles I enjoy. I like customising characters, playing awesome martial characters and having some options to act in each major activity of play. Not to mention progression being exciting. Exclusive niche protection, mage-only gameplay? Not for me, bad RPG, yep.


Weird question then, are you promoting something akin to 4e DnD, where most powers are mechanically similar with different means and results (for example, most Fighter AoEs are centered around them while Wizards have AoEs centered around points on the board, and are otherwise nearly identical)?

I don't mean that in a rigid 4e format, I just mean in the sense of "There's no inherent difference between physical and supernatural power".

MoiMagnus
2021-03-25, 02:22 PM
Weird question then, are you promoting something akin to 4e DnD, where most powers are mechanically similar with different means and results (for example, most Fighter AoEs are centered around them while Wizards have AoEs centered around points on the board)?

I don't mean that in a rigid 4e format, I just mean in the sense of "There's no inherent difference between physical and supernatural power".

While I'm not Sneak Dog, I will agree with him, and point to Mutant & Mastermind for a successful rule-heavy system that went that direction. It doesn't matter if you are using divination magic or if you are just "Movie Sherlock Holmes", those two abilities have the same end result.
[Unless you're trying to counter it. Interactions between multiple powers is when their precise description starts to actually have an influence on the gameplay.]

Though, when I say "I agree with him", I mean that I prefer RPGs that go that way. But I definitely don't consider that every RPG should necessary go that way.

Telok
2021-03-25, 04:22 PM
Hmm. I wonder....

Pendragon is a great system if you want to play a specific version of Arthutian mythos in a specific style. Terrible for D&D style high magic dungeon crawls. As a plus though, the game book itself (although not always the people proposing to play) is quite clear on that.

What if you go with:
1. What the system says it does, mechanically and thematically.
2. What it actually does do, right out of the box for people who take it at face value.
3. What it does in experienced hands applying best practices.
4. Rate the game on how well it meets it's own goals, with the understanding that tbis may vary dependent on the skill of the users.

There are games I wouldn't play with inexperienced DMs. Some because of system complexity on the DM side, others because they lack critical guidelines & guardrails. There are games that don't play well if the players aren't... not "experienced", more like the game works on certain expectations and themes that the players need to be able to understand. Like a superhero game that collapsed because half the players couldn't hero.

I can't say those are bad games. Just that there are users that don't have something (experience, expectations, adaptability, just something) that the system needs to be properly used.

Maybe adding "Does it work well for the intended audience?" and "Does it communicate who that audience is?", in the list somewhere.

erikun
2021-03-25, 04:50 PM
A good RPG system is useful. I can state, with fair certainty, that a useless RPG system is not good.* :smalltongue:

What makes a RPG system useful largely depends on who is using it, and what they are using it for. I want a system which I can run easily, which can interpret player actions into mechanics fairly well, and which I can teach other people if I need to. Fate does this. So, Fate is a good system for me. I also want systems which give a fairly distinct setting and playstyle, without being overly obtuse. Shadowrun is a fairly good example of this. So Shadowrun is a good system for me as well, even if it's one I use much less frequently.

I would say that a good RPG system (in general) has a goal and is successful at presenting and accomplishing that goal. It doesn't need to be a system for me. It doesn't really need to be a system for anyone, technically. As long as a system has a specific goal in mind, and chooses rules and mechanics which accomplish that goal well, then it can be a good system - at least, at that specific goal. No system can reasonably be good at everything, and even the generic RPGs are generally not as good at specific settings or scenarios than some RPGs specific for those settings.

--

* A system which highlights how useless it is to display useless RPG mechanics would technically be a use of the system, and thus potentially make it good at displaying bad RPG mechanics. So you can put your Time Cube RPG printouts back on the shelf.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-03-25, 07:06 PM
Two (somewhat inchoate) components (and there are others):

1) Fulfillment of purpose
2) Fitness of purpose

1) This answers the question "How well does it deliver on its claimed goals?" Which presupposes answers to the questions
1a) What are its purposes or goals?
1b) Who are its target audience?
1c) What measurements are there for testing this fit?

There are generally multiple goals, including the ones inherited from the genre level--being a Role-playing Game. Something that's not a good game isn't a good RPG; something that doesn't assist or encourage role-playing isn't a good RPG. But purpose is broader than that.

A statement of (one of) 5e D&D's purposes might be "Enable and empower creation of small-team based adventures in a fantasy world", while another might be "be more friendly to new players (than earlier editions)", while a third might be "make Hasbro lots of money" and a fourth might be "feel like D&D". Note: I'm not employed by WotC, nor do I speak for them. These are my impressions as to their aims, as expressed in their product.

2) This answers the question "is what it's trying to do important or interesting to me?". This one's quite subjective. For instance, you might have a great WWI trench-fighting RPG. Portrays life excellently, has wonderful mechanics, real gritty, etc. Does its job excellently. And I'd totally pass it over, because I'm not interesting in roleplaying in a WWI environment. That doesn't make it bad objectively, just bad for me.

I reject the idea that good systems have to be universal. I prefer when systems know who they're targeting and what they're trying to do. And then do it. And especially advertise what they're going for. Trying to be universal and failing (which everyone does, universal is basically impossible even within a single genre) ends up leaving you neither fish nor fowl nor good red beef, as the saying goes. Choose what you're going to do, then do it well.

Now if you narrow your focus too much, you'll not find players. Which may make it a commercial failure. But lots of "good" products are commercial failures. They were produced well, just not for the right market. Or things shifted out from under them. And conversely, a lot of commercial successes aren't objectively all that good.

Sneak Dog
2021-03-26, 06:53 AM
Weird question then, are you promoting something akin to 4e DnD, where most powers are mechanically similar with different means and results (for example, most Fighter AoEs are centered around them while Wizards have AoEs centered around points on the board, and are otherwise nearly identical)?

I don't mean that in a rigid 4e format, I just mean in the sense of "There's no inherent difference between physical and supernatural power".

I like it when the mechanics show the fiction. Making them mechanically similar implies they're similar in the setting, which often clashes with what the setting explicitly says. If it clashes, I'm against. Mechanical similarity makes it very easy to balance though.

In Shadowrun, characters getting hi-tech implants lower their magical capacity. It's a mechanic that shows the incompatibility. It's awesome in that way.
In Warhammer, magic runs the risk of warping reality and creating horrible effects up to and including the mage's death as they summon a daemon. Magic is risky and there's mechanics for it. It's good in that way.
In D&D 5e, mage's wanting to keep their concentration spells going need to make constitution checks, which also influence their maximum hit points. As a result, mages are promoted to be as tough and well conditioned as anyone, despite the popular image of a frail old mage. It's awkward in that way.
However, it has a very explicit split between what martials do (swing weapons a lot) and what mages do (cast spells a lot), which fits the system. It's good in that way.

D&D in general has been having issues here for me. Too distinct has lead to underwhelming martials. Too similar has clashed with the setting.

Pauly
2021-03-27, 01:31 AM
1) A world that is fun to be adventuring in and interesting to players. As a side bar this includes a breadth and depth of material so you aren’t stuck in any one place. Space 1889 is an example of a game that mechanically was average at best but because the world was so much fun players enjoyed the gaming experience.

Without this the game will fail.

2) Support for the DM. Most of us have day jobs and families. Unless you have the luxury of time for some reason DMs need as much help as possible. If the game requires too much from the DM in terms of campaign building, campaigns will stall.

3) Mechanics that are consistent with the world as described in the fiction. If I’m playing Star Wars and people start running gun toting Jedi because that’s mechanically better than using light sabers - that’s a fail.

4) Mechanics that are consistent and easy to understand. THAC0 is the poster child for a dis-intuitive mechanic that smart people couldn’t grasp because it ran negative to every other mechanic in the game. (I know people defend THAC0, but if it was so good why has it been abandoned and no other game stile the concept?)

Drascin
2021-03-27, 09:19 AM
The primary thing in my eyes is: how much does the game succeed in aiding the players in creating the sort of game it wants to be? Basically, how well does it fulfill its stated objective?

For example, I consider Exalted a bad game, largely because the thing it says it wants to be (an epic game of hubristic heroes and daring feats that change the world) has historically clashed with both the setting (which has often been written with a very WoD-style sensibility of "if you step out of line the Super Baddy/splat Elder/whatever will whack you) and the mechanics (which rewarded all sorts of things except actually going in and taking risks). The game can be fun, but what it ends up as as an emergent game and what it wants to be are not really so much as in the same zip code.

Meanwhile, I think Edge of the Empire is a pretty good game, overall, because most of it is pretty good about encouraging the sort of stories that it wants to create - a bunch of slightly criminal weirdos running around in the galaxy backwaters and getting into and out of trouble. Do note, it still has some bad parts, as Star Wars typically wants some starship chases and such, and the starship rules for EotE are not conducive to daring Han Solo escapades. But on the ground, EotE makes getting into and out of the sort of trouble that Star Wars side stories thrive on very easy and very rewarding. Hence, successful game.

Tanarii
2021-03-27, 11:13 AM
I like to say, roleplaying is making decisions for the character in the fantasy environment,

So a good one is: It provides lots of opportunities to make interesting decisions for the character in the fantasy environment.

Change out "interesting" to whatever adjective you find most fun when it comes to decision making.

Lord Raziere
2021-03-27, 02:01 PM
The primary thing in my eyes is: how much does the game succeed in aiding the players in creating the sort of game it wants to be? Basically, how well does it fulfill its stated objective?

For example, I consider Exalted a bad game, largely because the thing it says it wants to be (an epic game of hubristic heroes and daring feats that change the world) has historically clashed with both the setting (which has often been written with a very WoD-style sensibility of "if you step out of line the Super Baddy/splat Elder/whatever will whack you) and the mechanics (which rewarded all sorts of things except actually going in and taking risks). The game can be fun, but what it ends up as as an emergent game and what it wants to be are not really so much as in the same zip code.


It also clashes with the fandom being White Wolf/Onyx Path fans and thus take everything way too seriously and deeply and thus you end up with people and devs recommending things like Debt: The First 5000 years to help explain its subject matter, when dude I don't want to need an anthropological book about ancient world economics to play my mythical hero/wuxia/anime-esque game.

Telok
2021-03-27, 03:46 PM
4) Mechanics that are consistent and easy to understand. THAC0 is the poster child for a dis-intuitive mechanic that smart people couldn’t grasp because it ran negative to every other mechanic in the game. (I know people defend THAC0, but if it was so good why has it been abandoned and no other game stile the concept?)

"Mechanics that are consistent and easy to understand." Great goal, nobody would ever complain right?

Lets look a little closer at D&D to-hit. Start with AD&D 1e, it had charts. Roll, add bonuses, check the class chart for the AC. Sounds terrible? It's a sheet of paper the DM uses, the player only adds a number or two, plus the charts both made martial classes better at fighting and were not just linear number lists. At the high/good AC range there were a set of ACs that a 20s would hit, then for ACs past that the roll needed to-hit would start going up again. Those charts were written by people who begain with war gaming simulations, those numbers were not just randomly made up. Easy to understand? Maybe not so much, some of the effects weren't obvious. Easy to use? Yeah, roll plus strength plus magic and tell the DM.

Move on to AD&D 2e, thac0. That's a "simplification" of the charts that loses the bumps and plateaus of the charts. Now players have a number on the character sheet and an extra step of math. It's issues come from keeping the backwards compatability of descending AC numbers inherited from the original wargaming roots (where they made sense at the time).

On to D&D 3e, ascending AC and class based attack bonus. Simple ya? We went with straight addition this time. But a plethora of modifiers, feats, gear, etc., including touch AC and "no dex" flat footed AC. And we're back to complaints of "too complicated".

4e, everyone uses powers so everyone with the same stat bonus has the same chance to stab/shoot/magic a target. In theory you could have characters with different levels or different magic item plusses, but the system is trying to be balanced and different levels/bonuses isn't balanced. Complaints of "too samey".

5e and we're even simpler with the only difference in stabbing/to-hit ability between characters is attribute bonuses and a magic item or two. But at least you might have the option to trade a bit of character improvement to have the option to trade -5 attack for +10 damage if you use the right kind of weapon. We're consistent and easy to understand, but unless the character is casting spells the difference in character's martial skill is 16, 18, or 20 stat and what plus of magic weapon they use.

How about 6e? We can make things even more consistent and easier to understand. Everyone gets 1d20 vs AC and AC is limited to a 5 to 15 range. Consistent, everyone is the same. Easy, no math at all. We can make it even easier! If we move all differences in combat ability to damage and hit points we can do away with AC too, the to-hit can be just be 1d20 vs 11. But wait! We can make that easier too! Since that's a 50% chance we can just double all the hit points and do away with attack rolls. Mechanics that are consistent and easy to understand, plus we just eliminated all the attack rolls so the character sheets and combat rounds are simpler too. In fact, there are tables that already do away with rolling damage and hit points. Just take the averages and things are even more consistent and simpler.

I think I recall reading a couple 1-page games that used a single d6 with a 5+ success and characters having a few +1s and +2s. That's about the epitome of consistent and easy to understand, but nobody ever seems to use them.

How about a game that plays great but has a custom dedicated "results" app that it needs in order to be played? Easy to use, hit three buttons in order and read the result. Consistently good and accurate range of results. The actual randomizing is completely opaque. Some people would hate it for the electronics bit of course, but that's not part off "is the game any good". High stats/skills are good and pushing three buttons to read a result is easy to understand, right?

MoiMagnus
2021-03-27, 04:59 PM
How about a game that plays great but has a custom dedicated "results" app that it needs in order to be played? Easy to use, hit three buttons in order and read the result. Consistently good and accurate range of results. The actual randomizing is completely opaque. Some people would hate it for the electronics bit of course, but that's not part off "is the game any good". High stats/skills are good and pushing three buttons to read a result is easy to understand, right?

Digital randomness is quite difficult to handle. Players easily over-interpret results and will quickly feel like the results are rigged or unfair. [Peoples also think their dice are cursed, but they blame the physical dice, not the game itself].

Opacity is seen as unfair. Just displaying the odds is rarely enough, as a lot of peoples don't trust randomness if it doesn't match their intuition. The two solutions I've see that seems to work to reduce player's feeling of unfairness are
(1) "Materialisation" of the randomness through explicit cards or dice.
(2) Lies and illusions. You fake transparency by displaying odds of success/failure that are wrong by using a different formula for your "odds" and the actual check. [Usually you undervaluate the probability of success for easy/medium checks].

IME, (2) is the most frequent choice, especially in tactical video games (Fire Emblem, XCOM, etc).

Quertus
2021-03-27, 06:13 PM
1) A world that is fun to be adventuring in and interesting to players. As a side bar this includes a breadth and depth of material so you aren’t stuck in any one place. Space 1889 is an example of a game that mechanically was average at best but because the world was so much fun players enjoyed the gaming experience.

Without this the game will fail.

Eh… I build my own campaign settings. So, afaict, the only fail state is if the game is locked into a single setting, *and* that setting doesn't deliver.

So, it needs a good setting, *or* an open setting. Both is just gravy.


2) Support for the DM. Most of us have day jobs and families. Unless you have the luxury of time for some reason DMs need as much help as possible. If the game requires too much from the DM in terms of campaign building, campaigns will stall.

I generally make my own content. What help do you think a system *needs* to give me?


3) Mechanics that are consistent with the world as described in the fiction. If I’m playing Star Wars and people start running gun toting Jedi because that’s mechanically better than using light sabers - that’s a fail.

Hmmm… this is tricky. When it's *obvious* to all the characters that the fluff-compliant methods are suboptimal, that can be an issue. Was there a version of Star Wars that had this specific issue?

Anyone who thinks D&D is "obvious", though, I'd love to Obliviate their D&D PhD, lock them in a room with no internet, and see just what they create. Based on my extensive experience with earlier editions, my intuition suggests that it's not at all as obvious as some would have you believe. And, since D&D Wizards don't exactly have the internet, it's bad role-playing to play them as if they understand things that they realistically wouldn't.


4) Mechanics that are consistent and easy to understand. THAC0 is the poster child for a dis-intuitive mechanic that smart people couldn’t grasp because it ran negative to every other mechanic in the game. (I know people defend THAC0, but if it was so good why has it been abandoned and no other game stile the concept?)


"Mechanics that are consistent and easy to understand." Great goal, nobody would ever complain right?

Lets look a little closer at D&D to-hit. Start with AD&D 1e, it had charts. Roll, add bonuses, check the class chart for the AC. Sounds terrible? It's a sheet of paper the DM uses, the player only adds a number or two, plus the charts both made martial classes better at fighting and were not just linear number lists. At the high/good AC range there were a set of ACs that a 20s would hit, then for ACs past that the roll needed to-hit would start going up again. Those charts were written by people who begain with war gaming simulations, those numbers were not just randomly made up. Easy to understand? Maybe not so much, some of the effects weren't obvious. Easy to use? Yeah, roll plus strength plus magic and tell the DM.

Move on to AD&D 2e, thac0. That's a "simplification" of the charts that loses the bumps and plateaus of the charts. Now players have a number on the character sheet and an extra step of math. It's issues come from keeping the backwards compatability of descending AC numbers inherited from the original wargaming roots (where they made sense at the time).

On to D&D 3e, ascending AC and class based attack bonus. Simple ya? We went with straight addition this time. But a plethora of modifiers, feats, gear, etc., including touch AC and "no dex" flat footed AC. And we're back to complaints of "too complicated".

4e, everyone uses powers so everyone with the same stat bonus has the same chance to stab/shoot/magic a target. In theory you could have characters with different levels or different magic item plusses, but the system is trying to be balanced and different levels/bonuses isn't balanced. Complaints of "too samey".

5e and we're even simpler with the only difference in stabbing/to-hit ability between characters is attribute bonuses and a magic item or two. But at least you might have the option to trade a bit of character improvement to have the option to trade -5 attack for +10 damage if you use the right kind of weapon. We're consistent and easy to understand, but unless the character is casting spells the difference in character's martial skill is 16, 18, or 20 stat and what plus of magic weapon they use.

How about 6e? We can make things even more consistent and easier to understand. Everyone gets 1d20 vs AC and AC is limited to a 5 to 15 range. Consistent, everyone is the same. Easy, no math at all. We can make it even easier! If we move all differences in combat ability to damage and hit points we can do away with AC too, the to-hit can be just be 1d20 vs 11. But wait! We can make that easier too! Since that's a 50% chance we can just double all the hit points and do away with attack rolls. Mechanics that are consistent and easy to understand, plus we just eliminated all the attack rolls so the character sheets and combat rounds are simpler too. In fact, there are tables that already do away with rolling damage and hit points. Just take the averages and things are even more consistent and simpler.

I think I recall reading a couple 1-page games that used a single d6 with a 5+ success and characters having a few +1s and +2s. That's about the epitome of consistent and easy to understand, but nobody ever seems to use them.

How about a game that plays great but has a custom dedicated "results" app that it needs in order to be played? Easy to use, hit three buttons in order and read the result. Consistently good and accurate range of results. The actual randomizing is completely opaque. Some people would hate it for the electronics bit of course, but that's not part off "is the game any good". High stats/skills are good and pushing three buttons to read a result is easy to understand, right?

2e THAC0 was bad. 3e "touch AC" was not "added complexity" - it replaced the more complicated, less defined, and more obfuscated "AC 10".

There is no way in which the 3e attack roll mechanics were inferior to the 2e THAC0 mechanics. And I say this as someone who considers 2e to be the best RPG!

The 1e tables added value at the cost of complexity - not better or worse, but different.

As i understand it, 4e and 5e have the same basic "mechanic" (d20 + bonus vs DC) as 3e. So the differences in the implementation of the rest of the system, that produce these different opinions, seem unrelated to the question of how easy and intuitive the system is.


Digital randomness is quite difficult to handle. Players easily over-interpret results and will quickly feel like the results are rigged or unfair. [Peoples also think their dice are cursed, but they blame the physical dice, not the game itself].

Opacity is seen as unfair. Just displaying the odds is rarely enough, as a lot of peoples don't trust randomness if it doesn't match their intuition. The two solutions I've see that seems to work to reduce player's feeling of unfairness are
(1) "Materialisation" of the randomness through explicit cards or dice.
(2) Lies and illusions. You fake transparency by displaying odds of success/failure that are wrong by using a different formula for your "odds" and the actual check. [Usually you undervaluate the probability of success for easy/medium checks].

IME, (2) is the most frequent choice, especially in tactical video games (Fire Emblem, XCOM, etc).

Huh. I always felt that my "rolls" were on the lucky side in XCOM, which just made it more frustrating that I could never beat it. Is there a source for the display math being wrong in those games?

Personally, I like rolling physical dice. I'll only sacrifice that bit of enjoyment if the game when I have a compelling reason - like when I'm running an army of the undead, or a mech with 40 machine guns...

Cluedrew
2021-03-27, 07:58 PM
A good game is fun to play.

I was tempted to leave it there to make it a statement about the simplicity of it all. But then I thought I should explain that whatever general criticism you can level at a system doesn't really matter as long as people are enjoying it. You can argue that maybe they would have more fun with a different game but even if that is true the second game is merely better not that the first is bad. And I suppose I am ignoring some special purpose games that don't exist for entertainment… yeah that's fine for now.

Let me close off with some things that generally help systems be fun:
Clear about their goals. (Expectation/Experience matching.)
Have unity between there mechanics and themes.
They should take minimal time/energy/skill to learn (minimal is relative and I am speaking of the skill floor).
They should take minimal time/energy/skill to play/run (same, this one is surprisingly controversial).
Actually the last two are so broad they kind of cover everything else I was going to put on the list.

Sneak Dog
2021-03-28, 07:41 AM
A good game is fun to play.

I was tempted to leave it there to make it a statement about the simplicity of it all. But then I thought I should explain that whatever general criticism you can level at a system doesn't really matter as long as people are enjoying it. You can argue that maybe they would have more fun with a different game but even if that is true the second game is merely better not that the first is bad. And I suppose I am ignoring some special purpose games that don't exist for entertainment… yeah that's fine for now.

Let me close off with some things that generally help systems be fun:
Clear about their goals. (Expectation/Experience matching.)
Have unity between there mechanics and themes.
They should take minimal time/energy/skill to learn (minimal is relative and I am speaking of the skill floor).
They should take minimal time/energy/skill to play/run (same, this one is surprisingly controversial).
Actually the last two are so broad they kind of cover everything else I was going to put on the list.

Just 'fun to play' is not a useful metric. We can't measure short-term fun very well, it gets muddied by playing a game with friends being fun. Long-term fun is even trickier, little frustrations might add up and ruin the experience. Then we get to the part where a TTRPG is not a game, but a system for a GM to make a game out of, and how to split the GM making a fun game from the system being fun.
The list is important. It lets us actually figure out what makes an RPG good with something we can talk about.

Good first two points.
Requiring time to learn is a barrier to entry, but the results can well be worth it. It's a trade-off. Striving to minimise time/energy/skill is good, but can be sacrificed for other aspects and make the RPG better. I agree it generally helps.

Requiring energy and skill to play is straight-up great though. It lets you get into the game and get rewarded for investing effort and being skillful and penalised for the opposite. Plenty of players enjoy this challenge and would have less fun without both reward and penalty. This is a playstyle thing which would (probably) make it bad for you, but good for others. So it doesn't apply, as you say, generally.

Cluedrew
2021-03-28, 08:35 PM
Just 'fun to play' is not a useful metric.I'm not claiming we can measure it, but it is more important than anything we can measure.


Requiring time to learn is a barrier to entry, but the results can well be worth it.This is what that note about relative is all about. I'm not disagreeing but I did think of that. In this phrasing I would say for a given set of goals if you can lower the barrier to entry you should.


Requiring energy and skill to play is straight-up great though. It lets you get into the game and get rewarded for investing effort and being skillful and penalised for the opposite. Plenty of players enjoy this challenge and would have less fun without both reward and penalty. This is a playstyle thing which would (probably) make it bad for you, but good for others. So it doesn't apply, as you say, generally.This I don't understand. If I explained I was speaking of the "floor" (minimum required to get a reasonable result) verses the "ceiling" (where improvements in stop getting improvements out). Its always nice to improve but I think mastery/challenge is only really core in the commonly included combat mini-game. Which, for all the many people who have fun playing it, is a good bit of design. For me, those flavours don't mix.

Tanarii
2021-03-28, 08:56 PM
This I don't understand. If I explained I was speaking of the "floor" (minimum required to get a reasonable result) verses the "ceiling" (where improvements in stop getting improvements out).[/COLOR]
Right. If something has a high energy requirement to play, I'm going to play it only once in a blue moon. If something has a high skill requirement to play, I'm not going to be able to find any new players to play with me. This is a surprisingly common barrier in Board games too.

TTRPGs almost always have an extremely high time requirement to play. It is hands down the hardest part about getting long term players and IMO the thing that keeps it from growing as a casual entertainment field.

About the only east way you'll get players for high skill/time to play is if you participate in dedicated gaming clubs regularly. E.g. Game stores or school campuses.

Witty Username
2021-03-29, 12:07 AM
Other people who are willing to play with you is what makes an RPG good.

Yora
2021-03-29, 06:05 AM
That is literally the lowest possible measure of something's quality.

Altheus
2021-03-29, 07:55 AM
Easy to teach to others, quick to play and not that many character build options.

Jason
2021-03-29, 07:56 AM
THAC0 is the poster child for a dis-intuitive mechanic that smart people couldn’t grasp because it ran negative to every other mechanic in the game. (I know people defend THAC0, but if it was so good why has it been abandoned and no other game stile the concept?)

THAC0 was not at all difficult to figure out, and was a definite step up from having to look at the chart in the DMG.
Most games today have a mechanic that is very like THAC0. Basically any rule that says "it's this hard to hit this NPC" and requires addition and subtraction is just as difficult to figure out as THAC0 was. I could say something about what thinking a little addition and subtraction is too complicated to grasp says about ths average gamer's math skills today, but I will refrain.

Yora
2021-03-29, 08:00 AM
"If BAB had been used from the start, nobody would ever have seen a need to invent THAC0."

That's always the end of discussion to me.

Jason
2021-03-29, 08:26 AM
"If BAB had been used from the start, nobody would ever have seen a need to invent THAC0."

That's always the end of discussion to me.

True, but BAB is just THAC0 with the "subtract from 20" step already done. Its not really a brand new mechanic.

Fun fact: to convert an Armor Class from 1st or 2nd edition to 3rd-5th edition, subtract it from 20. To convert from 3rd-5th edition to 2nd or 1st edition, subtract it from 20. It works either way.

MoiMagnus
2021-03-29, 08:40 AM
True, but BAB is just THAC0 with the "subtract from 20" step already done. Its not really a brand new mechanic.


Which makes BAB significantly better as a rule than THAC0.

Quite often, when you rework a mechanics, you're not making raw improvement, you're making some trade-off. You're sacrificing a lot some depth or granularity for the sake of simplicity, etc.

When reformulating, you can actually obtain something which is objectively better, rather than just a different tradeoff than the existing one. (Though arguably, there is some trade-off, like confusing old time players, but they are much milder)

Tanarii
2021-03-29, 09:41 AM
That is literally the lowest possible measure of something's quality.
Popularity isn't lowest, it's just a quick yardstick.

It's not always the most accurate though. There are a ton of people that subscribe to Any Gaming is Better Than No Gaming (and Boredom). Or are reasonable compromisers, willing to play something they consider sub-par but not terrible that are all others know, in order to get games.


THAC0 was not at all difficult to figure out, and was a definite step up from having to look at the chart in the DMG.
The game lost a lot in subtlety when it changed to "20 always hits 1 always misses" but it definitely gained in ease of play.

Jason
2021-03-29, 09:55 AM
Which makes BAB significantly better as a rule than THAC0.Yes it is easier to use, but it really is the same mechanic, just expressed a little more simply.

My point being that THAC0 is not the impenetrable mystery that many gamers who never played with it make it out to be. At the time it was introduced it was a useful innovation that was much easier and quicker than what was used before.

You want impenetrable, try to figure out what the "advantage" symbol in FFG Star Wars is supposed to represent. "Using custom dice with non-intuitive symbols that no one can figure out what they are supposed to be" is one of my criteria for a bad game.

kyoryu
2021-03-29, 11:12 AM
An RPG is "good" when it effectively delivers on the things it's trying to (intentionally or accidentally) deliver.

It's good for you when the things it delivers on are things you want.


THAC0 was not at all difficult to figure out, and was a definite step up from having to look at the chart in the DMG.
Most games today have a mechanic that is very like THAC0. Basically any rule that says "it's this hard to hit this NPC" and requires addition and subtraction is just as difficult to figure out as THAC0 was. I could say something about what thinking a little addition and subtraction is too complicated to grasp says about ths average gamer's math skills today, but I will refrain.

Arguably.

The advantage of the chart is that it allowed for (and actually had) non-linear changes to chances to hit, which a formulaic approach like THAC0 or BAB does not.

The disadvantage of course is that you have to look it up, which means you need a quick reference and a brief second of time on each hit. So.... it's a matter of which of those things matters more to you.


Popularity isn't lowest, it's just a quick yardstick.

It's not always the most accurate though. There are a ton of people that subscribe to Any Gaming is Better Than No Gaming (and Boredom). Or are reasonable compromisers, willing to play something they consider sub-par but not terrible that are all others know, in order to get games.

Popularity does not directly correlate to quality, but it's hard to have a lot of popularity without having at least a good amount of quality.

Like, a game being unpopular could be really awesome, just unknown for various reasons.

But a really popular game probably has at least some good stuff going for it (yes, even 4e).

But that's really quality in the first sense of what I wrote above... a popular game could still be terrible to you because the things it does well are things you have no interest in, or even actively want to avoid. Like, that's me and country music and most pop. I can recognize the talent of the people doing it, while still acknowledging that they're just doing things I have zero interest in.

That's also me and D&D 3.x. It's a great system for doing a bunch of things that are the opposite of what I consider to be ideal gaming.


THAC0 was not at all difficult to figure out, and was a definite step up from having to look at the chart in the DMG.
Most games today have a mechanic that is very like THAC0. Basically any rule that says "it's this hard to hit this NPC" and requires addition and subtraction is just as difficult to figure out as THAC0 was. I could say something about what thinking a little addition and subtraction is too complicated to grasp says about ths average gamer's math skills today, but I will refrain.

At one level you're right, but THAC0 doesn't present that concept well.

You've got: AC, how hard you are to hit, lower is better. (Why?)

THAC0, which represents how likely you are to hit stuff..... lower is better.

Now, you subtract AC? THat's weird. It's just not intuitive. And then you have a roll over system.

Yes, all the bits are still there that are in there with BAB, but it's just more obvious how to use them "they have a number to beat. Roll over it, and add all the stuff that makes you better. If they have stuff that makes them harder to hit, they add it to the number to beat." Like, there's an intuitiveness of why things are that way that just works.

The only reason for THAC0 to be the way it is is to keep compatability with 1e, whose system was a holdover from other games. It's not really defensible as a system in a green field environment.

It's also not as horrible as a lot of people seem to make it out to be, especially if you accept it just as a formula you use, rather than trying ot "understand" it.

Tanarii
2021-03-29, 01:59 PM
You've got: AC, how hard you are to hit, lower is better. (Why?)This one is easy. Because lower is tougher to hit. (That statement depends on the system obviously, but it make intuitive sense.) Impossible to hit should be zero though, negative AC numbers don't make sense.


THAC0, which represents how likely you are to hit stuff..... lower is better.This one is just an artifact of the attack tables. It makes sense that higher is better attacking.

kyoryu
2021-03-29, 02:24 PM
This one is just an artifact of the attack tables. It makes sense that higher is better attacking.

Well, yeah.


The only reason for THAC0 to be the way it is is to keep compatability with 1e, whose system was a holdover from other games. It's not really defensible as a system in a green field environment.

It wasn't designed as a good system in and of itself - it was designed as a chartless variation of the attack tables from 1e.

Pauly
2021-03-29, 09:38 PM
THAC0 was not at all difficult to figure out, and was a definite step up from having to look at the chart in the DMG.
Most games today have a mechanic that is very like THAC0. Basically any rule that says "it's this hard to hit this NPC" and requires addition and subtraction is just as difficult to figure out as THAC0 was. I could say something about what thinking a little addition and subtraction is too complicated to grasp says about ths average gamer's math skills today, but I will refrain.

Just because I’m on the interwebs doesn’t mean I’m some whippersnapper in short britches. I learned to play Chainmail from on original store bought copy before I learned D&D.
If what I wrote was too complicated to grasp it says a lot about the average gamer’s reading comprehension skills today, but I will refrain.
I specifically said the math itself wasn’t difficult. What is difficult conceptually is that in the rest of the game mechanics high numbers represent stronger/more difficult and positive modifiers are good. Yet armor class/THAC0 reversed that. Your +1 sword made your THAC0 smaller, which was good. Your cursed armor +1 made your AC higher, which was bad.

To be conceptually easy to understand, intuitive in other words, a game should use
High numbers good, low numbers bad, or
Low numbers good, high numbers bad.
Mixing and matching between the two is bad design. It isn’t about the difficulty of the math, it’s about the consistency of the math.

It applies to other things. For example agility skill tests should use the same mechanics as diplomacy skill checks. Roll a d[whatever] add your bonuses subtract your penalties. Consult the outcomes table and success/fail. But if your diplomacy check and agility check require different dice, different tables for success then it becomes conceptually difficult.
It would be like driving a car only for the brake and accelerator pedals to be reversed depending whether you were turning left or turning right. There might be good reasons why it’s a better system, but it will confuse the heck out of the driver.

Pauly
2021-03-29, 09:41 PM
It wasn't designed as a good system in and of itself - it was designed as a chartless variation of the attack tables from 1e.

Having played those, the charts were easier to understand, the THAC0 easier to use.

Witty Username
2021-03-29, 10:09 PM
Which makes BAB significantly better as a rule than THAC0.

Quite often, when you rework a mechanics, you're not making raw improvement, you're making some trade-off. You're sacrificing a lot some depth or granularity for the sake of simplicity, etc.

When reformulating, you can actually obtain something which is objectively better, rather than just a different tradeoff than the existing one. (Though arguably, there is some trade-off, like confusing old time players, but they are much milder)

THACO does come with an advantage that you can roll and immediately know whether or not you hit, If you roll over your THACO, you hit (true 90% of the time). BAB you have to calculate what your number was every time to determine if you hit or not, assuming AC is hidden from the players. This allow comes with the 10% of the time THACO doesn't hit, you know you are dealing with one of the better AC's in the game, instant panic. YMMV on how important this is, but I personally like how THACO puts emphasis on the characters skill rather than the monsters defenses it makes ones combat prowess easier to grok (even if it is only a little). That being said I have been aware of THACO and how to use it since I was ~6, so it may be more out of familiarity than effectiveness.

Tanarii
2021-03-29, 10:35 PM
I specifically said the math itself wasn’t difficult. What is difficult conceptually is that in the rest of the game mechanics high numbers represent stronger/more difficult and positive modifiers are good. Yet armor class/THAC0 reversed that. Your +1 sword made your THAC0 smaller, which was good. Your cursed armor +1 made your AC higher, which was bad.
Saving throws, lower numbers were better, because you had to roll over them.

Ability score checks (E.g. BECMI RC's general skills, or Ad&D's NwP), higher numbers were better, because you had to roll under them. Unless you had a closer to threshold check (opposed rolls), in which case higher number rolled but still succeeded was better.

Thieves skills were on d%, while reaction rolls were 2d6, and Surprise checks were on a d6, unless they weren't.

IMO the attack matrix was superior to THACO, but it was pretty much in line with the rest of the system: no consistent expectations should be assumed.

Jason
2021-03-29, 10:49 PM
Saving throws, lower numbers were better, because you had to roll over them.
Yep. It's not the case that higher numbers were always better in 1st ed. AC was not the only example of this, merely one of the more prominent ones.

Cursed armor was described with negative numbers (-1, -2, etc.) In 1st edition. +1 Armor is beneficial, and would lower your armor class, not raise it.

The idiosyncrasies of the system were frankly part of the charm.

Telok
2021-03-29, 11:46 PM
You know... I'm going to say that specific mechanics like thac0 don't make a game good or bad. Simpler or more complicated perhaps. Easier or harder for some. Which could be better or worse for individual people. I mean, at least it's not <gasp> dividing by 3 or something. The horror. The horror.

If you equate "all rolls use the exact same mechanic" and "minimum complexity" with a "good game" then there's a pile of games out there that use a single d6 and a handful of pages. One mechanic, total simplicity, no math beyond adding or subtracting single digits. And nobody ever mentions them or serms to play them despite them checking all the "good" categories.

But I can still find groups having a blast with AD&D, ShadowRun, and Champions. All of which are "bad" games by those metrics. Of course that's back to fun/popular not making a game good. That tells me there's a range of complexity and disparate mechanics that matters. A number of games are possibly too simple, as a number may be too complex. Of course people will rate things differently based on personal preference.

D&D has never had a truely unified mechanics (damage, occasional d100 charts, & needing to use multi-roll checks to even out certain situations, off the top of my head) and there are things which the d20+X vs DC paradigm isn't great and needs the DM to fix during game. Plus, frankly, it still isn't anywhere near simple or easy in a fair number of places.

So I'd say that a negative point on the good-bad game meter is unwelcome complexity that that fails to produce a commensurate benefit. Likewise a positive point would be simplicity that doesn't sacrifice some aspect of game play just for the sake of simplicity.

I'm really thinking that it's not really useful to just say "good" or "bad". It needs to be "good for-", "bad at-", and "does/doesn't need advanced DM skills to-".

Satinavian
2021-03-30, 07:03 AM
You know... I'm going to say that specific mechanics like thac0 don't make a game good or bad. Simpler or more complicated perhaps. Easier or harder for some. Which could be better or worse for individual people. I mean, at least it's not <gasp> dividing by 3 or something. The horror. The horror.

Thac0 is not bad because it is complex or hard to understand. It is bad because it is needlessly complex. It doesn't provide any benefits over simpler menachics that can reach the very same outcomes. Like BAB.

Pauly
2021-03-30, 08:09 AM
You know... I'm going to say that specific mechanics like thac0 don't make a game good or bad. Simpler or more complicated perhaps. Easier or harder for some. Which could be better or worse for individual people. I mean, at least it's not <gasp> dividing by 3 or something. The horror. The horror.

If you equate "all rolls use the exact same mechanic" and "minimum complexity" with a "good game" then there's a pile of games out there that use a single d6 and a handful of pages. One mechanic, total simplicity, no math beyond adding or subtracting single digits. And nobody ever mentions them or serms to play them despite them checking all the "good" categories.
to-".

Since I brought up THAC0, the complaint about it isn’t the mechanics. The math works. I prefer high numbers good, low numbers bad, but I can work with low numbers good, high numbers bad.
The complaint is that it is inconsistent with the rest of the game. People found the inconsistency difficult, not the mechanic. People could see that what we know ad BAB would work without forcing your brain to remember a different subsystem for that circumstance.

It isn’t about simplicity. Different games offer different levels of complexity to different groups. I’ve played and enjoyed Empire, a TT wargame where the quick reference sheet was 12 densely typed double sided pages, and you needed all of that to play the game in anything resembling a timely manner.

When playing a RPG your time is split between the RP (the story) and the G (the mechanics). The more time you devote to the G the less you can put into the RP. If your mechanics are consistent then it helps players streamline their thinking and decision making.

Tanarii
2021-03-30, 08:55 AM
The complaint is that it is inconsistent with the rest of the game.
It really wasn't though. Low THAC0 (or to-hit number on a chart) was better, low saving throws were better, and low AC was better. It was actually fairly consistent, in so far as the word could be applied to AD&D, which it can't.

The game was structurally full of inconsistent subsystems for resolution. But "higher is better" wasn't the case.

It also makes conceptual sense for it to be lower. Thac0 is a TN, like saves. And later, like DCs. And for TNs where the goal is to roll over, lower is better.

What actually changed was AC was turned onto a TN. Originally, it wasn't.

Jason
2021-03-30, 10:27 AM
You know... I'm going to say that specific mechanics like thac0 don't make a game good or bad. Simpler or more complicated perhaps. Easier or harder for some. Which could be better or worse for individual people. I mean, at least it's not <gasp> dividing by 3 or something. The horror. The horror.

If you equate "all rolls use the exact same mechanic" and "minimum complexity" with a "good game" then there's a pile of games out there that use a single d6 and a handful of pages. One mechanic, total simplicity, no math beyond adding or subtracting single digits. And nobody ever mentions them or serms to play them despite them checking all the "good" categories.

But I can still find groups having a blast with AD&D, ShadowRun, and Champions. All of which are "bad" games by those metrics. Of course that's back to fun/popular not making a game good. That tells me there's a range of complexity and disparate mechanics that matters. A number of games are possibly too simple, as a number may be too complex. Of course people will rate things differently based on personal preference.
That's the thing. Some groups like complex, while others don't. Some groups even like "needlessly complex". There are fans of Starfleet Battles because of the giant rulebook. There are gamers who spend endless hours using the MegaTraveller and Traveller the New Era and GURPS Vehicles rules just designing vehicles and starships.

Ever looked at the vehicle combat rules for the original Twilight: 2000? Challenge Magazine published a TW2K combat example in the late '80s. In the example, a group of players has holed up in a Polish farmhouse, when a group of marauders come by and decide to bushwhack them. During the course of the battle one marauder fires a portable anti-tank missile at the player’s Bradley armored fighting vehicle. This is how the attack is resolved:


Second Turn, Round Three: The sniper fires the Armbrust. At 100 meters (close range) his HW 60 means he needs to make a percentile roll of 36 (at close range the percentage to hit is 0.6 times base skill). He rolls 34 and hits.

It is a left front oblique shot, and the oblique column of the vehicle hit location chart is used. A die roll of 5 is a F:HS or center hull side result (per the notes to the aforementioned chart). Consulting the vehicle damage location list for the M2 Bradley APC, the referee notes that the armor at that point is 15 (the number in parens after the F:HS). The referee then determines damage (per pages 8-10). According to these rules, the damage of the weapon is compared to the target's armor at the location of the hit (15 in this case). The Armbrust damage is x 20C. The x means the damage (20) is multiplied by a die roll. The C (for constant) means this die roll does not vary with range and is always 4D6 (4D6 is the damage roll for weapon attacks at close range). A 4D6 roll of 17 multiplied by 20 is 340 damage points for the Armbrust. Since the Armbrust's damage is greater, the weapon penetrates with 325 damage points remaining.

The component list for the Bradley at location F:HS is D,E,F. This is the order in which the components take damage if the vehicle is hit from the right side. For a left side hit (such as this one) the order is reversed, and becomes F,E,D. In the notes to the vehicle damage hit location tables, we see that these letters represent the vehicle's fuel, engine, and driver. The damage points remaining after penetration hit each of these in sequence, with fuel first. This follows the procedure outlined in the component damage rule (page 9).

First, the referee consults the damage multiplier table (referee's charts) and notes that the damage multiplier of fuel is x 10 or 10.

Second, the two numbers (remaining damage and damage multiplier) are compared. Since 325 is greater than 10, the shot damages the component. The referee subtracts the multiplier from the damage, leaving 315 damage points.

Third, the damage points left over are multiplied by 10 to determine the percent damage (315 x 10=3150%).

Fourth, the actual number of hits taken by the fuel is determined. For every 10% damage the component takes, it receives actual damage points equal to its damage multiplier. In this case, that is 3150/10 = 315 x 20 = 6300. This is subtracted from the remaining damage figure to determine if any energy goes on to other components; 315-6300= - 5985, (page 9). The Armbrust has expended its energy, and no other component is hit.

There is a special case for the referee to consider, however: fuel can catch fire. The fuel hits rule (page 10) states that if the percent damage to the fuel is greater than or equal to the flashpoint for that particular type of fuel (taken from the fuel flashpoint table in the referee's charts) the fuel catches fire. The referee looks up the flashpoint for the ethanol fuel the Bradley is carrying (30%) and tells Allen that the Bradley is on fire.

Allen must now try to escape. Ordinarily this would be a AVG:AGL task, but the referee rules that Allen is wounded and increases it to DIF:AGL. This means that Allen must make a percentile roll less than or equal to half his converted AGL. Allen's AGL is 12, which converts to 60. Allen must roll 30 or less to escape unharmed. He rolls a 41 and escapes, but he is burned in the process. Per the escape rule (page 10) the referee rolls ID6 for the number of locations burned (getting a result of 3), rolls each location on the hit location chart, and finally rolls 1D6x ID6 for damage to each area. Allen receives 12 points of damage to his left arm, 8 points of damage to his abdomen, and 16 points of damage to his left leg. Since his left leg has already taken 9 points, this is a total of 25 points, which is greater than the left leg's hit capacity of 19, but not more than twice that capacity. This is a serious wound, and Allen must roll against his CON to remain conscious (55 or less). He rolls 23 and can still move (a good thing, since remaining next to a burning Bradley is not a good thing), but only at a crawl since his left leg is seriously wounded (all that is stated in the rules is that he would lose use of the limb, but the referee uses his common sense, and restricts Allen's movement in this way). Allen must make the roll to stay conscious each turn he crawls away from the burning Bradley.
Yeah.

That game was pretty popular in its day. I imagine reading that example alone could make the brains of gamers who think THAC0 is needlessly complicated explode.

Complexity is therefore by itself not an objective criteria of whether a game is bad or good. How much complexity is good or bad depends on the group and the amount of crunch they like in their rules..

Telok
2021-03-30, 10:37 AM
Ok, thac0 was the number the player needed to roll to hit an armored target. Just like the ad&d saves were the number the player needed to roll to survive by dumb luck and fate after they messed up. The dm told the player a modifier, if any. The numbers on the ad&d character sheet were the numbers on the die that the player needed to roll, ac was a modifer to the opponent's roll. The thing that changed was the ac modifier got wrapped into the dc instead of the roll.

It's not particularly good or bad as a mechanic, just poorly explained.
d20+(player mods)+(enemy ac bonus) vs 20
d20+(player mods) vs 20-(enemy ac bonus)
And of course 20-8 = 10+2. Who wrote down what the roll needed to be just moved from the players to the dm.

Mechanically it's the same, the difference is presentation and explanation. The later d&ds were better with the presentation, the mechanic didn't change. Its about the same style difference as physics equations taught as algebra vs taught as calculus, same numbers with different style.

Enough. Thac0 is old news and all this has been gone over before. I'm gonna let this die. I think bell curve systems are better for not-comedy games. Dosen't make them better for everything and not all bell curve systems are better than flat distribution systems.

Stonehead
2021-03-30, 01:27 PM
You know... I'm going to say that specific mechanics like thac0 don't make a game good or bad. Simpler or more complicated perhaps. Easier or harder for some. Which could be better or worse for individual people. I mean, at least it's not <gasp> dividing by 3 or something. The horror. The horror.

For sure one mechanic can't make a game good or bad, but surely there's more granularity than that when judging a games quality, right? THAC0 was before my time, so I can't really comment on it's quality as a rule, but lets pretend everyone agrees it's bad for a second. If THAC0 was replaced with something more intuitive, that wouldn't have automatically made AD&D a good game, but it would have made it better.

There's been a lot of talk in this thread about how well systems deliver on their promises, and a game's rules are one of the biggest ways it does that.

Quertus
2021-03-31, 03:28 PM
Well. THAC0 got interesting.

So, in d20 systems, the target number (DC) is how difficult the challenge is, your skill is the modifier added to the d20 of chance to see if you succeed. Rolling high is good.

In 2e, your skill (THAC0, saves) is your target number; the challenge (AC, save bonus/penalty) provides the modifier added to the d20 of chance to see if you succeed. Rolling high is good.

But then, in 2e, your attribute is the target number for skill checks, the particular skill and the challenge provide the modifiers… to the target number… and you roll the d20 of chance to see if you succeed. Rolling low is good.

For consistency, the 3d6 base stats should have been reversed, low numbers should have been good. Fighters should have required a 12 or lower Strength, a Girdle of Storm Giant Strength should have granted a Strength stat of -3, and exceptional Strength should have looked like "3(100)" or something. Wizards should have hoped for a 3 in Intelligence (and want to use wishes to make it lower), etc.

Then everything in 2e would have been consistent. (Well, except psionics, and Thief skills, and…)

But, consistency aside, as much sense as "your skill (THAC0) is the target number, the challenge (AC) provides the modifier" makes, I'll contend that this is the first time I've seen the concept expressed so clearly.

Gygaxian pros aren't the only flaw in 2e's language, I guess. But it explains why AC was bounded (in roughly a +12 to -12 range).

Jason
2021-03-31, 05:22 PM
For sure one mechanic can't make a game good or bad...
Giving it some thought, I think you're correct that one good mechanic won't make a whole game system good, but I think that one bad mechanic can make a game bad, especially if it's a very important mechanic.

For example, I don't like the basic dice mechanics for FFG Star Wars. I think the dice symbols are non-intuitive, it takes too long to build the pool and adjust it and then sort out the roll after youve rolled it, and then I dislike how almost every roll ends up a mixture of success and failure, and more often and to more extreme levels the more experienced your characters are.

That's the game's basic resolution mechanic. If you're annoyed by it, like I am, then you're going to be annoyed everytime you try to do anything in the game. That one mechanic ruins the whole game for me.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-03-31, 07:12 PM
Giving it some thought, I think you're correct that one good mechanic won't make a whole game system good, but I think that one bad mechanic can make a game bad, especially if it's a very important mechanic.

For example, I don't like the basic dice mechanics for FFG Star Wars. I think the dice symbols are non-intuitive, it takes too long to build the pool and adjust it and then sort out the roll after youve rolled it, and then I dislike how almost every roll ends up a mixture of success and failure, and more often and to more extreme levels the more experienced your characters are.

That's the game's basic resolution mechanic. If you're annoyed by it, like I am, then you're going to be annoyed everytime you try to do anything in the game. That one mechanic ruins the whole game for me.

If I may, I'd change that to "one bad core mechanic can make a game bad for a person...". Then I'd be in agreement.

For example, I think that 5e's variant encumbrance is wack. Horrible. Not so much the idea, but that they got all the weights wrong so clerics built according to the quick-start guidelines are encumbered simply by wearing the gear they're provided. Not even the adventuring pack, just the armor and weapon. I'll never use variant encumbrance. That said, it's decidedly not a core mechanic, so meh. Doesn't affect my estimation of the system as a whole.

If they'd have set the core d20 + mod vs DC thing to be say "roll 1d20, do some calculus to figure out which table to roll on, then roll on that table (and each table uses a different pattern), which tells you which other table to use (once you factor in the phase of the moon)...", I'd say the whole system is bad (for me).

And that second italics is important. There are only a very few things that can make a system objectively bad. If the system itself just doesn't work at all (such as if you're missing critical parts of generating a character or the rules for doing so are internally contradictory so its impossible to make a legal character). A few things like that. But that's a really easy bar to clear. Beyond that, it's mostly a matter of taste and what works for you, personally, based on the things you're trying to do with it.

Stonehead
2021-03-31, 07:41 PM
Giving it some thought, I think you're correct that one good mechanic won't make a whole game system good, but I think that one bad mechanic can make a game bad, especially if it's a very important mechanic.

For example, I don't like the basic dice mechanics for FFG Star Wars. I think the dice symbols are non-intuitive, it takes too long to build the pool and adjust it and then sort out the roll after youve rolled it, and then I dislike how almost every roll ends up a mixture of success and failure, and more often and to more extreme levels the more experienced your characters are.

That's the game's basic resolution mechanic. If you're annoyed by it, like I am, then you're going to be annoyed everytime you try to do anything in the game. That one mechanic ruins the whole game for me.

You might be right. Depending on how fundamental the mechanic is, no amount of polish could redeem the system as a whole. At the very best you could salvage some other mechanic, and homebrew it into other games. I really don't like that you need to spend points to benefit from aspects in FATE, and that ruins the whole system for me.


If I may, I'd change that to "one bad core mechanic can make a game bad for a person...". Then I'd be in agreement.

For example, I think that 5e's variant encumbrance is wack. Horrible. Not so much the idea, but that they got all the weights wrong so clerics built according to the quick-start guidelines are encumbered simply by wearing the gear they're provided. Not even the adventuring pack, just the armor and weapon. I'll never use variant encumbrance. That said, it's decidedly not a core mechanic, so meh. Doesn't affect my estimation of the system as a whole.

If they'd have set the core d20 + mod vs DC thing to be say "roll 1d20, do some calculus to figure out which table to roll on, then roll on that table (and each table uses a different pattern), which tells you which other table to use (once you factor in the phase of the moon)...", I'd say the whole system is bad (for me).

And that second italics is important. There are only a very few things that can make a system objectively bad. If the system itself just doesn't work at all (such as if you're missing critical parts of generating a character or the rules for doing so are internally contradictory so its impossible to make a legal character). A few things like that. But that's a really easy bar to clear. Beyond that, it's mostly a matter of taste and what works for you, personally, based on the things you're trying to do with it.

Not to be too pedantic, but if a core mechanic could make a game bad for someone, then it's technically also true that a mechanic could make a game bad. :P

Jokes aside, I honestly think it's more useful to say that there's nothing wrong with disliking good things than it is to say that nothing is objectively good or bad. Like, if a resolution mechanic takes forever to resolve, that's a bad trait. In Jason's FFG Star Wars example above, it's not like taking a long time to build the pool is good for some people and bad for others. It seems more accurate to say it's a flaw in the system, because nothing is perfect, and Jason cares about that flaw, while fans of the game don't.

Obviously some things are taste, like genre and rules-lite vs rules-heavy. But in my experience, it's more that fans of a game don't care that much about its flaws, while critics don't care about its strengths (or really do care about its flaws)

Quertus
2021-03-31, 09:42 PM
If they'd have set the core d20 + mod vs DC thing to be say "roll 1d20, do some calculus to figure out which table to roll on, then roll on that table (and each table uses a different pattern), which tells you which other table to use (once you factor in the phase of the moon)...", I'd say the whole system is bad (for me).

And that second italics is important. There are only a very few things that can make a system objectively bad. If the system itself just doesn't work at all (such as if you're missing critical parts of generating a character or the rules for doing so are internally contradictory so its impossible to make a legal character). A few things like that. But that's a really easy bar to clear. Beyond that, it's mostly a matter of taste and what works for you, personally, based on the things you're trying to do with it.

I think, like with programming, if the complexity of the process exceeds the required complexity to generate the solution, then you have objectively bad code. Or, at least, objectively suboptimal code - which, for both programs and games, I suspect is synonymous with bad.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-03-31, 09:55 PM
I think, like with programming, if the complexity of the process exceeds the required complexity to generate the solution, then you have objectively bad code. Or, at least, objectively suboptimal code - which, for both programs and games, I suspect is synonymous with bad.

If everything suboptimal is bad, then everything's bad. Because everything is suboptimal.

Especially since "required" is a subjective parameter here. Some people enjoy super-crunchy, super-detailed mechanics. Hit charts, tables for different armor vs weapon types, etc. Whereas I think that even 3e's BAB-per-class + several different AC's was surplus to requirements. Of course there's a U-shaped curve here, where at one end just about everyone agrees that you could really do with a bit more complexity ("Roll 1d20, if it's over 10 you win the game") and at the other just about everyone agrees that maybe you don't quite need all that crunch. But those points are really really far out and in the middle there's a wide variation in what "fits requirements".

kyoryu
2021-04-01, 10:32 AM
Some people like complexity.

It's really hard to say that anything is good or bad in a vacuum. It's all about what the individuals are looking for.

MoiMagnus
2021-04-01, 11:47 AM
Some people like complexity.

I'm doubtful of that, though it might depends on what you call "complexity".

A lot of peoples like the depth that complexity allows.
But I don't know anybody who would prefer a D&D in which every ability score is a multiple of 0.73 instead of an integer [and the modifier associated is ((N*1.37)-10)/2, rounded down, so same game balance] just for the sake of complexity.

Complexity is the cost of interesting features of a game, but it's still a cost and you don't want to overpay.

Quertus
2021-04-01, 12:17 PM
If everything suboptimal is bad, then everything's bad. Because everything is suboptimal.

Especially since "required" is a subjective parameter here. Some people enjoy super-crunchy, super-detailed mechanics. Hit charts, tables for different armor vs weapon types, etc. Whereas I think that even 3e's BAB-per-class + several different AC's was surplus to requirements. Of course there's a U-shaped curve here, where at one end just about everyone agrees that you could really do with a bit more complexity ("Roll 1d20, if it's over 10 you win the game") and at the other just about everyone agrees that maybe you don't quite need all that crunch. But those points are really really far out and in the middle there's a wide variation in what "fits requirements".

Your response did not match my claim. Let me try again.

An operation - say, calculating n! - has a known complexity. This is not subjective.

It is a known fact that various sorting algorithms operate at different speeds. And if you are using bubble sort, it is very very much slower than the other common sorting algorithms. This, also, is not subjective.

I don't care if you enjoy super crunchy code - if you're only adding 2 small numbers together, and you've written a thousand lines of recursive bubble sort that takes days to run, it's bad code (even if it does somehow eventually come to the correct answer (and I don't think I want to know how you're using bubble sort to add two numbers)).

Now, that said, there is a subjective component; namely, *how* suboptimal something has to be before it is considered "bad".

And, here, there are many competing factors: speed, readability, simplicity, code reuse, maintainability, etc. Optimizing one is often done at the expense of others.

Contrary to the opinions of my more efficiency-minded (and, typically, bug-breeding) co-workers, most applications don't require the bleeding edge best - any standard form other than bubble sort is sufficient for most purposes. In fact, if you're simply sorting "the party" by initiative order / matching order / whatever, even bubble sort will work just fine.

So, yes, just as I talk about how balance is a range, not a point, and different groups will have ranges of different sizes, so, too, will different people have different ranges of *how* suboptimal things can be before they consider them bad, and that range will likely vary by the scenario. Which… is at least *related* to your "U-shaped curve", I guess, in that people will have different preferences. One can like chocolate cake or strawberry cake, sure. But if the chocolate cake carries warnings like major pharmaceutical products (may cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, blurred vision, seizures, or death), I'd say that's a bad cake, regardless of who likes it.

I like crunch. But I don't want *needless* crunch, I don't value "crunch for Crunch's sake". If you're using NASA supercomputers to track characters' every action, and probabilistically determine their inventory based on data the NSA has collected via spy satellites on what everyone was carrying at every point in time? Unless this is being done as a really expensive April fool's joke, I think you'll get better results by just tracking inventory than by asking the super computer whether or not you have a gun / change for a twenty / keys to the White House at the current moment.

kyoryu
2021-04-01, 02:04 PM
I'm doubtful of that, though it might depends on what you call "complexity".

A lot of peoples like the depth that complexity allows.
But I don't know anybody who would prefer a D&D in which every ability score is a multiple of 0.73 instead of an integer [and the modifier associated is ((N*1.37)-10)/2, rounded down, so same game balance] just for the sake of complexity.

Complexity is the cost of interesting features of a game, but it's still a cost and you don't want to overpay.

So, look at 3.x. Sure you can make a completely non-combat character by searching through 20 splats and adding stuff together.

Or I can do the same thing in Fate or GURPS with a lot less effort.

Some people like showing the mastery that they can do that in 3.x They like mastering the complex system and showing what they can do. It's a thing in tabletop games, in video games, all over the place. Like a lot of systems offer "you can do anything" but, really, boil down to a half dozen builds. People like the complexity of figuring these builds out, rather than just being handed that half dozen choices, even though in terms of real depth it's basically the same.

Stonehead
2021-04-01, 02:14 PM
I think here the difference between "complexity" and "depth" might be useful. At least, the way that game design distinguishes between the two. I'm oversimplifying greatly, but complexity is basically the amount of rules there are, and depth is something like the diversity of the options given to the player.

So, as an example, compare Rock Paper Scissors to RPS 101 (https://www.umop.com/rps101.htm) to Pokemon. Rock Paper Scissors has very low complexity, and very low depth. The rules are simple, and you don't really need to put much thought into your actions. RPS101 has much higher complexity, but basically the same level of depth. Maybe you could read into what signs are more difficult to throw and calculate the best move, but it's basically just Rock Paper Scissors. Pokemon adds a lot of complexity, which results in a much higher depth. The web of type effectiveness is intricate and asymmetrical. And the fact that each pokemon can only learn 4 moves instead of having access to all types, means there's a lot more decision making to be done in creating a team. (Obviously there's more mechanics to pokemon than just type effectiveness, but I think it illustrates the idea well).

So, complexity will usually but not always lead to depth, and depth is what the general audience is really after.

There's another way to get depth though, and that's through what they call 'elegance'. Elegance in programming and game design means something specific. It's basically when simple rules lead to complex systems. A good way to show complexity is the way that flat damage reduction, and multiple attacks interact. Imagine you have one fighter with 4 defense and another fighter with 0, while you have one attack that deals 10 damage, and another that deals two hits of 6 damage. Against the 0 defense fighter, your double attack will deal 12 total damage, making it better than your single attack. But, against the 4 defense fighter, your double attack will only deal 4 damage ((6 - 4) x 2), while your single attack will deal 6 damage.

We end up with a system that basically has type effectiveness that arises as the natural result of simple rules. There's not a lot of complexity, but we do have a decent amount of depth.

Wall of text aside, I think there are people who like complexity, independent from depth. Some people like memorizing type effectiveness, or reading through page after page of options to come up with something unique.

TLDR: the general audience likes depth, and complexity is an easy, reliable way to get depth. There are other options though. There are also people who like complexity in and of itself.

Man_Over_Game
2021-04-01, 02:18 PM
I'm doubtful of that, though it might depends on what you call "complexity".

A lot of peoples like the depth that complexity allows.
But I don't know anybody who would prefer a D&D in which every ability score is a multiple of 0.73 instead of an integer [and the modifier associated is ((N*1.37)-10)/2, rounded down, so same game balance] just for the sake of complexity.

Complexity is the cost of interesting features of a game, but it's still a cost and you don't want to overpay.

We want a simple foundation that has no upper ceiling on the possible (optional) complexity that's available.

For example, rolling a die to see if you succeed has a very low ceiling.

Having a pool of d6s to represent your actions, and you can spend as many as you want on a single action and you can't do any action more than once, has a relatively high ceiling despite a fairly low floor.

kyoryu
2021-04-01, 06:10 PM
I think here the difference between "complexity" and "depth" might be useful. At least, the way that game design distinguishes between the two. I'm oversimplifying greatly, but complexity is basically the amount of rules there are, and depth is something like the diversity of the options given to the player.

So, as an example, compare Rock Paper Scissors

Here's how I relate the two.

In game theory, there's a concept called a "dominated strategy". That's a choice you can make where, no matter what your opponent does, a single other choice is better. I stretch that slightly to "as good, or better".

So, let's look at RPS. In RPS, there's a Nash Equilibrium (which is NOT the same as an optimal strategy, but for our purposes is close enough) of "play r, p, and s randomly and equally". That's because rock beats scissors but loses to paper, etc. etc. We know RPS.

There is no dominant strategy in RPS. We could lock at rock vs scissors and say "a-ha! Rock is dominant becuase it does better than paper or scissors!" but that's not true because it needs to do better no matter what the opponent does. If the opponent picked paper instead, rock would lose. RPS has no dominant strategies.

Let's add The Bomb. The bomb is just a fist with your thumb sticking out. The bomb blows up paper and rocks, gets its wick cut by scissors, and ties against itself.

So... what does this do to RPS?

Well, we can do a lot of math and diagrams and stuff, but the answer is pretty simple - it replaces paper. In every case where you might play paper, the bomb will do at least as well, and does better in some cases. So once we know that paper is dominated, we can basically just forget about it..... and once we do, we have RBS.

Once you remove paper, RBS is exactly the same as RBPS. And RBS is exactly the same as RPS.

So, here's the thing, RBPS has more complexity - there's more options to consider. But once you do the math and figure it out, the actual choices have the same count as RPS, so it doesn't have any more depth.

Some people like navigating that and determining the optimal choices, and good for them! Some don't care, and would rather have the final available strategies be obvious so you can play the game on that level, and that's great too.



TLDR: the general audience likes depth, and complexity is an easy, reliable way to get depth. There are other options though. There are also people who like complexity in and of itself.

The interesting thing is that complexity can actually reduce depth. It's fairly common, actually Let's say a game has ten classes, and then they change the game to some kind of point buy system.... if the resulting point buy system has less than ten actually viable builds, then you've reduced depth (the number of valid choices) while increasing complexity (the knowledge needed to figure out the valid choices). (By "valid" here I mean "a choice that is, in some way, better than another choice in some ways"). As combinatorial complexity increases, this becomes more and more likely.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-04-01, 07:24 PM
The interesting thing is that complexity can actually reduce depth. It's fairly common, actually Let's say a game has ten classes, and then they change the game to some kind of point buy system.... if the resulting point buy system has less than ten actually viable builds, then you've reduced depth (the number of valid choices) while increasing complexity (the knowledge needed to figure out the valid choices). (By "valid" here I mean "a choice that is, in some way, better than another choice in some ways"). As combinatorial complexity increases, this becomes more and more likely.

Even outside this pathological case (where depth scales inversely with complexity), the general case is that depth scales slower than complexity. Doubling the complexity (by some measure) may only increase the depth by 10%. This is one of my big gripes with 3e D&D--tons of complexity and options theoretically, but most of it is utterly pointless. It's just noise to be dug through by people who want to actually play the game. Or, worse, fodder for "look at my system mastery" comparisons (ie letting the experienced players say "git gud nub" when a new person falls into one of the traps the system digs for people). Plus, increased complexity often leads to unintentional dominant choices. Where by combining X, Y, and Z, you get something that the designers never planned for and which breaks the game unless the DM accounts for it (which often leads to arms-races and party struggles as one person's character warps the game around them due to mechanical prowess). That kind of thing results in even less actual depth, because with dominant strategies like that, your options are
1) play to those dominant strategies both as a player and as a DM (resulting in a much more limited palette of choices)
2) everyone agrees to avoid those dominant strategies (which is fine, but often takes system mastery because you can accidentally break things)
3) have a mix and suffer unless everyone's fine with playing BMX Biker and Angel Summoner.

A lot of classic monsters have to be completely rewritten or just left out--giving everyone and their mother spells so they can keep up with the T1 casters is one example of this adaptation.

kyoryu
2021-04-01, 10:21 PM
Even outside this pathological case (where depth scales inversely with complexity), the general case is that depth scales slower than complexity. Doubling the complexity (by some measure) may only increase the depth by 10%. This is one of my big gripes with 3e D&D--tons of complexity and options theoretically, but most of it is utterly pointless. It's just noise to be dug through by people who want to actually play the game. Or, worse, fodder for "look at my system mastery" comparisons (ie letting the experienced players say "git gud nub" when a new person falls into one of the traps the system digs for people). Plus, increased complexity often leads to unintentional dominant choices. Where by combining X, Y, and Z, you get something that the designers never planned for and which breaks the game unless the DM accounts for it (which often leads to arms-races and party struggles as one person's character warps the game around them due to mechanical prowess). That kind of thing results in even less actual depth, because with dominant strategies like that, your options are
1) play to those dominant strategies both as a player and as a DM (resulting in a much more limited palette of choices)
2) everyone agrees to avoid those dominant strategies (which is fine, but often takes system mastery because you can accidentally break things)
3) have a mix and suffer unless everyone's fine with playing BMX Biker and Angel Summoner.

A lot of classic monsters have to be completely rewritten or just left out--giving everyone and their mother spells so they can keep up with the T1 casters is one example of this adaptation.

I would definitely argue that 3x falls into the "greater complexity leading to lesser depth" model, even if you ditch the truly TO stuff like Pun-pun.

And I wasn't even getting into the fact that many of those dominant choices would be unintentional, but that's pretty clearly the case. It's rare that people intentionally design like that, but the combinatorial complexity pretty much guarantees it. It really happens in almost every sufficiently complex system. I think that's why you see Blizzard getting out of expansive build trees and into more direct choices - they can make the choices actually meaningful as well as being accessible to more players.

I mean, that's a decent chunk of the argument, really, that by reducing the complexity you also reduce the testing surface and it's easier to ensure you're more-or-less where you want to be in terms of overall balance.

Stonehead
2021-04-01, 10:45 PM
Another thing to keep in mind here is that rpgs are also role playing games. That doesn't take away from the optimization discussion which is all still valid, but there's more to a game's complexity (and also it's quality) than just build options. Building characters is basically a game upon itself, but actually playing the game has its own levels of complexity.

Everything that's been said about builds also applies to gameplay, but it's a bit more obscured, because in role playing games, like in life, the objectives aren't very clear and they usually differ from person to person. A game's resolution mechanic could be as simple as "Roll a d20, add your level, >10 is a success, < 10 is a failure". That's obviously not very complex. It doesn't really have any depth at all, but honestly if it's just a "beer and pretzles" game, it would be more fun than a few rules-lite systems I've played. Even adding attributes to rolls in addition to/instead of your level would increase a game's complexity, but also it's depth. Like, think about how you approach problems in rpgs, you try to play to your character's strengths (or show off their weaknesses for comedic effect). I would consider the barbarian deciding to intimidate the guard instead of sweet-talking him because it suits him better a very lite form of depth.

Also, think about lookup tables. Hardly any modern rpgs still use lookup tables (ie, roll 1d20, 3d6, 1d100, and look up the result on this table) in their main game play. They add a lot of complexity (having 100 possible results instead of 2, or 4 if you run with partial success/failure). But they don't really add much depth. Especially because the players rarely know what the content of the tables are before rolling.

Lord Raziere
2021-04-01, 11:11 PM
I would definitely argue that 3x falls into the "greater complexity leading to lesser depth" model, even if you ditch the truly TO stuff like Pun-pun.

And I wasn't even getting into the fact that many of those dominant choices would be unintentional, but that's pretty clearly the case. It's rare that people intentionally design like that, but the combinatorial complexity pretty much guarantees it. It really happens in almost every sufficiently complex system. I think that's why you see Blizzard getting out of expansive build trees and into more direct choices - they can make the choices actually meaningful as well as being accessible to more players.

I mean, that's a decent chunk of the argument, really, that by reducing the complexity you also reduce the testing surface and it's easier to ensure you're more-or-less where you want to be in terms of overall balance.

I mean the problem with systems that lead to unintentional broken things and depth of interaction is that they really only work in card games like Mt:G and Hearthstone, because the entire point is to let dominant strategies emerge to determine a temporary meta- but then that meta eventually has to rotate out. it doesn't stay. this makes sure you have to constantly change decks and be in the habit of changing up your strategy to play. and allows that depth to be explored by making sure the choice is a time limit, once it rotates out it isn't competitive anymore.

this doesn't work for roleplaying games, because roleplaying games operate on a slower timescale. a card game has more room for brokenness and unintentional interaction because if you screw up, whatever broken thing you make is not going to last and people will get tired of the interaction real quick. but when you design a roleplaying game edition, that edition's ruleset is going to be around for years. if you don't make sure what interactions and strategies you want to exist actually do and match up to the vision you want and you end up with something that isn't what you intended to make, you can't take that back as easily, because now whatever you designed, your stuck with unless you make books to fix that and thats when diminishing returns come into play as the more books you put out, the less likely as many people will buy them. meaning you have to get that first book right, or whatever fixes you make will be taken as "meddlesome" with the likelihood rising the later it comes.

and of course if you have that slower timescale, that produces a stagnant environment where your stuck with a non-ideal meta, everyone soon knows the strats and everyone becomes complacent about it or starts modifying the game to fix it in their own way, which is fine from a player perspective, not so great from a designer perspective. now emergent gameplay can be good, but that isn't the be-all end-all of gaming and just because you can enjoy oranges from a system meant to enjoy apples, doesn't mean the system should be about oranges or that it is about oranges, because no matter how little that matters from a player perspective, thats a failure from a design perspective, because an apple enjoyment system should be able to enjoy apples instead of screwing up so much you get oranges enjoyment instead. There is something to be said for a system intending an experience and successfully delivering on that experience.

Witty Username
2021-04-02, 12:08 AM
So, look at 3.x. Sure you can make a completely non-combat character by searching through 20 splats and adding stuff together.

Or I can do the same thing in Fate or GURPS with a lot less effort.

Some people like showing the mastery that they can do that in 3.x They like mastering the complex system and showing what they can do. It's a thing in tabletop games, in video games, all over the place. Like a lot of systems offer "you can do anything" but, really, boil down to a half dozen builds. People like the complexity of figuring these builds out, rather than just being handed that half dozen choices, even though in terms of real depth it's basically the same.

I think that is more how granular 3.x could get, you could make just about any character concept and represent it mechanically. I don't know about Fate or Gurps but at least in 5e I have gotten frustrated trying to make some fairly basic concepts with what is given. But that might be more limitations of the class system, 3.x had enough classes to get the options but there were so many that it was difficult to navigate, where 5e has so few and the use of sub classes can make for grab bags of abilities that don't make much sense for the character or things that simply don't exist.
My example was trying to make a Frost priest, homebrewing a domain because the existing ones don't really fit, and my conclusion was you would still end up with a lot of healing, light, and radiant damage without overhauling the cleric.

MoiMagnus
2021-04-02, 03:01 AM
while increasing complexity (the knowledge needed to figure out the valid choices).

That's probably where we differ. I mostly define complexity as "the number of rules" and "how difficult it is to apply those rules", not the amount of knowledge needed to figure out the valid choices.

As such, with my definition, Go is one of the less complex games in existence, while being one of the game that reward system mastery and knowledge the most. (Chess is also an example of reasonably low complexity [there are 2-3 obscure rules, so not as great as an example as Go] but high skill/knowledge reward)

[While I make a difference between the depth of the character-creation-system, which is how interesting and skill-rewarding is the mini-game of creating your own character and finding the better builds, and the depth of the gameplay itself, which is how interesting and varied is the game once you settled on a valid build]

Tanarii
2021-04-02, 05:04 AM
Go and Chess are extremely high complexity games.

Complexity is definitely not just how many rules are in the book. They're interactions and application of the rules. The play experience is definitely a part of that.

A good example of very low complexity is Monopoly or Life, or better: snakes and ladders.

There is a reason those latter are kids / family games, and go and chess are not.

MoiMagnus
2021-04-02, 07:19 AM
Complexity is definitely not just how many rules are in the book.

That was the point of my previous message. Noting that I was not using the same definition of complexity.

Using programming metaphor (which doesn't apply well to social games like RPGs), I was calling "complexity" the difficulty to code a program that allows users to play the game, and "depth" the difficulty to code an AI that play the game cleverly. While other peoples (like you), would use "complexity" to refer to the second one too.

[Which makes Go and Chess very low "complexity" games but with very high "depth"]

Stonehead
2021-04-02, 09:42 AM
That was the point of my previous message. Noting that I was not using the same definition of complexity.

Using programming metaphor (which doesn't apply well to social games like RPGs), I was calling "complexity" the difficulty to code a program that allows users to play the game, and "depth" the difficulty to code an AI that play the game cleverly. While other peoples (like you), would use "complexity" to refer to the second one too.

[Which makes Go and Chess very low "complexity" games but with very high "depth"]

In computer science, they usually define the complexity of games to be a function of the number of possible game states, and the connections between them. That doesn't really make sense for role playing games though.



A good example of very low complexity is Monopoly or Life, or better: snakes and ladders.

Snakes and Ladders is an interesting example, because I would argue it's way more complex than it needs to be. The players have literally no input on the game. If we assume the dice rolls are fair, then there are zero choices to be made in a game of chutes and ladders. You could roll a single die to determine who wins, and have basically the same outcome as a full game. All those extra rules make the game more complex, although it's still a very simple game, but they don't add depth at all.

kyoryu
2021-04-02, 09:58 AM
I mean the problem with systems that lead to unintentional broken things and depth of interaction is that they really only work in card games like Mt:G and Hearthstone, because the entire point is to let dominant strategies emerge to determine a temporary meta- but then that meta eventually has to rotate out. it doesn't stay. this makes sure you have to constantly change decks and be in the habit of changing up your strategy to play. and allows that depth to be explored by making sure the choice is a time limit, once it rotates out it isn't competitive anymore.

Sure, and a lot of roleplaying games sit in this weird space where "deck-building" (character building) is a primary focus, but occurs once over a long time scale. That's just kind of fundamentally hard to deal with.


I think that is more how granular 3.x could get, you could make just about any character concept and represent it mechanically. I don't know about Fate or Gurps but at least in 5e

GURPS is extremely granular and can generate damn near any character concept.

Fate is far less granular, but still can generate... damn near any character concept.

5e can't because 5e rolled back its flexibility to pre-3e levels, and chose to focus on "adventuring" as opposed to being a pseudo-generic system. And I think 3e was only a pseudo-generic system unintentionally. 5e has no illusions about being generic in any way. It does "D&D adventuring".


That's probably where we differ. I mostly define complexity as "the number of rules" and "how difficult it is to apply those rules", not the amount of knowledge needed to figure out the valid choices.

As such, with my definition, Go is one of the less complex games in existence, while being one of the game that reward system mastery and knowledge the most. (Chess is also an example of reasonably low complexity [there are 2-3 obscure rules, so not as great as an example as Go] but high skill/knowledge reward)

I'd really say that complexity is the number of choices available, while depth is the number of useful choices.


[While I make a difference between the depth of the character-creation-system, which is how interesting and skill-rewarding is the mini-game of creating your own character and finding the better builds, and the depth of the gameplay itself, which is how interesting and varied is the game once you settled on a valid build]

This is a very good point, and different people will prefer that balance to be in different places.... I prefer depth of at-table gameplay over character creation, personally.


Go and Chess are extremely high complexity games.

By my definitions, I'd say Go is a high depth game more than anything.


A good example of very low complexity is Monopoly or Life, or better: snakes and ladders.

There is a reason those latter are kids / family games, and go and chess are not.

As far as rules complexity goes (which gets away from my more formal definition), Go isn't much more complex than them. Chess is more complex, but Go arguably has greater depth.

The rules of Go aren't much more complex than Othello.

Composer99
2021-04-02, 01:25 PM
When discussing game design, I would separate the complexity of emergent gameplay from the complexity of the game's ruleset. For fans of those games, Chess and Go deliver complex gameplay experiences from really quite simple rules.

At least in my estimation, the former (the complexity of emergent gameplay) is depth, or at least part of depth, and the latter (the complexity of the ruleset) is complexity, or at a major part of it.

Chess and Go, by my reckoning, are deep games, but not particularly complex. This is why you can teach Chess and Go to children, probably starting around age 7-8, but those games can still enthrall and engage adults of all ages, where many "kids' games" targeted at the same age segment quickly become tiresome (at least in my experience).

D&D (especially WotC-era D&D), World in Flames (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1499/world-flames), and The Magic Realm (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/22/magic-realm), by contrast, are all complex games.

Tying back to my earlier claim about return on investment, I would say that in general, an RPG with more depth is likely to produce a better return on investment for any given player. I would also say that in general, an RPG with a lower depth-to-complexity ratio is likely to produce a lower return on investment for any given player. (Even a player who enjoys complexity for its own sake would, I expect, prefer a higher depth-to-complexity ratio.)

kyoryu
2021-04-02, 01:47 PM
I think that mostly tracks, but I do think there are people that just really like mastering complexity, and have less care about depth.

They'd like the greater complexity, whether or not depth increases, and may not actually like more depth (past a point).

IOW, they'd be less concerned about the ratio, and more about the measure of complexity in and of itself.

Which, I mean, is fine. Not every game needs to or can appeal to every player.

And I think that's my big thing about game design - "good games" isn't a single objective set of criteria. It's all about what the individual player wants, and whether or not a game does the things that a specific player wants.

"Bad games" though I think can be more objective. Like, a game that has design elements that make other things it tries to do hard can be said to have "objectively bad" design because at some point it doesn't meet any set of criteria due to having conflicting mechanics... for example, a super-heroic type game with characters doing epic feats - but having a fairly high chance of just random death from a bad roll. It's not going to satisfy people wanting to be "heroic" because random death stuff is usually counter to that, and it's not going to satisfy "gritty" gamers because the overall tone will be too heroic and over the top. It might satisfy some super narrow niche of folks, but that would be an extremely narrow niche.

Stonehead
2021-04-02, 02:13 PM
And I think that's my big thing about game design - "good games" isn't a single objective set of criteria. It's all about what the individual player wants, and whether or not a game does the things that a specific player wants.

"Bad games" though I think can be more objective. Like, a game that has design elements that make other things it tries to do hard can be said to have "objectively bad" design because at some point it doesn't meet any set of criteria due to having conflicting mechanics... for example, a super-heroic type game with characters doing epic feats - but having a fairly high chance of just random death from a bad roll. It's not going to satisfy people wanting to be "heroic" because random death stuff is usually counter to that, and it's not going to satisfy "gritty" gamers because the overall tone will be too heroic and over the top. It might satisfy some super narrow niche of folks, but that would be an extremely narrow niche.

If that's the case, couldn't you just say that all the games that aren't sufficiently "bad" are "good"? There's no formula for identifying a good game, but I don't think that means the entire concept of objective quality is ruined.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-04-02, 02:21 PM
Life scientific theories according to Popper, which can never be proved true but can be disproved (1), games might not be able to be said to be objectively good but can be said to be objectively bad. Good requires fit for an individual, which is subjective. But bad only requires lack of fit with internal objectives, which is (more) objective.

(1) I'm not claiming this is really the case, just making an analogy to a mode of thought/concept where proof and disproof are not binary.

kyoryu
2021-04-02, 02:30 PM
If that's the case, couldn't you just say that all the games that aren't sufficiently "bad" are "good"? There's no formula for identifying a good game, but I don't think that means the entire concept of objective quality is ruined.

Basically? You can separate two concepts:

1) a good game is one which meets is objectives, or at least some set of objectives.
2) a good game is one which meets the needs of a particular person or group

The point is that there's no one set of objectives which is good. You can't say "you should design a game according to these principles" because you can't say that one game is flat out better than another. Some players will like swingy games, some will hate them, etc.

You can say that some games are good at meeting some needs, and some are better at meeting other needs. You could even theoretically prove one "better" in a limited sense if you could prove that it was better at meeting every possible need than another game.

We can definitely say "these games are good for you" in some fashion, by figuring out the things you actually are looking for in a game, and then figuring out which games deliver those things.

But you can't say "games should be designed like so", except in the most generic of higher-order criteria like "don't have rules which fight against the objectives other rules aim for". And even that game might hit the sweet spot for a limited number of people.


Life scientific theories according to Popper, which can never be proved true but can be disproved (1), games might not be able to be said to be objectively good but can be said to be objectively bad. Good requires fit for an individual, which is subjective. But bad only requires lack of fit with internal objectives, which is (more) objective.

(1) I'm not claiming this is really the case, just making an analogy to a mode of thought/concept where proof and disproof are not binary.

Basically. Or you allow the concept of "a good game but not a good game for me." I can recognize that D&D 3 does a lot of things well - they're just things I don't want. I don't think it's a bad game, but I do think it doesn't fit my needs well at all.

Quertus
2021-04-02, 06:21 PM
Once upon a time, people tried for the umpteenth time to get me to play the FF series. I said while it's great to watch the cut scenes, the gameplay doesn't look engaging, doesn't seem challenging. They argued that it was.

I said, OK, set me up with an interesting fight. They saved the game before the "hardest fight in the game".

I explored the menus of options, picking each one and seeing what it did.

And accidentally beat the fight while trying to understand the interface.

-----

There definitely should be words for "how much effort it takes to code a game" and "how much effort it takes to code an AI". But those are only a few of the values necessary to determine if a game is *good*, let alone whether a particular player will enjoy it.

Some other related values include the level of system mastery necessary to create a competent / top tier / "successfully models your concept" / fun to play character, how successful you can be by "button spazzing" (in play, or in character creation), and what the costs of failure look like (for example, in 3e, people claim that you lost the moment you wrote "Fighter" on your character sheet, but that that isn't obvious until much later).

However, an RPG is not a competitive CCG, and so "only the best can win" is even more toxic in an RPG (like 3e) than in a CCG (like MtG). I'll play silly decks in MtG, because I realize that winning isn't everything, and isn't nearly as important as having fun. 3e offers a *huge* range of potential and, even when I run somewhere close to the top of that range - like with Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named - I can still balance to the table by role-playing him as tactically inept.

So, IME, 3e is made of win and options, not some optimal strategy preventing the possibility of playing others.

Man_Over_Game
2021-04-02, 07:00 PM
Once upon a time, people tried for the umpteenth time to get me to play the FF series. I said while it's great to watch the cut scenes, the gameplay doesn't look engaging, doesn't seem challenging. They argued that it was.

Bit of a tangent, but I wholeheartedly agree. I realize now I enjoyed JRPGs because games kinda sucked compared to today's standards. You played something because it's what you had. I think I enjoyed everything but the gameplay in JRPGs.

That being said, I strongly recommend trying out Lightning Returns on Hard. It is probably the most fun I've ever had playing something that leaned heavily on the actual game side of RPG. The plot's a little odd (you're the henchman of a godlike alien, a former nemesis, that's trying to move the people from this world to another because the conflicts between you two broke reality and is now causing this world's reality to decay. Final Fantasy: Noah's Ark), but it works as long as you don't think about it too much.

Stonehead
2021-04-02, 07:10 PM
We can definitely say "these games are good for you" in some fashion, by figuring out the things you actually are looking for in a game, and then figuring out which games deliver those things.

But you can't say "games should be designed like so", except in the most generic of higher-order criteria like "don't have rules which fight against the objectives other rules aim for". And even that game might hit the sweet spot for a limited number of people.

This is a good point. I think art is a good analogy. Obviously, there isn't cut and dry criteria for good art. But, if you narrow down your scope, you can start to define some guidelines. Like, good realism, or good impressionism, they have general guidelines that you should follow. Similarly, you can't define the rules of a "good rpg", but you can get close to some guidelines if you narrow it down to a good "rules-lite political intrigue game", or a good "tactical dungeon crawling game"



Basically. Or you allow the concept of "a good game but not a good game for me." I can recognize that D&D 3 does a lot of things well - they're just things I don't want. I don't think it's a bad game, but I do think it doesn't fit my needs well at all.

Honestly, I think this is the key. Like, I'm not a fan of games that make choices for my characters, but I can still kind of tell the difference between when it helps characterization and when it's just obtrusive. Or like, I don't like the resource system in Fate, but I get that there are people who just don't care about that.

MoiMagnus
2021-04-03, 04:28 AM
But you can't say "games should be designed like so", except in the most generic of higher-order criteria like "don't have rules which fight against the objectives other rules aim for". And even that game might hit the sweet spot for a limited number of people.

Though you can say "this methods can help to design good games".

Game design is a lot like cooking. Just because peoples have different taste, and that some peoples will find disgusting the favourite meal of other, doesn't mean you can't be a better cook than someone else, and that you can't have some overhaul guideline on "what to do" and "what not to do (unless you have a very good reason to)".

kyoryu
2021-04-03, 11:41 AM
This is a good point. I think art is a good analogy. Obviously, there isn't cut and dry criteria for good art. But, if you narrow down your scope, you can start to define some guidelines. Like, good realism, or good impressionism, they have general guidelines that you should follow. Similarly, you can't define the rules of a "good rpg", but you can get close to some guidelines if you narrow it down to a good "rules-lite political intrigue game", or a good "tactical dungeon crawling game"

You're getting closer for sure but there's still variance.


Honestly, I think this is the key. Like, I'm not a fan of games that make choices for my characters, but I can still kind of tell the difference between when it helps characterization and when it's just obtrusive. Or like, I don't like the resource system in Fate, but I get that there are people who just don't care about that.

That also leads to "I hate this game, but others like it. I wonder why? What is it doing for them? What does that say about what they want and what I want?" which can also lead to being curious about other game styles, or at least gaining an understanding of them.

At the very least "yeah, it seems like a good game for X, Y, and Z, but honestly I'm not interested in those things" is wayyyyy more likely to lead to a productive conversation than "Game X sucks".


Though you can say "this methods can help to design good games".

Game design is a lot like cooking. Just because peoples have different taste, and that some peoples will find disgusting the favourite meal of other, doesn't mean you can't be a better cook than someone else, and that you can't have some overhaul guideline on "what to do" and "what not to do (unless you have a very good reason to)".

I'd agree with that. There are techniques and tools for sure, and knowing what those are, what they do, and when to use them is super useful.

Sadly, most people in the space don't have the objectivity to actually list those kinds of things out.... "how to design a game in general terms" almost inevitably gets intertwined with "what I like", at least if put forth into general conversation. If I were to try to do that exercise, I'd have to strongly limit the audience of that conversation.

Cluedrew
2021-04-05, 09:06 AM
1) a good game is one which meets is objectives, or at least some set of objectives.
2) a good game is one which meets the needs of a particular person or groupI'd go with the second. Let's say I try to make a comedic super-heroes game but, because I am much better at detailed world building than comedy it flops, on the comedic front. But people realise it actually does quite good at a more grounded "what-if" super-heroes story. Is that game bad because it failed to achieve its objectives or good because it... I'm just going to say "if fun for a type of game".

I think it is the latter. I'd further argue that objective good/bad of a game system is just an aggregate of the subjective. That is to say how many people like this system and how much? I don't know how to balance more people liking it less vs fewer people liking it more nor how to account for being an established brand or not being widely available, but luckily I'm not in marketing.


And to suddenly drop into specifics: You know for all the talk of depth and complexity I think we are focusing a bit too much on the hard mechanical side. I've got to say there are several games that have won me over on the basis of there setting and having rules and content that fit that setting. If I open up a rule-book and I can tell what stories this is meant to tell I am way more interested in that then better system that I have no idea what to do with. (Unless the difference in quality is really extreme.) I just like a system that knows what it wants to be and makes me interested in that.

kyoryu
2021-04-05, 12:41 PM
I'd go with the second. Let's say I try to make a comedic super-heroes game but, because I am much better at detailed world building than comedy it flops, on the comedic front. But people realise it actually does quite good at a more grounded "what-if" super-heroes story. Is that game bad because it failed to achieve its objectives or good because it... I'm just going to say "if fun for a type of game".

I think it is the latter. I'd further argue that objective good/bad of a game system is just an aggregate of the subjective. That is to say how many people like this system and how much? I don't know how to balance more people liking it less vs fewer people liking it more nor how to account for being an established brand or not being widely available, but luckily I'm not in marketing.

I think it's both. It's hard for a system to be the second "good" if it's not the first.

They're both "good", just different types of good. Being able to separate "good objectively, or good for some purposes" from "does what I like" is a super useful skill. Lady Gaga is an incredibly talented performer that makes great music.... that I don't want to listen to. I can appreciate her talent and what she's doing, but I'm just not her target audience.


And to suddenly drop into specifics: You know for all the talk of depth and complexity I think we are focusing a bit too much on the hard mechanical side. I've got to say there are several games that have won me over on the basis of there setting and having rules and content that fit that setting. If I open up a rule-book and I can tell what stories this is meant to tell I am way more interested in that then better system that I have no idea what to do with. (Unless the difference in quality is really extreme.) I just like a system that knows what it wants to be and makes me interested in that.

I'd say that is absolutely part of what I, at least, am talking about. And, for sure, some people don't want or care about that either. "Does it do what I want? Does it do what it tries to do?" are pretty all-inclusive, and not limited to specific aspects :)

Quertus
2021-04-05, 03:28 PM
I'd go with the second. Let's say I try to make a comedic super-heroes game but, because I am much better at detailed world building than comedy it flops, on the comedic front. But people realise it actually does quite good at a more grounded "what-if" super-heroes story. Is that game bad because it failed to achieve its objectives or good because it... I'm just going to say "if fun for a type of game".

I think it is the latter. I'd further argue that objective good/bad of a game system is just an aggregate of the subjective. That is to say how many people like this system and how much? I don't know how to balance more people liking it less vs fewer people liking it more nor how to account for being an established brand or not being widely available, but luckily I'm not in marketing.


And to suddenly drop into specifics: You know for all the talk of depth and complexity I think we are focusing a bit too much on the hard mechanical side. I've got to say there are several games that have won me over on the basis of there setting and having rules and content that fit that setting. If I open up a rule-book and I can tell what stories this is meant to tell I am way more interested in that then better system that I have no idea what to do with. (Unless the difference in quality is really extreme.) I just like a system that knows what it wants to be and makes me interested in that.

Well, I don't know if I can manage a good conversation about it or not, but I'm pretty sure that I strongly disagree with most or all of that.

------

I think that Fatal is the system most likely to get the most people to agree that it is just bad. If I were to print out the rules to Fatal, and then use them to crush a dangerous bug, that doesn't suddenly instill them with the "good" property.

3e is good despite the misinformation from the developers that is balanced. Some are able to enjoy 4e despite the numerous failings surrounding skill challenges (and despite it being mis-marketed as an RPG). So there are numerous things that can serve as *obstacles* to the enjoyment of a system, but which do not necessarily invalidate the system as "good", or being enjoyed.

Now, 3e has a lot of… skill requirements, and minigames, and the general claim is that you can lose the game at character creation. But that's at least equally true in many other tests of skill: you can lose MtG during deck building; you can lose chess during your opening moves; you can lose at professional basketball by being born short. Too competitive? You can lose at running by being born with asthma, you can lose at solitaire by being missing a card; you can lose your dream of being a fighter pilot by being born colorblind.

If 3e is treated as a game of skill, then this is part of the draw of the game. So I divide obstacles into "required" and "needless". Being able to "lose the game during character creation" is arguably required complexity for 3e; the developers claiming that 3e was balanced was a needless obstacle.

All of this is just background for what, from my PoV as a programmer, is my belief that the measure of how "bad" something is is a matter of how much *unnecessary* obstacles / complexity / etc something has.

-----

Setting / rules / story

Having a cool setting, where you could tell / take part in cool stories? That's fine, but… if the rules are *fighting* your ability to do so, IMO that definitely contributes to the "bad" rating.

In fact, any time that there is disconnect between the rules and the fiction, you're looking at a prime source of "bad".

Can you have a good game without a good setting? Well… given that there are numerous good systems with *no* setting, I'll have to say that the answer is a resounding "yes".

The *concept* of WoD Mage really appealed to me. The d10 WoD system? Not so much. The implementation of various storytellers (only 1 way to skin a cat; don't bother getting attached - this won't last more than a few sessions; go McGuffin or go home; the plot is everything; even rotes straight from the book don't work; abusive NPCs; passive aggressive… nah, I can't even begin to diagnose what all was wrong with this one; massive house rules that even Gygax would realize were terrible) has left me wondering whether it's even possible to have a good game of WoD Mage.

Monte Cook's d20 WoD? Every other splat, he limited by "spheres", but Mage? Nope. No such concept, just limited by *mana* - something Mages *didn't* have to worry about.

Which made me begin to wonder whether it's possible to make a good Mage game at all, or whether there's some curse that makes this an impossible task, forcing even otherwise sane individuals to grasp the idiot ball whenever they make the attempt.

Not knowing what to do with a system is certainly an obstacle to enjoying the system - and almost certainly an unnecessary one. But I'd rather have to figure out how to use Slow Motion or Inferno rounds or Assume Supernatural Ability, than to be handed something with obvious purpose that is otherwise fundamentally flawed.

Cluedrew
2021-04-05, 06:59 PM
I think it's both. It's hard for a system to be the second "good" if it's not the first.Definitely, making something great by accident can happen and has happened many times, but compared to trying and getting it right it is pretty rare. Still of a system that met its objectives but isn't fun to play and a system that did not met its objectives but is fun to play I would call the second "better".

Except when talking about design itself. As an example is Apocalypse World I feel is the best designed system I have ever seen. Despite the fact I don't want to play it. Because appreciating good design is different from enjoying the type of game it was aimed at creating.


I'd say that is absolutely part of what I, at least, am talking about. And, for sure, some people don't want or care about that either. "Does it do what I want? Does it do what it tries to do?" are pretty all-inclusive, and not limited to specific aspects :)I did say "specifics", kind of like the depth/complexity thing. Although "Does it do what I want?" does kind of imply that you already have something in mind and are looking for it. Just checking out systems and letting them pitch themselves to you is a different quality. If you asked my for some campaigns I would be interested in "organised crime in a haunted city" would not have made the list until I read Blades in the Dark.


3e is good despite the misinformation from the developers that is balanced. Some are able to enjoy 4e despite the numerous failings surrounding skill challenges (and despite it being mis-marketed as an RPG).Please stop. This is the game design equivalent of saying X group of people aren't actually human. And I will explain that in detail if I have to. I can level every complaint (yes, except for the skill challenges) against 4th edition against the other editions. Its as much of a role-playing game as they are. … Which is not to say it is a good role-playing game. Actually it would be another good example of a system that did a lot better at achieving its goals then being fun to play.

And I'm out of time.

Quertus
2021-04-05, 11:16 PM
Please stop. This is the game design equivalent of saying X group of people aren't actually human. And I will explain that in detail if I have to. I can level every complaint (yes, except for the skill challenges) against 4th edition against the other editions. Its as much of a role-playing game as they are. … Which is not to say it is a good role-playing game. Actually it would be another good example of a system that did a lot better at achieving its goals then being fun to play.

Although that is a very polite request, I cannot fathom a reason why it should matter. Saying that a 4 of diamonds is not a face card or a MtG card, saying that Pluto is not a planet, saying that 4e is not an RPG? That's purely definitional, and not denying some fundamental rights to a living sentient being, and equating the two seems… wrong somehow, in ways that I don't have words to express.

Of course, you explicitly specified "X group of people aren't actually human", and I certainly *will* make such a contention, as well: aliens, Artificial Intelligences, and deities, for example, all reside within the set "people", but outside the set "humans". /Pedantry

But humans often *do* remove the personhood, in part or in whole, from other humans - often due to age, but for other reasons as well. So even what I *think* you mean isn't exactly cut and dry verboten in even modern thought.

So I'm unable to parse the request as something worthy of such parallels / such concern.

Now, one could argue that my definitions of what makes something an RPG are a bit strict. Maybe, after review, 4e and a lot of so-called "CRPGs" (many of which I also classify as "not RPGs") will get reclassified in my lingo as "dwarf RPGs", in honor of Pluto's reinclusion among the wanderers. Maybe someday it'll be shown that I'm guilty of a "no true Scotsman" fallacy. Maybe I'm blind to certain aspects of certain systems, and they fully deserve the title of "RPG", even under my definitions.

But it seems a very strange line to draw, that my caricature of myself is denying basic human rights because it claims that Pluto is not a planet. :smallconfused:

Cluedrew
2021-04-06, 08:11 AM
Although that is a very polite request, I cannot fathom a reason why it should matter. Saying that a 4 of diamonds is not a face card or a MtG card, saying that Pluto is not a planet, saying that 4e is not an RPG? That's purely definitional, [...]You know what? I'll pack up my biases as best I can in a box and metaphorically shelve them. Trying to live up to "a good person to disagree with" here.

What is a role-playing game? Working from the general to the specific. Once I would say "A game centered around, about and/or supports role-playing." but there was a major issue with this definition: D&D didn't count. Yes you could probably read those words in a way it would work but that was just a summery of a big thing in my head. But then I realised that was silly, even if I could draw a nice box around that group its not what most people meant. A lot of older role-playing games actually don't have a lot of rules to support role-playing. And of course a lot of rules-lite systems don't have a lot of rules at all. All they really have is the open ended nature of the game (that is, the GM can make stuff up) and this general intention that people would.

So I would argue that it is all you need to count as a role-playing game. Ability and intention.

Also it matter because it sounds terrible but doesn't actually mean anything. What does it matter if a game doesn't quite meet the requirements of being an role-playing game? We can still examine its design, we can still learn from it and if it is close enough you actually have to think about it to figure out if it meets the requirements there is probably a lot of overlap in lessons and people who enjoy both so why not talk about it in an role-playing game forum? Similarly what does it matter if a different race of beings are not human, if they are close enough we have to think about it they are definitely people and deserve the same rights and respect as one, or put shortly: they are a person. But if someone just kept bringing up the fact "you know they are not human right" I would start to wonder. Even if you aren't actually trying to get at some dark insinuation, it feels weird.

kyoryu
2021-04-06, 09:41 AM
Additionally, there are many people that do enjoy 4e, do consider it a roleplaying game, and consider it a better game than 3e.

All you do by using language like "it's not a roleplaying game" and stuff that reads like "you can like it despite its obvious flaws, I guess, if you really try hard enough, but I don't know why any rational person would want to" does nothing to aid the conversation, and everything to derail it.

Like, what do you hope to gain with that language?

Jason
2021-04-06, 11:26 AM
There is a difference between "that's not a role-playing game" and "that's not a good role-playing game". There's also a difference between "that is a good RPG" and "that is an RPG I would enjoy playing."

4th edition was an RPG. In my opinion it was, as far as the mechanics went, a good RPG. It is not, however an RPG I would choose to play.

Part of my opinion of why I would not want to play it is based in how it too closely resembles a tactical miniatures game or video game, but I accept that it was an RPG. There is a GM and the players take on roles of the heroes on adventures, etc. In short it fits my basic definition of RPGs.

It was a good game in the sense that the mechancics largely worked just fine. It just wasn't what I personally wanted in a D&D game. My group played one session, and then we went back to 3.5 until 5th edition cane out. That was entirely a question of personal taste, like preferring chocolate to strawberry icecream, not a question of bad and good.

Telok
2021-04-06, 11:34 AM
Additionally, there are many people that do enjoy 4e, do consider it a roleplaying game, and consider it a better game than 3e.

I've met people who think that Shadowrun is a better RPG than D&Ds 3, 4, and 5, and in the same breath admit that the most recent edition is a dumpster fire. I'd love to play an Amber Diceless campaign, that's pretty much a pure acting & RP game but I've met people who don't think it's a rpg because its diceless*.

Personally I'm happier to play Rifts with a good DM than D&Ds 4 & 5 with an average DM because the mechanics can be house ruled into decency and the system doesn't feel like it's kicking characters in the face for not fitting into one of five trope archetypes. I like that in Fantasy HERO I can build a ninja mathematician with mechanically represented moral failings and not end up with a character thats forced to know "thieves cant", spells, or magic ki powers just to exist, and I think it's a better generic fantasy system than D&D but that opinion can cause flame wars.

So if someone's understanding of "rpg" includes "the game needs to have mechanical interactions or effects involving the character as a person with a personality" that's OK. If their experience with D&D 4e has informed them that the game is a tactical fighting board game with a broken 'skill challenge' mechanic and no options related to role play, that's OK too. In fact it's similar to my experience with the system, that it had as many game structures related to rp as Monopoly does.

I may not agree with a definition of rpgs that excludes D&D 4e. But I can understand it.

*It's (Amber Diceless) also basically a very very niche specialty game with all the usual issues of finding people who have even seen the books, game and novels, and would be willing to play. Fun tho, if you're into the setting and like to rp with friends a lot.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-04-06, 11:34 AM
Additionally, there are many people that do enjoy 4e, do consider it a roleplaying game, and consider it a better game than 3e.

All you do by using language like "it's not a roleplaying game" and stuff that reads like "you can like it despite its obvious flaws, I guess, if you really try hard enough, but I don't know why any rational person would want to" does nothing to aid the conversation, and everything to derail it.

Like, what do you hope to gain with that language?


There is a difference between "that's not a role-playing game" and "that's not a good role-playing game". There's also a difference between "that is a good RPG" and "that is an RPG I would enjoy playing."

4th edition was an RPG. In my opinion it was, as far as the mechanics went, a good RPG. It is not, however an RPG I would choose to play.

Part of my opinion of why I would not want to play it is based in how it too closely resembles a tactical miniatures game or video game, but I accept that it was an RPG. There is a GM and the players take on roles of the heroes on adventures, etc. In short it fits my basic definition of RPGs.

It was a good game in the sense that the mechancics largely worked just fine. It just wasn't what I personally wanted in a D&D game. My group played one session, and then we went back to 3.5 until 5th edition cane out. That was entirely a question of personal taste, like preferring chocolate to strawberry icecream, not a question of bad and good.

Exactly my thoughts. There's a lot of conflation going on between

X is good (objective)
X is something I like (subjective)

Those are completely separate issues. There are objectively good games I can't stand. The whole PbtA structure is well designed...for a game I don't ever see myself wanting to play. And there are bad games I happen to like quite a lot. And everything in between.

Max_Killjoy
2021-04-06, 11:39 AM
As others have stated in different ways, two important things to making a game good:
1) Does it clearly and honestly state what it wants to do?
2) Does it actually do that, and do it competently?

Question one is about being honest with the customer/gamer, so they can pick a system that suits their needs -- there is no single objective "one best system" for everyone or every setting or every whatever.

Question two is about delivering on that promise. Some games really do set out to do the thing they say they do, but fail along the way.

kyoryu
2021-04-06, 12:55 PM
As others have stated in different ways, two important things to making a game good:
1) Does it clearly and honestly state what it wants to do?
2) Does it actually do that, and do it competently?

Question one is about being honest with the customer/gamer, so they can pick a system that suits their needs -- there is no single objective "one best system" for everyone or every setting or every whatever.

Question two is about delivering on that promise. Some games really do set out to do the thing they say they do, but fail along the way.

And part three, the subjective part, is "is the thing it wants to do something I care about?"

Jason
2021-04-06, 01:01 PM
As others have stated in different ways, two important things to making a game good:
1) Does it clearly and honestly state what it wants to do?
2) Does it actually do that, and do it competently?

Question one is about being honest with the customer/gamer, so they can pick a system that suits their needs -- there is no single objective "one best system" for everyone or every setting or every whatever.

Question two is about delivering on that promise. Some games really do set out to do the thing they say they do, but fail along the way.

Yeah, that's pretty close to what i said on page 1, though I broke "does it competently" into "understands and emulates its chosen genre", "has no system holes that make the mechanics unworkable" and "is well organized and easy to reference".

For example;
FFG Star Wars fails the "understands and emulates its chosen genre" criteria of competence because the characters in the movies do things that you can't actually do in the game, like Jedi effortlessly deflecting storms of blaster bolts (the WEG and Saga versions do a much better job of emulating what we see on the movie screens).
Legend of the 5 Rings, a game I rather like, had a revised rulebook in its 3rd edition that so badly mangled the description of the Defense skill that it was unusable. My group had to house rule it to what we thought they might have been trying to do, but I'm still not clear if we ever got it right.
GURPS books are pretty close to the top of my scale for well-organized and accessible RPG rules. They each have an index too. Too many RPGs to mention don't have an index or page headings.

Quertus
2021-04-06, 05:48 PM
To be a good RPG, I think that something must first be an RPG, and, second, be good. Where "good" is best measured as "not bad". I think it is easiest to define what makes something bad… and what makes something bad for particular purposes / people.

One form of objective "bad" is needless inefficiency. Another is rules that work against the game's goal. A perhaps lesser third is misleading information.

-----

4e Spoiled for length, for anyone who wants to just skip past my conversation with @Cluedrew.


Also it matter because it sounds terrible but doesn't actually mean anything. What does it matter if a game doesn't quite meet the requirements of being an role-playing game? We can still examine its design, we can still learn from it and if it is close enough you actually have to think about it to figure out if it meets the requirements there is probably a lot of overlap in lessons and people who enjoy both so why not talk about it in an role-playing game forum? Similarly what does it matter if a different race of beings are not human, if they are close enough we have to think about it they are definitely people and deserve the same rights and respect as one, or put shortly: they are a person. But if someone just kept bringing up the fact "you know they are not human right" I would start to wonder. Even if you aren't actually trying to get at some dark insinuation, it feels weird.

I mean, I'm all about using examples from outside gaming (as my previous post demonstrates, albeit poorly, and my post history demonstrates in spades), and Angry's "eight types of fun" certainly pulls wisdom from outside of gaming and uses it to evaluate RPGs.

So, while *some* tend to use "but it's not X" dismissively, as though that fact in and of itself should make the subject matter irrelevant to the discussion, even the caricature of myself doesn't go so fast as to do so out of hand.

However, whether or not something is an RPG is kinda important to an RPG forum - there has to be some sense of "chicken / not chicken", something to distinguish RPGs from CCGs or war games for the forum to meaningfully exist.

My personal definition is a bit strict, and doesn't include… a number of things that self-declare as role-playing games. So I'm not even being facetious - I honestly don't consider 4e to be a RPG. Although I freely admit that my diagnosis is based on limited information, and thus may simply reveal my ignorance rather than truly say something meaningful about 4e. (In reality… I'm not aware of a word for what I want to say. Much like "bias" or "subjective", but applied to the questions being asked in the "same game test". 4e fails my test of being an RPG, but that may demonstrate the… bias… of the questions).

Anyway…

A race not being human is irrelevant to their personhood… but may be relevant to our ability to *test* for it. My AI classes were rife with discussions like, "how will we know when we have achieved AI? How can we test for it?"… followed by horrific evaluations of applying those answers back to Humanity (and of AI doing the same, evaluating, "are humans actually sentient, actually people?").

However, a race not being human is *very* relevant to environmental needs, breeding potential… unless you're in D&D, when "ecology" is "yes", and half-breed everything is a thing. But still relevant to whether they need to use UMD to operate items that specify, "human only".

Now, my caricature of myself is *supposed* to feel weird. That's kinda the point. But if this one particular claim, that 4e is not an RPG, tends to make it feel the *wrong* kind of weird? Hmmm… I don't really *understand* it, despite all the virtual ink I've spilled, but perhaps the quantity of virtual ink will allow my senile mind to remember this conversation, and to pick on 4e's numerous *other* failings for a time, in the hopes that, like planets, RPGs will someday be sufficiently defined that we'll all agree on whether 4e is an RPG, a dwarf RPG, or not an RPG at all.

(My money's on my senility mind winning out over people's ability to come to a consensus, but we'll see)

Cluedrew
2021-04-06, 07:44 PM
I stand by "a good role-playing game is fun to play". Although I will acknowledge that it can be a tricky thing to measure or act on (which actually makes a lot of the other definitions useful in that way) it still feels like the core issue. And I will again bring up a system that is good for different reasons than it was intended to be as an example of why "meets its objectives" doesn't quite go far enough. Its not very often a system is good by accident, only real-world example I can think of is Vampire: The Masquerade and that is debatable.


My personal definition is a bit strict, and doesn't includeÂ… a number of things that self-declare as role-playing games. So I'm not even being facetious - I honestly don't consider 4e to be a RPG.Yeah but what is it? Is it the same as your previous answer in the thread on this topic (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?522929-What-is-a-role-playing-game)? By the way if we don't knock this out in one or two more posts we should probably start up another one of those.

Back on sub-topic: I believe you can make decisions as a character in 4e. Yes the tactical combat mini-game does discourage that but A) its not the entire game, B) doesn't prevent it and C) no more than any other edition of D&D. OK for C, some people found the at-will/encounter/daily thing a bit harder to think of from an in-character perspective compared to the existing abstract mechanics in other editions (such as HP and spell slots). I didn't so its a subjective thing and so that doesn't feel like it should be making a definition difference.

I'm have very little to say about anything after "Anyways..." because for that to have any meaning you would have to show 4th is not a role-playing game or at least show it exists in a liminal space where there is a serious debate to be had. You have not and until then I will state boldly that 4th edition is both a human and a planet. Metaphors can be fun sometimes.

kyoryu
2021-04-07, 10:28 AM
For example;
FFG Star Wars fails the "understands and emulates its chosen genre" criteria of competence because the characters in the movies do things that you can't actually do in the game, like Jedi effortlessly deflecting storms of blaster bolts (the WEG and Saga versions do a much better job of emulating what we see on the movie screens).

I get what you're saying, but I'm not sure I totally agree.

The FFG games are set in the times of the Empire, or right after, right? The examples of Jedi we see in those films is at a much lower level than what we see in the prequels. Luke doesn't effortlessly deflect a battalion of laser fire, but Qui-Gon does. So i think the FFG games are more aimed at Luke-like levels of power as we see him grow rather than prequel-level full-on Jedi-Masters-trained-by-the-best-Jedi-Masters-for-years levels.

Jason
2021-04-07, 11:32 AM
I get what you're saying, but I'm not sure I totally agree.

The FFG games are set in the times of the Empire, or right after, right? The examples of Jedi we see in those films is at a much lower level than what we see in the prequels. Luke doesn't effortlessly deflect a battalion of laser fire, but Qui-Gon does. So i think the FFG games are more aimed at Luke-like levels of power as we see him grow rather than prequel-level full-on Jedi-Masters-trained-by-the-best-Jedi-Masters-for-years levels.

Pretty much every Jedi in the prequel movies is seen deflecting large numbers of blaster bolts, even young Padawans. In other words, it's not a skill that only Jedi Masters have. It is also one of the first skills Obi-wan begins teaching Luke, as soon as he can begin his training on the Falcon, and by RotJ Luke is deflecting a lot of blaster bolts from Jabba's thugs and even successfully deflects bolts from the small blaster cannon mounted on an Imperial speeder bike.

Edit: Rebels gives a good example of an Empire-era Padawan (Ezra) also being taught to deflect blaster bolts with relative ease. And his trainer is not Obi-Wan level.

In the game, however, it is nigh-impossible to fully deflect one blaster bolt from an avereage stormtrooper's rifle, and deflecting bolts from a speeder bike's cannon is even more impossible. Deflect in the game only deflects a few damage points for each level of the talent, there are a limited number of levels of the talent you can buy in each light saber combat talent tree, and fully buying just one tree is expensive enough to last a typical campaign.
Even Yoda and Vader don't have enough levels of Deflect to do what they do on screen. The system simply can't replicate it.

In my book that's a fail, especially since the WEG and various WOTC versions of Star Wars RPGs have reasonable mechanics to let Jedi deflect blaster bolts pretty much like they do on screen.

kyoryu
2021-04-07, 12:15 PM
Pretty much every Jedi in the prequel movies is seen deflecting large numbers of blaster bolts, even young Padawans. In other words, it's not a skill that only Jedi Masters have. It is also one of the first skills Obi-wan begins teaching Luke, as soon as he can begin his training on the Falcon, and by RotJ Luke is deflecting a lot of blaster bolts from Jabba's thugs and even successfully deflects bolts from the small blaster cannon mounted on an Imperial speeder bike.

Edit: Rebels gives a good example of an Empire-era Padawan (Ezra) also being taught to deflect blaster bolts with relative ease. And his trainer is not Obi-Wan level.

In the game, however, it is nigh-impossible to fully deflect one blaster bolt from an avereage stormtrooper's rifle, and deflecting bolts from a speeder bike's cannon is even more impossible. Deflect in the game only deflects a few damage points for each level of the talent, there are a limited number of levels of the talent you can buy in each light saber combat talent tree, and fully buying just one tree is expensive enough to last a typical campaign.
Even Yoda and Vader don't have enough levels of Deflect to do what they do on screen. The system simply can't replicate it.

In my book that's a fail, especially since the WEG and various WOTC versions of Star Wars RPGs have reasonable mechanics to let Jedi deflect blaster bolts pretty much like they do on screen.

Well, yes, my point was that FFG seems aimed more at Original Trilogy levels of Jedi-ness, and specifically people figuring it out on their own, rather than prequel levels.

Which doesn't mean it works for you, of course. It just means it's (from what I see) a game that's not doing the things you want, rather than one that's not meeting its targets.


The power of the Force flows through you. All your life you have felt it and used it, perhaps even unconsciously. Now, at last, you have found others like you who can sense and manipulate the Force, others willing to risk their lives for the sake of justice, for the sake of restoring balance to the galaxy. Together, you are searching for the secrets of the outlawed Jedi Order and fighting against whatever evil you encounter. You may choose to lurk in the shadows and defend the downtrodden, or join the Rebellion battle the Empire from the pilot’s seat of a starfighter, or you may slowly succumb to the temptations of the dark side.

That says "force sensitive types feeling their way through learning this stuff", which sounds about like what you've described on the mechanics side of things.

This all kinda fits in with the FFG "grittiness" that seems to pervade the whole series of games.

Jason
2021-04-07, 03:08 PM
Well, yes, my point was that FFG seems aimed more at Original Trilogy levels of Jedi-ness, and specifically people figuring it out on their own, rather than prequel levels.

Which doesn't mean it works for you, of course. It just means it's (from what I see) a game that's not doing the things you want, rather than one that's not meeting its targets.
The point of having a licensed RPG is to be able to have adventures that feel like the licensed property.

There are (arguably) good game balance reasons for having deflect work the way they did it, but it's a failure to successfully understand and emulate the genre they were supposedly trying to recreate in the game.

It might have been acceptable to not have Force sensatives able to perform the signature Jedi move (the first move Luke is taught in the first film) in the Edge of the Empire line. In that line Force users were purposefully left as a minor element. But it's inexcusable to have it still be just flat-out impossible to do the signature move in the Jedi-centered Force and Destiny line, with characters that are Jedi.

Max_Killjoy
2021-04-07, 04:10 PM
For me, subjectively, FFG's system fails on two points.

1) It's promising and trying to deliver an experience I don't want, a highly narrative one that puts "story" ahead of in-fiction causality, etc.

2) Its mechanics are... I just want to say bad, if I'm being honest. They're trying so hard for a system that does "yes, but" and "no, but" that they made the but bigger than the yes or the no.

Jason
2021-04-07, 04:47 PM
For me, subjectively, FFG's system fails on two points.

1) It's promising and trying to deliver an experience I don't want, a highly narrative one that puts "story" ahead of in-fiction causality, etc.

2) Its mechanics are... I just want to say bad, if I'm being honest. They're trying so hard for a system that does "yes, but" and "no, but" that they made the but bigger than the yes or the no.
That's a good way of putting it. I found it surprisingly frustrating at how often the "but" came up. By the end of our campaign it seemed like rolls where we failed whatever we were trying to do but had a Triumph and lots of advantage as a mocking consolation prize were way too common. But it is a subjective "personal taste" issue, as you say.

Jedi being unable to do what they do in the movies is something I would consider closer to an objective problem with the system.

Max_Killjoy
2021-04-07, 05:06 PM
That's a good way of putting it. I found it surprisingly frustrating at how often the "but" came up. By the end of our campaign it seemed like rolls where we failed whatever we were trying to do but had a Triumph and lots of advantage as a mocking consolation prize were way too common. But it is a subjective "personal taste" issue, as you say.


Maybe if they'd had some way to cash in Triumph and/or Advantage for basic successes...

Jason
2021-04-07, 05:19 PM
Maybe if they'd had some way to cash in Triumph and/or Advantage for basic successes...

If I remember correctly there were a few talents rhat allowed this with some specific skills. No general rule though.

Friv
2021-04-07, 05:35 PM
I get what you're saying, but I'm not sure I totally agree.

The FFG games are set in the times of the Empire, or right after, right? The examples of Jedi we see in those films is at a much lower level than what we see in the prequels. Luke doesn't effortlessly deflect a battalion of laser fire, but Qui-Gon does. So i think the FFG games are more aimed at Luke-like levels of power as we see him grow rather than prequel-level full-on Jedi-Masters-trained-by-the-best-Jedi-Masters-for-years levels.

It's not just Jedi. I discussed in a thread once that I couldn't build Han Solo using Genesys without about 200 XP (10-15 sessions of play, for those who haven't played the game), and someone tried to defend the system by saying that you shouldn't be able to play someone as cool as Han Solo right away, you've got to build up to that.

The question of whether Obi-Wan should be playable in Edge of the Empire is an interesting one; I would tend to say yes, but I realize it gets a bit messier. Certainly, the specialization in the first book is the one that you would use to build Obi-Wan, you just... couldn't do it very easily.

Lord Raziere
2021-04-07, 05:47 PM
It's not just Jedi. I discussed in a thread once that I couldn't build Han Solo using Genesys without about 200 XP (10-15 sessions of play, for those who haven't played the game), and someone tried to defend the system by saying that you shouldn't be able to play someone as cool as Han Solo right away, you've got to build up to that.

The question of whether Obi-Wan should be playable in Edge of the Empire is an interesting one; I would tend to say yes, but I realize it gets a bit messier. Certainly, the specialization in the first book is the one that you would use to build Obi-Wan, you just... couldn't do it very easily.

Meh.

this is why I'm iffy on progression systems for playing concepts like emulating a specific hero you want to play or a unique concept with superpowers. often those concepts work better when fully formed from the start with little growth needed from a mechanical perspective, because often its a fully complete character and any growth you need from it is purely a matter of roleplaying and character development. the progression system will add on things that aren't apart of the plan to so, its basically dross that detracts from what you want to play.

I'd say that progression systems work better when you don't know how your character is going to end up exactly because its all about the journey to whatever they are. its an incomplete character that as it grows and develops can be rounded out and made better with time. progression systems are all about change and sometimes you want a specific character concept that doesn't morph into something else over time. a squire just picking up a sword is more conducive to a progression system than Spiderman or Batman or whatnot.

Quertus
2021-04-07, 08:34 PM
@Cluedrew - I have very little to add to our discussion. In the thread you linked, I was attempting to find some outer bounds, some common ground to work from, not explain my personal metrics.

However, it does give me ideas germane to this thread.

Is High-ho-cherry-oh a good board game?

Well, it is a board game. And some have had fun with it. So, by some definitions, yes.

Yet, like chutes and ladders or Candyland, there is no decision making, no way to influence the final outcome.

Does that make it a bad game?

Or… is that really true? Going first is an advantage - now the "pick a game" minigame is a game you can game, choosing the game where you believe you are most likely to be placed earliest in the lineup.

But wait, there's more!

See, one could always cheat! Manipulate the results of the randomizer… or *believe* that one can. Or even cheat the location of the piece.

Does the ability to take your fate into your own hands through skill at cheating change whether they are good games?

-----

The linked thread used the metaphor of coffee. To extend that metaphor slightly, I don't need to have a name for sugar in warm milk to declare that that's not coffee.


I'd say that progression systems work better when you don't know how your character is going to end up exactly because its all about the journey to whatever they are. its an incomplete character that as it grows and develops can be rounded out and made better with time. progression systems are all about change and sometimes you want a specific character concept that doesn't morph into something else over time. a squire just picking up a sword is more conducive to a progression system than Spiderman or Batman or whatnot.

A slight variant of that argument could be used to question the value / implementation of the (highly front loaded) build minigame in 3e.

Telok
2021-04-07, 11:41 PM
@CluedrewA slight variant of that argument could be used to question the value / implementation of the (highly front loaded) build minigame in 3e.

Hm. I'm reminded of the early days of 3e, before internet deconstructed and analyzed everything. People played in a manner similar to AD&D at first and the characters were growing organically. Taking skills and feats that seemed appropriate when they leveled up. It all went fine for a while. About 9th or 10th level some issues started to appear, the usual things like flurry of blows turning into flurry of misses, a twf dex fighter starting to suffer as more damage reduction appeared, the sorcerer having more hit points and ac than the monk. But things still worked ok at that point. Whirlwind was a disappointment to the fighter, you needed really lucky dice to get mileage out of circle kick, Haste was still good for the martials, natural spell was from an optinal splatbook, the rogue loved owning stealth and sneak attack was like an almost always on backstab. The cracks in the system were appearing but they could have easily been patched for another 5 or 6 levels with loading up the martials with high end magic items.

Then... I forget which order the splats appeared... but the arcane caster one came out and we sussed out how WotC was handling prestige classes. There were things that would have fit (or fixed) some characters perfectly, except of course nobody would qualify until something like 16th level for classes you were supposed to be picking up at 6th level. Not long after that was when people started seriously analyzing stuff, 3.5 showed up, and the whole "win the build minigame" thing started.

So it's interesting to me that 3e works organically in the 1-9 level range, where it's levels 10+ and prestige classes that the "build minigame" makes a difference. It's obviously not a perfect system, but it works without preplanned builds at the lower half of the level range.

Cluedrew
2021-04-08, 07:42 AM
To Quertus: But you still haven't explained what your personal metrics are.

On Character Building: I got two things to say: A) I think there will always be problems translating things across mediums. While that doesn't mean that people shouldn't be trying to solve them I'm usually going to go for the one intended to be played from the start. Like I don't think having that one combat trick and a shiny sword makes you a Jedi. B) Yeah I like off the fly character growth, let the events and characters shape each other and not merely continue in sight of each other.

Satinavian
2021-04-08, 09:09 AM
Before i started D&D 3.x i didn't plan out character progression far in advance. There was either no real need to as you could change the focus of character development on the fly or no opportunity to as most important decisions were already made at character creation.

Only the combination of frequent prerequisitives and outright fear taxes combined with a quite rigid class system and then prestige classes lead to the need to plan far ahead. I never had used a system like that before.

And i didn't like that aspect. Sure, 3.x allows you to build a vide variety of characters but forces you to give up natural character evolution through play to actually get the kind of character you want. And you better bring system mastery as well.


Classless point buy is a far superior solution imho. There is some danger of cherry picking the best options but i haven't seen super balanced class systems either so would need some table agreement about powerlevel anyway.

Jason
2021-04-08, 10:31 AM
It's not just Jedi. I discussed in a thread once that I couldn't build Han Solo using Genesys without about 200 XP (10-15 sessions of play, for those who haven't played the game), and someone tried to defend the system by saying that you shouldn't be able to play someone as cool as Han Solo right away, you've got to build up to that.Yes, the power level of starting characters in FFG is pretty low, comparatively. That could be argued as another genre failure.
Again, if you are playing a licensed game, you should be able to play as characters similar to your example.
I've often said "Luke's first adventure started with him on the farm and ended with him blowing up the Death Star" - if the system forces you to spend a dozen sessions building up your character before you can do things like they do in the movies then you are not really doing Star Wars right.

kyoryu
2021-04-08, 11:38 AM
Re: FFG Star Wars:

I still think this is a "suitable for your preferences" issue, rather than an "objectively bad" issue. It's pretty clear they're going for a more zero-to-hero game, and don't want you to start as Han/Luke/etc.

That might mean it's a bad game for what you want to do (emulate those stories right off the bat), but that's a mismatch between intended experience and desired experience, not a failure to deliver on what it does.

Re: Chutes and Ladders

Again, C&L does what it sets out to do - it makes an easily played game for preschoolers so that they can have fun. And said preschoolers still love it. It's successful at that.

It's not a very good game for adult gamers or even teenagers or even most primary school kids because of the lack of choice/etc.

Re: 4e "not feeling like" D&D

For people not coming from a heavy D&D background, that's probably ludicrous. For people coming from a 3e background, less so (for all the various reasons).

I'm a bit more complex, really.

I started with Moldvay B/X and a lot of 1e. Jumped over to GURPS in the mid 80s.

Played a bit of 3e when it came out, and thought it was a cool upgrade. Then I started seeing weirdness... people "dipping" classes to get extra powers, etc etc. This didn't really "feel like D&D" to me. As the splats came out, and people started talking about their 3So/4Wi/2Cl/3Art or whatever, that feeling just intensififed. This wasn't the D&D I knew. And talking to people about how you could do anything with 3e really rubbed me wrong... I didn't want D&D as a generic system. I wanted D&D to be the thing where you sat down and picked a class and had a streamlined experience, but maybe with some more interesting stuff for fighters. I'm also a big open-world kinda guy, and not big on the planned adventures, even though that seemed to be where the majority of gaming was heading.

I thought 4e was cool. It wasn't "my" D&D, but at least Fighters were Fighters and Clerics were Clerics again - the level of multiclass insanity that 3.x encouraged was gone. And while "kill stuff, do RP thing, kill stuff" wasn't my preferred play style, I recognized that 4e was well aimed at servicing that. I had some issues with it - I would have preferred to see Fighters on a different ability schedule, so that they'd have more at-wills, and maybe a few encounters, for instance, but overall I thought it was decent. The healing surge mechanic made fights interesting, as it balanced danger per fight with resource attrition, and it didn't bother me since it really reminded me of fighters catching a breath between rounds in MMA/boxing. The numbers caused some confusion at first, since they went against my gut feelings of what hp/damage should be, but they mostly worked.

The weird thing that I saw was the number of people saying just flat out untrue things - saying that things were removed that weren't, for instance.

4e still isn't, and won't be "my game". But it's a decent game for the things that it does well, that suffered for an (I think) fairly small number of objective issues that were fairly quickly patched, as well as a large number of subjective issues. I prefer it to 3.x for exactly the same reasons most 3.x fans hate it.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-04-08, 12:30 PM
Re: 4e "not feeling like" D&D

For people not coming from a heavy D&D background, that's probably ludicrous. For people coming from a 3e background, less so (for all the various reasons).

I'm a bit more complex, really.

I started with Moldvay B/X and a lot of 1e. Jumped over to GURPS in the mid 80s.

Played a bit of 3e when it came out, and thought it was a cool upgrade. Then I started seeing weirdness... people "dipping" classes to get extra powers, etc etc. This didn't really "feel like D&D" to me. As the splats came out, and people started talking about their 3So/4Wi/2Cl/3Art or whatever, that feeling just intensififed. This wasn't the D&D I knew. And talking to people about how you could do anything with 3e really rubbed me wrong... I didn't want D&D as a generic system. I wanted D&D to be the thing where you sat down and picked a class and had a streamlined experience, but maybe with some more interesting stuff for fighters. I'm also a big open-world kinda guy, and not big on the planned adventures, even though that seemed to be where the majority of gaming was heading.

I thought 4e was cool. It wasn't "my" D&D, but at least Fighters were Fighters and Clerics were Clerics again - the level of multiclass insanity that 3.x encouraged was gone. And while "kill stuff, do RP thing, kill stuff" wasn't my preferred play style, I recognized that 4e was well aimed at servicing that. I had some issues with it - I would have preferred to see Fighters on a different ability schedule, so that they'd have more at-wills, and maybe a few encounters, for instance, but overall I thought it was decent. The healing surge mechanic made fights interesting, as it balanced danger per fight with resource attrition, and it didn't bother me since it really reminded me of fighters catching a breath between rounds in MMA/boxing. The numbers caused some confusion at first, since they went against my gut feelings of what hp/damage should be, but they mostly worked.

The weird thing that I saw was the number of people saying just flat out untrue things - saying that things were removed that weren't, for instance.

4e still isn't, and won't be "my game". But it's a decent game for the things that it does well, that suffered for an (I think) fairly small number of objective issues that were fairly quickly patched, as well as a large number of subjective issues. I prefer it to 3.x for exactly the same reasons most 3.x fans hate it.

Before 4e, I'd only played the CRPG versions of D&D. But had done so extensively, starting with Baldur's Gate through the NWN series. So I had a fairly decent exposure to (one version of) the 2e and 3e mindsets.

I picked up 4e when I was asked to run a RPG club at a high school where I taught. For that format, it was a bad fit and I happily jumped to 5e when that came out. But I enjoyed 4e. Didn't have any problems feeling like D&D to me.

Later, I had the opportunity to play in a PF game. That felt like D&D...but was a total slog. I jumped in at about 5th level. Building the character alone took 3-4 hours with a dedicated tool to sort through the options and advice from the playground. And that was a pretty standard Oracle, nothing fancy. And then by 6th level, the witch and I shut down a boss encounter (the boss didn't get to do anything) by using obvious pieces of kit. The ludicrous imbalance there was apparent even purely by accident. Neither of us were trying to make strong characters, but it was inevitable. And beyond that, doing anything in that game was a bunch of time spent (by the DM) cross-referencing a whole set of rules in various places (seriously, PF stat blocks are a total mess, especially printed. Because they just contain pointers to rules found elsewhere, and lots and lots of chaff). Individual turns taking 3-4 minutes when people knew what they were doing. And all sorts of edge cases and things needing adjudication, plus straight up un-fun things (a scarf that, if you touch it, causes a save or die. No warning, no way to avoid it, just straight up save or die. And if you save, you still have tons of penalties and it sticks to you and imposes more save-or-dies until you fulfill the specific (and no-where specified) conditions for ending it. No, that wasn't homebrew. That was straight out of the AP.).

I was able to play decent (at low level) games of 4e in a 30 minute window with people who didn't own any of the books and whose character building experience was "pick from list, do a little customization". Yeah, a single fight may take several sessions. But it was doable. I'd never have been able to even start a 3e campaign, let alone play.

So for me, 4e felt way more like D&D than PF did. And was a much better fit. I'd gladly play it again, given the right group. I prefer running 5e for many reasons, but if I had to say, I'd say 5e > 4e > 2e >>>>>>>>>>>>> 3e. But the important thing is that's just my personal opinion. Not some objective fact.

Jason
2021-04-08, 12:56 PM
Re: FFG Star Wars:

I still think this is a "suitable for your preferences" issue, rather than an "objectively bad" issue. It's pretty clear they're going for a more zero-to-hero game, and don't want you to start as Han/Luke/etc.

That might mean it's a bad game for what you want to do (emulate those stories right off the bat), but that's a mismatch between intended experience and desired experience, not a failure to deliver on what it does.
It is a debatable point. You can play a creditable Han Solo-style character in the game, just not as a starting character. Whether that is an objective problem with the system or a subjective "to taste" problem is something I could go either way on.

Cinematic Star Wars doesn't really do "zero to hero" with its protagonists. They often have humble beginnings from a social perspective, true, but they are never unskilled. Luke can fight better than any stormtrooper at the beginning of the movie, can lead a flight of starfighters on a bombing run the first time he's ever sat in one, and can fix just about anything. Nine-year-old Anakin has superhuman piloting and repair skills to start with, and let's not even get started on Rey. The power level for starting characters in FFG Star Wars feels too low to me, but it can be argued that you can just start with more xp than is suggested in the books and still play Star Wars the way you want to.

The Jedi inability to deflect blaster bolts is much more clearly an objective failure of the system, though, because no Jedi in the game can really do it like they do it in the movies, not even with a ridiculous level of xp spent on various light saber combat trees.


Played a bit of 3e when it came out, and thought it was a cool upgrade. Then I started seeing weirdness... people "dipping" classes to get extra powers, etc etc. This didn't really "feel like D&D" to me. As the splats came out, and people started talking about their 3So/4Wi/2Cl/3Art or whatever, that feeling just intensififed. This wasn't the D&D I knew.I agree with you. The class dipping and 5-prestige-class nonsense wasn't the D&D I knew either. I did some dipping, but only in the Living Greyhawk campaign, where I could end up at any table. In my home games I never had more than two base classes and maybe two prestige classes in any character. In the two longest 3.5 campaigns I played in I had a Dwarf Fighter/Paladin (10 levels of Fighter, then he multi-classed into 10 levels of Paladin because of in-play reasons) who reached 20th level and a Human Cleric who got to about 16th, neither of them with any prestige classes.

The later edition designers seem to agree with us that it all got out of hand.

Childs
2021-04-09, 06:39 AM
As I think the most important thing in RPG projects is an interesting, full of all sorts of interactive and adventurous world. In general, an alive world.

Quertus
2021-04-09, 01:30 PM
To Quertus: But you still haven't explained what your personal metrics are.

You are correct. I have not. Even in the thread you linked (and created), I did not. Because I have no intention of fighting that fight.

If others try to nail down a definition, I'll respond… with agreement / by adapting my beliefs… or with my 2¢… or, if that is ignored, with a more *thorough* response, much like I did with the definitions of CaS vs CaW.

However, I'll point those who are interested in my personal / working definition in the general direction:


What is a role-playing game? Working from the general to the specific. Once I would say "A game centered around, about and/or supports role-playing." but there was a major issue with this definition: D&D didn't count.

But then I realised that was silly, even if I could draw a nice box around that group its not what most people meant.

A lot of older role-playing games actually don't have a lot of rules to support role-playing. And of course a lot of rules-lite systems don't have a lot of rules at all. All they really have is the open ended nature of the game (that is, the GM can make stuff up) and this general intention that people would.

So I would argue that it is all you need to count as a role-playing game. Ability and intention.

You are correct that being "about" role-playing, or having "rules" for role-playing are not good qualifiers for the definition of an RPG.

Ability and intent?

One could roleplay the white knight, white queen, and black bishop as being in a love triangle.

One could roleplay the shoe as being claustrophobic, and desperately wanting the game to last forever, so that it doesn't have to go back in the box.

One could roleplay the Demonic Hordes as having a preference for eating basic Plains.

One could roleplay the lines as malicious liars, who delight in causing suffering and failure.

Does that enable Chess, Monopoly, MtG, and tennis to be RPGs?

(I don't know this story well, but) scientists were trying to invent a new, stronger tape. They failed. Their tape just readily pealed right off most surfaces. And thus was masking tape born.

Does their intent affect the success of their product?

My actual definition, were one to attempt to reverse engineer it from my tests, would involve words like "frequency", "extent", and "degree", rather than simple binary qualifiers. In that regard, you can look to your thread at Max's "hill" metaphor to understand the feel of my definition.

Unlike Max, though, my personal definition is based more on "the rules are the territory" than "the rules are the map" logic; changing this variable could impact which systems qualify as RPGs.

And, third time's the charm, my discussion with Max about HP is very telling for my notion of thresholds.

Also, don't forget, "like this world, *unless* specified otherwise".

If you're really trying to create my definition, you'll want phrases like "primary gameplay loop", but *without* the word "primary".

Looking at the "stances" is also valuable to matching my definition. As is understanding my stance on OOC information.

And throw in some (completely unfair) bias related to cognitive load, that one could divine from my comments on metagaming and role-playing, for good measure.

Confused yet? Now imagine how confused everyone would be if I tried *actually stating* my definition, and how big a fight it would be, just *explaining* what I meant, let alone with others' disagreements with my value judgements.

Able to see why I have no intention of going down that road?

EDIT: in short, with a PhD in my post history on the Playground, one could likely would have the information necessary to devise a heuristic to approximate my definition of an RPG.

In shorter, it's complicated :smalltongue:



As I think the most important thing in RPG projects is an interesting, full of all sorts of interactive and adventurous world. In general, an alive world.

And what, do you think, an RPG can do to allow or prohibit the creation of such? What makes existing settings qualify / disqualified?

Friv
2021-04-09, 05:27 PM
You are correct. I have not. Even in the thread you linked (and created), I did not. Because I have no intention of fighting that fight.

To be perfectly honest, you certainly seem to be trying to fight that fight. You're just doing so in a way that denies anyone who disagrees with you the tools to do so effectively.

If you refuse to share a definition because you think it is too complex for others to understand, that definition is linguistically useless, and if you intend to use a definition that no one else is capable of understanding as a key aspect in communications, you are no longer communicating. If you have no intention of discussing why something is or is not an RPG, then there is no value to making the initial statement that a thing is or not an RPG.

In essence, if you did not want to have this tangent, why did you begin it?


For example, if I were to define a roleplaying game, I could do so very easily. A roleplaying game is a game in which there are rules of some kind, as well as the playing of roles, and the rules in some way directly connect to the playing of roles. That's really all it needs.

Any definition of an RPG that would exclude a game like D&D, of any edition, is fundamentally similar to a definition of coffee that excludes the latte because coffee does not contain milk.

Cluedrew
2021-04-09, 06:23 PM
One could roleplay the white knight, white queen, and black bishop as being in a love triangle.If I'm going to go for the full answer we should probably break this off into its own thread (its only semi-on-topic) but the short version is: How do you do that just moving pieces around? They can't talk or even go places other than one of 64 spaces.


Confused yet? Now imagine how confused everyone would be if I tried *actually stating* my definition, and how big a fight it would be, just *explaining* what I meant, let alone with others' disagreements with my value judgements.I once (with others) spent 5ish pages of a thread explaining to you what Tier 1 meant in the D&D tier list. This is Giant in the Playground forums; that is what we do. Yes occasionally a moderator has to come in and calm things down, but not that often, people try to avoid that for a variety of reasons. We could do it if you wanted to.

But if you don't want to, we don't have to. But if I may echo Friv for a moment and give out some social advice*: If you don't want to get into a fight, don't be throwing the first blow. And you can't "oh its a good game, just a different type of game", to run with the fighting metaphor, that's just putting a bandage on the wound at best. Also (dropping metaphors) its rather useless unless you actually go into details about why, so don't do it half-way.

* Not that I am socialising professional.

anthon
2021-04-09, 10:42 PM
So I've been mulling it over in my head, but what exactly decides whether an RPG is good or not?


From what I've gathered, there are two distinct categories of needs from an RPG: Support of the Story, and Support of the Game.

4E DnD, for instance, had terrible story but generally excellent support of the game (which is why many people associate it as a board game instead of an RPG).

While RPGs like World of Darkness are tuned for story, and instead don't have much "game" to win (it's certainly not a combat-oriented game).

And 5e DnD sits in the middle by attempting both, but doesn't really have much support for doing both at the same time (for example, using illusions or skills in combat isn't covered at all).

3.5e, FATE and 13th Age try to sit in that middle as well, but can end up being bogging folks down in rules in order to make everything function together.


So what makes an RPG good? Or are there always major sacrifices in every system, and it's really just about finding the right players for the right game?



when player generated content is every bit as supported and welcome as DM content, You have a good game system. Players who feel like they can be creative, contribute, and make their mark upon the world, to me, this is important. Be the next Rary, Tasha, or Toreador. Be the next Morgan Blackhand or Corporate Dragon CEO of Seattle. Have your brand stamped on that mass produced pistol or cyberware. Stamp your face on the coins that fund wars in the realms with castles and warships fighting in your name.

I love to see players doodle stuff, like clockwork steampunk or specialized costumes, made up weapons, or pets. I like to see them composing legends, spinning tales, and asking What-ifs.

So stuff like ship building, magic item creation, empire building, spell research, programming, mecha design, mad scientist super power labs, space ship yards, or cookie recipe guides - hey this stuff is golden.

Quertus
2021-04-10, 08:32 AM
To be perfectly honest, you certainly seem to be trying to fight that fight. You're just doing so in a way that denies anyone who disagrees with you the tools to do so effectively.

If you refuse to share a definition because you think it is too complex for others to understand, that definition is linguistically useless, and if you intend to use a definition that no one else is capable of understanding as a key aspect in communications, you are no longer communicating. If you have no intention of discussing why something is or is not an RPG, then there is no value to making the initial statement that a thing is or not an RPG.

In essence, if you did not want to have this tangent, why did you begin it?


For example, if I were to define a roleplaying game, I could do so very easily. A roleplaying game is a game in which there are rules of some kind, as well as the playing of roles, and the rules in some way directly connect to the playing of roles. That's really all it needs.

Any definition of an RPG that would exclude a game like D&D, of any edition, is fundamentally similar to a definition of coffee that excludes the latte because coffee does not contain milk.

Here's a few details that may help you understand my PoV:

My attacks on 4e are part of a long-running gag, whereby I am attempting to demonstrate the difference between a character and a caricature, by posting as a caricature of myself with regards to 4e. I've been saying that 4e is "not an RPG" for a long time now; this is the first time it's been likened to denying personhood.

Language is… messy and inefficient. There are times when "coffee" *is* a separate category from "latte", because "coffee" in this case has multiple definitions.

I don't not share my definition because it is difficult to understand. It *is* difficult to understand, but that is not the reason for not sharing it. The reason I don't want to detail it is because of the misunderstandings and arguments that would ensue.

Everything should be as simple as it can be, and no simpler. I'd not oversimplify my definition of an RPG to make it "linguistically useful", even if I *did* have any intention of sharing it.


If I'm going to go for the full answer we should probably break this off into its own thread (its only semi-on-topic) but the short version is: How do you do that just moving pieces around? They can't talk or even go places other than one of 64 spaces.

Sigh. (Actually, I'm told "sigh" does not convey what I want it to. So, what conveys "this is a lot of work", but, unlike "*rolls up sleeves*", does not convey an industrious attitude towards that work, but an, "I had hoped not to have to do this work" attitude? Because that's what *I* mean by "sigh".)

How does one roleplay in combat, with only making attack rolls? Why, one roleplays "vengeful" by attacking the one who dealt you damage; "protective" by attacking the one who hurt your ally; "indecisive" by switching targets; cowardly by… I didn't include "movement" in the options, so… attacking one's self for subdual damage, perhaps?

In this example, the Knight moves to protect the Queen; the Queen avoids and perhaps even overlooks opportunities to capture the Bishop. If the Knight finds out, he may actively seek to capture the Bishop.


I once (with others) spent 5ish pages of a thread explaining to you what Tier 1 meant in the D&D tier list. This is Giant in the Playground forums; that is what we do.

True.

But even if it *weren't* currently framed by me stating, "4e is not an RPG", I expect this to be a… difficult topic. Heck, even *you* have already likened it to denying personhood. How much more evidence of "not likely to produce scholarly responses" do I need?


Yes occasionally a moderator has to come in and calm things down, but not that often, people try to avoid that for a variety of reasons. We could do it if you wanted to.

But if you don't want to, we don't have to.

If I'm ever up for the misunderstandings (and worse), how would you suggest I go about it?

Obviously, I was not up to it when you made your thread, and I am currently avoiding that level of drama, too. But should I ever actually *want* that headache, what would be the best way to approach explaining my complicated and controversial answer to a sensitive topic?


But if I may echo Friv for a moment and give out some social advice*: If you don't want to get into a fight, don't be throwing the first blow. And you can't "oh its a good game, just a different type of game", to run with the fighting metaphor, that's just putting a bandage on the wound at best. Also (dropping metaphors) its rather useless unless you actually go into details about why, so don't do it half-way.

* Not that I am socialising professional.

Shrug. Figure I gave an adequate (if incomplete) explanation the first time(s) I brought it up, when people were claiming that 4e wasn't D&D; it's just part of my caricature now, not something given thought or intent.


when player generated content is every bit as supported and welcome as DM content, You have a good game system. Players who feel like they can be creative, contribute, and make their mark upon the world, to me, this is important. Be the next Rary, Tasha, or Toreador. Be the next Morgan Blackhand or Corporate Dragon CEO of Seattle. Have your brand stamped on that mass produced pistol or cyberware. Stamp your face on the coins that fund wars in the realms with castles and warships fighting in your name.

I love to see players doodle stuff, like clockwork steampunk or specialized costumes, made up weapons, or pets. I like to see them composing legends, spinning tales, and asking What-ifs.

So stuff like ship building, magic item creation, empire building, spell research, programming, mecha design, mad scientist super power labs, space ship yards, or cookie recipe guides - hey this stuff is golden.

I'll not deny, the Heart of Tafiti, the power of Creation, is one of the best ways to ensure an awesome experience for me in an otherwise decent system. Sign me up! :smallbiggrin:

Cluedrew
2021-04-10, 05:40 PM
I could go over point-by-point making little clarifications and comments but I'm going to stick to just the most important one:[QUOTE=Quertus;25001797If I'm ever up for the misunderstandings (and worse), how would you suggest I go about it?[/QUOTE]This one I have several pieces of advice but one wins out as the most important. If you remember only one thing remember this: Allow yourself to be convinced.

Without that its not a discussion, its a lecture. I stopped making caster/martial disparity threads because I reached that point on that topic. If you want a lecture about my views on the topic I can give it to you but I would be surprised if there was actually anything new to discuss.* Now you might be thinking, "Isn't irrelevant if I'm right? Isn't that just saying prepare to be wrong." OK there is an element of that as I don't know what your argument is so for all I know it is catastrophically unsound. But mostly its because people can tell if you are approaching the conversation with an open mind or not (not every time but as the thread goes on). And you want the most sure fire way (within forum rules) to make people actively reject your argument: make it clear you aren't interested in theirs.

Other than that: Be polite, don't get angry (wait before posting if you have to), write for someone who is new to the form and has only read this thread, repeat the important context in a reply chain, ask questions and always be clear about what is a joke. I think that is everything.

* I think I have seen every argument and counter-argument about caster/martial disparity. It reached the point I could see two other people disagreeing about it and could then explain to them why they were disagreeing. Also consistent usage of a term among all parties is very important, I learned that from the many meanings of magic.

Quertus
2021-04-10, 06:49 PM
I could go over point-by-point making little clarifications and comments but I'm going to stick to just the most important one:This one I have several pieces of advice but one wins out as the most important. If you remember only one thing remember this: Allow yourself to be convinced.

Without that its not a discussion, its a lecture. I stopped making caster/martial disparity threads because I reached that point on that topic. If you want a lecture about my views on the topic I can give it to you but I would be surprised if there was actually anything new to discuss.* Now you might be thinking, "Isn't irrelevant if I'm right? Isn't that just saying prepare to be wrong." OK there is an element of that as I don't know what your argument is so for all I know it is catastrophically unsound. But mostly its because people can tell if you are approaching the conversation with an open mind or not (not every time but as the thread goes on). And you want the most sure fire way (within forum rules) to make people actively reject your argument: make it clear you aren't interested in theirs.

Other than that: Be polite, don't get angry (wait before posting if you have to), write for someone who is new to the form and has only read this thread, repeat the important context in a reply chain, ask questions and always be clear about what is a joke. I think that is everything.

* I think I have seen every argument and counter-argument about caster/martial disparity. It reached the point I could see two other people disagreeing about it and could then explain to them why they were disagreeing. Also consistent usage of a term among all parties is very important, I learned that from the many meanings of magic.

Thank you for the advice.

I am rarely angry, but often irritated at myself. I'll endeavour not to post when I'm irritated at how poorly I've explained something.

I don't think I have the one true answer… but… combined with "post for someone new" (which was the plan, btw), it would come off as "the lecture to end all lectures", as it would probably take several dozen posts just to give the background information (like defining the stances, for example) necessary to understand my definition.

I'd probably not use humor at all - there wouldn't be room :smallwink:

My personal definition for an RPG… is not an argument, nor would the expansion thereof be. Now, after the fact, explaining *why* I define RPGs the way I do, and dealing with attempts to oversimplify the definition would involve argumentation, but the first couple dozen posts (of providing the background to understand my definition, followed by the statement of my definition) would involve 0 argument, 100% lecture.

Hmmm… the only way to get anywhere near that end… without lecturing… would be… to ask questions… like asking others what criteria *they* use when evaluating an RPG… and, if the thread goes well enough, they'll do my legwork of explaining all these things for me, and I can just, at an appropriate moment say, "that reminds me (now that all the pieces are in place), my *personal* definition for an RPG is…".

But man that feels disingenuous.

-----

So, what makes an RPG good?

Recently, I've heard more posters talk about how Pendragon is good. Used to be, people claimed it would be good, but nobody played it. Is the system *more* good now that people are playing it?

I think that there's an "is latte a subset of coffee or a different menu section" linguistic issue here with the word "good". As I use the term, is more akin to "quality", and the quality of Pendragon did not, does not, and cannot change based on who or how many are playing it.

So, while I agree that "how many people are playing" / "how easy is it to get people to play" is relevant to the experience of an RPG, I reject the notion of a casual arrow in the direction "more players -> higher quality".

I think it would be nice if "higher quality -> more players", but the world doesn't work that way. Perhaps the best "totally not a rant" on that fact I've seen was in Neal Stephenson's "In the Beginning... was the Command Line".

So, despite how very many criteria my personal definition of an RPG has, I'm not seeing "popularity" as a valid metric for the *quality* of an RPG.

burpbot
2021-04-10, 07:00 PM
An RPG is good if ppl enjoyed playing it. Ppl did not enjoy playing 4e. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpmUxfS4LF8&ab_channel=PuffinForest)

Cluedrew
2021-04-10, 07:42 PM
but the first couple dozen posts (of providing the background to understand my definition, followed by the statement of my definition) would involve 0 argument, 100% lecture.On one hand: That's fine, its actually about the mindset not the ratio of content. On the other hand: Don't worry, I'm sure people will start inserting their opinions before that.

But if you give it a shot, you will probably see me there pretty quick.

Tanarii
2021-04-10, 08:13 PM
An RPG is good if ppl enjoyed playing it. Ppl did not enjoy playing 4e. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpmUxfS4LF8&ab_channel=PuffinForest)
At first I was wondering if he had gotten his memories of 4e and 3e mixed up or something. since 4e combat was a gripping leap forward for D&D. Although that wouldn't make much sense either, 3e was pretty fun in its own right, it just had some gaping rules problems (looking at you stealth) and later on massive balance problems from splat. Which 4e eventually came to have too.

Then he started in on cinematic descriptions of using powers and I realized I'd just hate to play at the table with him, and his opinion on what is good and fun and enjoyable and what isn't will never match mine. :smallamused:

I will say even though I really miss how awesome 4e combat was, I've since moved on to enjoying the very fast (for WotC) paced combat that is 5e. 4e took what 3e started, making combat really tactical and fun. 5e doesn't make D&D as fast to resolve a turn as BECMI, but it's better 3e, 4e, or even many aspects of AD&D for enhancing combat resolution time. It just does that at the cost of a huge chunk of tactical play.

But if you play 5e combat so fast that players don't have time to overanalyze, which the system totally allows you to do, you introduce a special kind of tension which is a kind of fun, the fear of not having time to think properly, just having to do what you can to stay alive. Even though you're not really in much danger. 5e combat being fun is all about the DM maintaining pacing during combat.

kyoryu
2021-04-10, 08:36 PM
An RPG is good if ppl enjoyed playing it. Ppl did not enjoy playing 4e. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpmUxfS4LF8&ab_channel=PuffinForest)

Some people did.

Some people didn't.

Frankbit
2021-04-12, 12:49 AM
I think Story is the most important aspect of any self-respecting RPG. If the player is going to be spending upwards of 30–40 hours with a set of characters, they’re going to need to be compelling. Hopefully, they are compelling enough to make players think “I’d really like to meet these people in real life”. Then there’s the plot. If it doesn’t keep players on the edge of their seats throughout the adventure (if it isn’t full of twists and turns), then it isn’t likely to motivate players to get to the next dungeon or take on the next big battle. The worst thing an RPG can do is fail to hold the player’s interest. It’s a huge challenge for game designers, which is perhaps why the top-tier RPGs are so well-respected. The very best RPGs remain interesting throughout, even as they swing between intense action and quiet reflection. An interesting story, a compelling plot, and a carefully paced adventure are all critical ingredients.

MoiMagnus
2021-04-12, 02:59 AM
Hopefully, they are compelling enough to make players think “I’d really like to meet these people in real life”.

Me looking at our team of Lawful Evil bastards that might accidentally destroy the world in their quest for ultimate power: maybe I should not take this sentence literally.

Tanarii
2021-04-12, 03:01 AM
An interesting story, a compelling plot, and a carefully paced adventure are all critical ingredients.
Personally I don't want story or plot in my RPGs. I want to play a character in the fantasy environment.

Jason
2021-04-12, 07:42 AM
I think that there's an "is latte a subset of coffee or a different menu section" linguistic issue here with the word "good". As I use the term, is more akin to "quality", and the quality of Pendragon did not, does not, and cannot change based on who or how many are playing it.

So, while I agree that "how many people are playing" / "how easy is it to get people to play" is relevant to the experience of an RPG, I reject the notion of a casual arrow in the direction "more players -> higher quality".
I agree. The quality of an RPG system is in no way dependent on how many people are playing it. A system that had lots of players, then no players for a time, and now has players again did not change in any objective sense.


I think Story is the most important aspect of any self-respecting RPG. If the player is going to be spending upwards of 30–40 hours with a set of characters, they’re going to need to be compelling. Hopefully, they are compelling enough to make players think “I’d really like to meet these people in real life”. Then there’s the plot. If it doesn’t keep players on the edge of their seats throughout the adventure (if it isn’t full of twists and turns), then it isn’t likely to motivate players to get to the next dungeon or take on the next big battle. The worst thing an RPG can do is fail to hold the player’s interest. It’s a huge challenge for game designers, which is perhaps why the top-tier RPGs are so well-respected. The very best RPGs remain interesting throughout, even as they swing between intense action and quiet reflection. An interesting story, a compelling plot, and a carefully paced adventure are all critical ingredients.
I think "story quality" is too subjective a criteria. Everybody likes different things in their stories. It's also almost entirely dependent on your group and especially on your GM. The best written background material won't do you any good if your GM and the rest of your group ignores it. Personally, any game where a major attraction is to meet the NPCs of the setting sets off warning bells for me, because the GM then has to play them so that they are as cool as they appear in the background material.
You can also have games where the GM discards all of the published background story in the game, makes his own stuff up instead using just the rules, and it's completely brilliant. You can't go to other players and say "D&D 4 is brilliant because my GM ran a fantastic campaign with its rules" when it was the GM doing all the work that made it good.

kyoryu
2021-04-12, 09:41 AM
I agree. The quality of an RPG system is in no way dependent on how many people are playing it. A system that had lots of players, then no players for a time, and now has players again did not change in any objective sense.

Semi-agree.

Popular games have to be at least good at some things, or they wouldn't be popular.

Unpopular games could be unpopular for any number of reasons - they could target small niches. They could have bad advertising. They might just be bad.

It's completely erroneous to say "this game is more popular than that one, therefore it's better".

Telok
2021-04-12, 10:15 AM
The very best RPGs remain interesting throughout, even as they swing between intense action and quiet reflection. An interesting story, a compelling plot, and a carefully paced adventure are all critical ingredients.

Paranoia says "Hi". Quiet reflection and careful pacing have no* place there, it's all comedy-action. In print and still good since 1984.

*Actually you can do them if you want. But I've had good games that were nothing more than "deliver this letter down the hall" and (d)evolved into Spy Vs Spy action with grenades on the highway.

Jason
2021-04-12, 10:30 AM
Semi-agree.

Popular games have to be at least good at some things, or they wouldn't be popular.

Unpopular games could be unpopular for any number of reasons - they could target small niches. They could have bad advertising. They might just be bad.

It's completely erroneous to say "this game is more popular than that one, therefore it's better".
I would say that popularity can be an indication that a game is good, but that neither popularity nor obscurity by itself determines if a game is good or bad.

Witty Username
2021-04-18, 12:48 AM
I always feel awkward when 4e gets brought up, because I feel like I didn't enjoy it for an unusual reason. I had trouble reading it. Parsing what each class did felt unusually difficult and I never figured out how magic items were supposed to work. So I get caught in this strange "I'll take your word on it" attitude when someone praises 4e because I don't understand it on a fundamental level.

I am certain it is not a complexity thing, as 3.5 was my jam for awhile and I was just defending THACO up thread. All I know is I do not grok 4e.

Max_Killjoy
2021-04-18, 08:21 AM
I always feel awkward when 4e gets brought up, because I feel like I didn't enjoy it for an unusual reason. I had trouble reading it. Parsing what each class did felt unusually difficult and I never figured out how magic items were supposed to work. So I get caught in this strange "I'll take your word on it" attitude when someone praises 4e because I don't understand it on a fundamental level.

I am certain it is not a complexity thing, as 3.5 was my jam for awhile and I was just defending THACO up thread. All I know is I do not grok 4e.

I don't think it was you, 4e didn't know what class did what either.

Most of the class abilities were just reskins of the same basic mechanics, over and over again.

Tanarii
2021-04-18, 09:20 AM
Most of the class abilities were just reskins of the same basic mechanics, over and over again.
Yeah, not even remotely the case.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-04-18, 09:35 AM
I don't think it was you, 4e didn't know what class did what either.

Most of the class abilities were just reskins of the same basic mechanics, over and over again.

Makeup brush...or jackhammer. You decide.

Quertus
2021-04-18, 01:33 PM
Makeup brush...or jackhammer. You decide.

Oh, man, I'm so glad I picked that visual for my example - thanks for the laugh!


I always feel awkward when 4e gets brought up, because I feel like I didn't enjoy it for an unusual reason. I had trouble reading it. Parsing what each class did felt unusually difficult and I never figured out how magic items were supposed to work. So I get caught in this strange "I'll take your word on it" attitude when someone praises 4e because I don't understand it on a fundamental level.

I am certain it is not a complexity thing, as 3.5 was my jam for awhile and I was just defending THACO up thread. All I know is I do not grok 4e.

It's OK, the developers didn't understand 4e, either - otherwise, they wouldn't have claimed that the math just works, when it so clearly didn't.

*Ducks* *looks for claims comparing his running gag to dehumanization*

Personally, I didn't like 4e. I recognize that some people do, but, similarly to you, I haven't really understood *why* they liked it. At times, I feel like the Emperor, unable to see the beauty in Jade. I'm probably too stuck looking at so much of 4e as "D&D - for people who hate D&D"… and might have appreciated it more if it hadn't come out under the D&D label. Or not, since I'm loving dtd40k7e. Shrug.

Tanarii
2021-04-18, 01:39 PM
Personally, I didn't like 4e. I recognize that some people do, but, similarly to you, I haven't really understood *why* they liked it. At times, I feel like the Emperor, unable to see the beauty in Jade. I'm probably too stuck looking at so much of 4e as "D&D - for people who hate D&D"… and might have appreciated it more if it hadn't come out under the D&D label. Or not, since I'm loving dtd40k7e. Shrug.It's possible to see the beauty there while simultaneously understanding many of the reasons people don't like it. Heck, it's possible to see the beauty in a game while preferring to play a newer (or older) edition of the very same game.

Except for the perception that all the powers were the same. That one doesn't make sense, since it was provable not true. It's like claiming that all AD&D or 3e or 5e spells or feats are the same. Or that the classes are all the same because they all use the same "attack roll" system. Or later on share the same resolution for skills.

Cluedrew
2021-04-18, 07:25 PM
*looks for claims comparing his running gag to dehumanization*... Did you read the section that explained why I made that comparison? I mean you probably did at the time but it is about using a statement about the structure of the argument.

Repeatedly bringing up something that sounds terrible is degrading. Especially if that terrible sounding this is unimportant and false, and I will maintain both of those things until someone forwards a reasonable argument to the contrary.
Except for the perception that all the powers were the same. That one doesn't make sense, since it was provable not true.The way powers were organised were the same and apparently that was enough for people. Which is weird because the no-refresh/short-rest/long-rest called problems before but put at-will/encounter/daily on the power and suddenly everything is uniform. And you can add frills but I think 5e is the first edition where spell-slots are more than a bunch of daily power pools.

I don't get it either really. I found 4th edition's combat system to be the most engaging of any of the systems. Which is more a comment on the low bar set by other editions than the quality of 4th. (5e is at second at one and a half combats.)

Friv
2021-04-18, 08:17 PM
... Did you read the section that explained why I made that comparison? I mean you probably did at the time but it is about using a statement about the structure of the argument.

Repeatedly bringing up something that sounds terrible is degrading. Especially if that terrible sounding this is unimportant and false, and I will maintain both of those things until someone forwards a reasonable argument to the contrary.
Quertus has said that he's just doing what his character would do, and I think we should afford him the same respect we would for a player doing that at the table.

Quertus
2021-04-18, 11:08 PM
It's possible to see the beauty there while simultaneously understanding many of the reasons people don't like it. Heck, it's possible to see the beauty in a game while preferring to play a newer (or older) edition of the very same game.

Except for the perception that all the powers were the same. That one doesn't make sense, since it was provable not true. It's like claiming that all AD&D or 3e or 5e spells or feats are the same. Or that the classes are all the same because they all use the same "attack roll" system. Or later on share the same resolution for skills.


The way powers were organised were the same and apparently that was enough for people. Which is weird because the no-refresh/short-rest/long-rest called problems before but put at-will/encounter/daily on the power and suddenly everything is uniform. And you can add frills but I think 5e is the first edition where spell-slots are more than a bunch of daily power pools.

I don't get it either really. I found 4th edition's combat system to be the most engaging of any of the systems. Which is more a comment on the low bar set by other editions than the quality of 4th. (5e is at second at one and a half combats.)

Sigh.

I cannot speak for others, but, for me, 4e *felt* samey. Which is not the same as "the perception that all the powers were the same" or "The way powers were organised were the same".

How did 4e *feel* samey?

Well, you know how, when you *think* you're drinking one drink, but actually drink a different one, it tastes *really weird*? Hold that image.

The buzz was, martial adepts were practice for 4e. They introduced *entirely different* refresh systems, and introduced them on top of 3e, which was already rife with plentiful new systems, like Binders and Warlocks. And, while nowhere near as chaotic as the 2e Wild Mage, the Crusader at least had a little bit of Chaos going for it.

Is that what we got? No.

We got classes that all used the same set of standardized recovery mechanics (at will / encounter / rest) to deliver their samey 2d6 + rider effect attacks.

Add to that the promise that "the math just works", when, instead, you got a system where it felt you *had* to optimize in terms of the numbers for *all* the classes in order to balance to the table.

Every single character felt the same to build and play. You engaged the exact same part of your brain, no matter which character you selected. A few of the individual notes may differ, but they all played exactly the same song - not even as different as "the Batmobile lost a wheel" or "soft Dalek, warm Dalek", the differences felt more like individual typos than actual variances.

So, think about how different in complexity - both to build, and to play - two different 3e characters can be. Think about how different the tempo and stamina of two different 3e characters can be. Now look at 4e, and tell me that it doesn't feel "samey" in comparison - *especially* when one walked in expecting innovative new increases in variance along the lines of martial adepts.

Tanarii
2021-04-19, 03:01 AM
Yeah, no. Again, saying that all classes are the same because "4e powers are damage + rider" is like saying all classes that attack using d20+bonus to damage is the same, or all classes that use d20+bonus skill checks are the same.

Powers produced drastically different results in play, and having a similar but not identical mechanical structure to resolving powers didn't change that.

Quertus
2021-04-19, 07:20 AM
Yeah, no. Again, saying that all classes are the same because "4e powers are damage + rider" is like saying all classes that attack using d20+bonus to damage is the same, or all classes that use d20+bonus skill checks are the same.

Powers produced drastically different results in play, and having a similar but not identical mechanical structure to resolving powers didn't change that.

But that's not what I said.

Let's try again. Here's how it *feels*:

3e

A Warlock deals 1d6 per 2 levels, at range, against touch AC, once per round… with opt-in upgrades, including AoE and rider effects (like… "on fire", maybe? Darn senility).

A Rogue deals (weapon damage plus) 1d6 per 2 levels, in melee or close range, once per attack (up to… 9 attacks per round of properly buffed)… under specified conditions, against certain opponents… with opt-in ability to trade in damage for rider effects (including "reduced movement" and "cannot talk").

An übercharger deals "you're chunky red salsa" damage (with the rider of "glass cannon" AC)

A Wizard deals damage and/or status effects, to one or more targets, AoE or targeting regular or touch AC or saves or unresisted.

4e

Everyone deals 2d6 + optional rider effect.

I'm saying that the variance between 4e classes is minimal, especially compared to 3e, they're all hitting the same notes. Thus, samey.

---And---

That is not just "damage + rider" that mantra them comparatively "samey": they also operate on very samey feeling power schedules.

3e

At will, 1/round (Warlock)

At will, 1/attack (Rogue)

Vancian (Wizard)

Vancian with substitution (Cleric, Druid)

Spell slots (Sorcerer)

Mana (spell points, Psion)

"Per encounter", aka "Mana with recovery" (Psion, martial feats)

Per encounter, with recovery (Warblade)

Random access (Crusader)

Limited use per day (Cleric turn undead, barbarian rage)

(Binder)

4e

At will (everyone)

Encounter (everyone)

Rest (everyone)

4e characters lacked this kind of "flow identity", they were all samey, marching to the same beats compared to their 3e counterparts.

---And---

The optimization frame of mind when building (and playing) them is different, too:

3e

Power Attack, Cleave, Great Cleave… a single level dip in Barbarian for pounce… DMM Persist Divine Power… are there any prestige classes I should be aiming for? [Optional: now, how do I not be trivially shut down, and actually deal with ranged / flying / etc?]

Eh, I'll just write "Cleric" on my character sheet, and pick spells later. And I can always convert them to healing.

Oh, I *like* healing. RSoP Diplomacer? That sounds fun. What else can I find to optimize my two tricks? And cloistered Cleric sounds right up this character's alley.

Meh, religious upbringing, chosen by the gods as their Cleric. If he decides he wants into a prestige class later, he'll just have faith that he can desperately struggle to meet the prerequisites at some point. Now, how can I best play 5d Wizard's Chess with a Cleric base? Hmmm…

4e

How do I make the numbers work?

3e had a whole orchestra of mindsets playing their songs, whereas 4e is limited to a single instrument, piping out their samey dirges.

*That's* my experience with how 4e *feels* samey *in comparison to 3e*.

-----

Now, I'm actually quite curious about this "Powers produced drastically different results in play" bit. I think that, even at 1st level, we've got…

3e

Attack

Trip

Disarm

Sneak attack

Touch attacks (Warlock, thrown flasks)

AoE (burning hands)

Cleave

TWF / rapid shot / Flurry of blows

Natural attacks

Fight defensively / all-out defense

Sleep

Color Spray

Entangle

Grease

Heal

Strike + Heal (Crusader maneuver or stance)

Strike + Heal + Heal (Crusader maneuver and stance)

Aid another

+4 AC nearby allies (stance)

Dropped marbles

Attacks by familiar / animal companion / mount / undead minions / hirelings.

Not to mention flanking, higher ground, binding wounds, fighting withdraw, running… and pretty useless options like expertise, power attack, or just spending your turn looking around.

4e

???

Conventional wisdom says 4e is "hit your limited list of buttons in time with the expected tempo". Can you explain how 4e "Powers produced drastically different results in play" that doesn't look samey compared to 3e play?

Jason
2021-04-19, 07:50 AM
It must be the Godwin's Law of D&D discussion: "The longer any forum discussion of what makes an RPG good proceeds, the more the chance of someone complaining at length about how bad 4th edition D&D was approaches 100%."

I never played 4th edition long enough to develop a grounded opinion on what was bad and what was good about it. I just know that my group played one adventure, decided it wasn't for us, and played 3.5 or other non-D&D games until 5th edition came out.

I thought all the characters felt the same and the game as a whole played too much like Descent or a video game. Maybe later rules mixed things up more, but the game had already lost our attention by that point.

I wish we had done the same thing with FFG Star Wars. I had deep misgivings about the mechanics after playing the Edge of Empire intro, but our GM was anxious to run the new Star Wars, the other players were willing, and I bowed to the group decision. I spent almost two years playing a system I discovered annoyed me every time I picked up those silly dice or had to spend experience points on those lousy career trees. And gaining experience only made it worse.

Cluedrew
2021-04-19, 07:57 AM
Kelly and Amanda are two of my most disparate characters (don't worry I'm going somewhere with this). Kelly was attacked by assassins and managed to get them to help him fix his jeep. Amanda assaulted someone for giving her a job offer, that they knew violated the conditions of her current job but still that's not really a reason to break someone's nose. But the funny thing is: mechanically they were almost identical. Kelly had more utility skills (and a jeep) while Amanda put those points into some more offensive abilities. Their defence was identical, their equipment almost the same and so on for everything else.

My opinion on varied mechanics is simple: The mechanics don't have to make the characters different, they just have be able to express what is different about them. And since every character (I think) has the "Say what the character would say" and "Do what the character would do" abilities you have a pretty good base. Now I have agued for more in the past so I agree you can always build off of this, but in a pinch its enough.

And mixing up the rate at which character's abilities refresh is not that extra step I'm looking for... so I don't have much issue with its absence.


Quertus has said that he's just doing what his character would do, and I think we should afford him the same respect we would for a player doing that at the table.He just seemed worried that I was going to make the same comparison as I did before. This argument has a different structure so it doesn't apply. I did try to explain why so it was clear, did that come off too strong?

Also I have a post from What if it IS what my character would do? (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25001799&postcount=10) if you want to read my thoughts on the in character side of it.

Jason
2021-04-19, 08:34 AM
Not to mention flanking, higher ground, binding wounds, fighting withdraw, running… and pretty useless options like expertise, power attack, or just spending your turn looking around.
Expertise and Power Attack were "useless optiins"?

Max_Killjoy
2021-04-19, 09:34 AM
I gave someone the copy of the 4E PHB that I ended up with, because they needed one and I was never going to use it.

Evidently I should have kept it so that I could give examples of where different abilities were just skins on the same +XdY dice added damage, or the same resistance, or the same bonus, or same applied penalty to another character, etc.

Tanarii
2021-04-19, 09:51 AM
I gave someone the copy of the 4E PHB that I ended up with, because they needed one and I was never going to use it.

Evidently I should have kept it so that I could give examples of where different abilities were just skins on the same +XdY dice added damage, or the same resistance, or the same bonus, or same applied penalty to another character, etc.
You just described three entirely different effects, which impact play in a different way.

The idea that powers were "the same" because they often, but not always, inflicted damage + some effect, is massive reductionism.

kyoryu
2021-04-19, 10:26 AM
You just described three entirely different effects, which impact play in a different way.

The idea that powers were "the same" because they often, but not always, inflicted damage + some effect, is massive reductionism.

Things that are true:

1) All characters (prior to Essentials) were built on the same power gain chassis
2) Almost all powers were some level of "damage + effect".
3) All characters (prior to Essentials) had the same recharge mechanics - At-Will/Short Rest/Long Rest

In play they often played very differently, especially after the first few levels. Even different builds in the same class could play pretty differently. So it really matters where you're looking for differentiation:

1) What you're doing on a turn-by-turn basis, and what effect you can have on the battlefield?
2) How does this class gain abilities?
3) What resource management does this class do?

4E has a lot of differentiation for the first. It has very little on the second and third (a bit more post-Essentials).

Essentials had a lot of goodness. One of the funny things is how much people said "oh stances are so much better for Fighters!" They were, for nearly all practical purposes, the same thing with a minor presentation pass. Which just shows how much presentation matters

Tanarii
2021-04-19, 10:43 AM
In play they often played very differently, especially after the first few levels. Even different builds in the same class could play pretty differently. So it really matters where you're looking for differentiation:

1) What you're doing on a turn-by-turn basis, and what effect you can have on the battlefield?
2) How does this class gain abilities?
3) What resource management does this class do?Of these three, only the first and third are valid for the difference in how something feels, as opposed to how something reads on a scan of the rule book. (Edit: or as opposed to people who spend a lot of time character building for entertainment and not much playing.)

And the first absolutely dominates compared to the third. Because the third is really a subset of the first.

kyoryu
2021-04-19, 11:01 AM
Of these three, only the first and third are valid for the difference in how something feels, as opposed to how something reads on a scan of the rule book. (Edit: or as opposed to people who spend a lot of time character building for entertainment and not much playing.)

And the first absolutely dominates compared to the third. Because the third is really a subset of the first.

I'd argue that.

For the second, "building characters" is really a lot of the game for some people. Feeling like it's all the same building process can suck some of the fun out of the game.

For the third, I think it's different from the first. Like, imagine two characters, One had a system of points that they had to use and manage with various abilities to keep their powers going - all their abillities had riders that changed these internal pools. Another character has a series of slots that they can use to fire off abilities that recharge on some schedule. Now, assume that both of these classes had abilities that, apart from their recharge/resource management did the exact same things to the battlefield and their targets.

By the first classification, they'd be the same. By the third, they'd be different. This is the inverse of 4e, but I think it illustrates why I think the 1st and 3rd categories aren't the same

I mean, don't get me wrong, I like 4e and I don't care for 3.x. But I think for the people that find 4e "samey" they're mostly looking at the latter two categories... which don't really matter to me, which is probably why I don't fine 4e "samey".

I also do think that the "everything does damage!" threw some people off, even though in many cases the damage is truly nominal.

To be clear - I absolutely personally agree that "what you do on a turn to turn basis, and how that impacts combat" is far and away the most relevant part of the game. But I do think there are people for whom that's just not true. And from that POV, yeah, 4e classes do look pretty similar. It can even be hard to see how the effects play out until you do it.

Tanarii
2021-04-19, 11:42 AM
For the third, I think it's different from the first. Like, imagine two characters, One had a system of points that they had to use and manage with various abilities to keep their powers going - all their abillities had riders that changed these internal pools. Another character has a series of slots that they can use to fire off abilities that recharge on some schedule. Now, assume that both of these classes had abilities that, apart from their recharge/resource management did the exact same things to the battlefield and their targets.

By the first classification, they'd be the same. By the third, they'd be different. This is the inverse of 4e, but I think it illustrates why I think the 1st and 3rd categories aren't the same
Except they won't be the same. Because the resource use differences will affect player decisions on when to use them, on a turn-by-turn basis. Like I said, the third is a subset of the first.

In other words, agreed that resource management was similar (but not identical due to Psionics) for most 4e classes. And varying that would increase the difference/variations in turn-by-turn decisions.

But the turn-by-turn decision making already varied between classes due to the huge difference in power use (criteria, success rate, targets, and effect).

Telok
2021-04-19, 12:00 PM
For my group D&D 4e became bad because the combats, which was most of D&D 4e anyways, kept getting slower and slower as hp outpaced damage and there were no win conditions except hp damage.

For me it was boring & samey game play in addition tobeing slow that turned me off. I played... warlock, beastform only druid, and a bard. The decision tree in combat was exactly the same for all of them* and all their powers were damage+rider or "let an ally spend a heal". Even the rituals never got used except once, a sort of darklight torch thing that enabled the human rogue to scout.

Wait, I recall the bard did have extra complexity. The powers used melee weapons and ranged weapons and an implement, and I think there was a shield. So a memorable number of wasted turns switching gear. Plus the hilarity of getting to say "bob shoots the jelly charismatically with a bow for X damage and <something rider>".

So, bad game for our group. We gave the system nearly a full year too before ditching it.

My personal metrics of good/bad have been informed by the experiences of the games I've played. That's probably the same for everyone. But I try to recognize the possible sources of bias in my experiences. D&D 4e may have been a good game by the end, after the different power formats, with the online character builder, after they finally fixed all the math errors, etc. But my experience covered the first year and a half, using only physical books. And it quickly became boring.

In a similar vein I keep reminding myself that all my D&D 5e experiences were with inexperienced DMs. That they couldn't make the system work out of the books dosen't make it a bad system for everyone or everything. Just that I shouldn't play 5e with a DM who hasn't made & learned from all the same mistakes I did when I was learning to DM AD&D. And in Champions it's always been with good, experienced DMs who would build characters for new players and have an intro set of trimmed rules to start with.

I think the only games I've played that I've never heard someone say (seriously) that they were bad systems are Paranoia and Pendragon. Some people don't enjoy them though.

* Seriously -> move? clump of enemies? use daily? use encounter? which at will? move? roll attack(s) & damage. That was it, all the decisions. Attempts to use anything but an on-sheet power were basically punished by using an off stat and not getting the bonuses that kept you relevant.

Jason
2021-04-19, 12:27 PM
I think the only games I've played that I've never heard someone say (seriously) that they were bad systems are Paranoia and Pendragon. Some people don't enjoy them though.
Paranoia is a good example of a niche game. It's a very good game, and even just reading the rulebooks can be entertaining (at least, for the 2nd and XP editions, which I'm most familiar with). But it really only does its one genre, and it isn't much good for anything else. An excellent game for when you want "comedy backstabbing in a dystopia" in other words.

It also has an edition that everybody hated. The so-called 5th Edition, which the XP edition, in true Paranoia style, declared an unproduct.

Friv
2021-04-19, 12:56 PM
I think the only games I've played that I've never heard someone say (seriously) that they were bad systems are Paranoia and Pendragon. Some people don't enjoy them though.

I will be the guy!

Nearly every edition of Paranoia has bad systems. They tend to have much too fiddly damage systems given the goal, there's a lot of weird edge cases that you'll never use, and there's a weirdly detailed level of bean-counting.

All of this is mitigated by the fact that Paranoia almost demands that the GM constantly ignore the rules when doing so will screw over the characters in a way that amuses the players, which means that the fact that the game system is bad doesn't tend to matter as much as it would in a game in which the players were expecting reliable results from their actions.

(The newest Paranoia leans into that with a much more chaotic and wacky game system which is more fun, but exports a lot of control from the GM to the system itself to make things feel a bit less aggressively antagonistic. YMMV.)

Quertus
2021-04-19, 06:57 PM
Expertise and Power Attack were "useless optiins"?

At first level, which was the context of that statement, they were "pretty useless", yeah.


Things that are true:

1) All characters (prior to Essentials) were built on the same power gain chassis
2) Almost all powers were some level of "damage + effect".
3) All characters (prior to Essentials) had the same recharge mechanics - At-Will/Short Rest/Long Rest

In play they often played very differently, especially after the first few levels. Even different builds in the same class could play pretty differently. So it really matters where you're looking for differentiation:

1) What you're doing on a turn-by-turn basis, and what effect you can have on the battlefield?
2) How does this class gain abilities?
3) What resource management does this class do?

4E has a lot of differentiation for the first. It has very little on the second and third (a bit more post-Essentials).

Essentials had a lot of goodness. One of the funny things is how much people said "oh stances are so much better for Fighters!" They were, for nearly all practical purposes, the same thing with a minor presentation pass. Which just shows how much presentation matters

Of note, my 4e experience was almost exclusively very early on.


I'd argue that.

For the second, "building characters" is really a lot of the game for some people. Feeling like it's all the same building process can suck some of the fun out of the game.

For the third, I think it's different from the first. Like, imagine two characters, One had a system of points that they had to use and manage with various abilities to keep their powers going - all their abillities had riders that changed these internal pools. Another character has a series of slots that they can use to fire off abilities that recharge on some schedule. Now, assume that both of these classes had abilities that, apart from their recharge/resource management did the exact same things to the battlefield and their targets.

By the first classification, they'd be the same. By the third, they'd be different. This is the inverse of 4e, but I think it illustrates why I think the 1st and 3rd categories aren't the same

I mean, don't get me wrong, I like 4e and I don't care for 3.x. But I think for the people that find 4e "samey" they're mostly looking at the latter two categories... which don't really matter to me, which is probably why I don't fine 4e "samey".

I also do think that the "everything does damage!" threw some people off, even though in many cases the damage is truly nominal.

To be clear - I absolutely personally agree that "what you do on a turn to turn basis, and how that impacts combat" is far and away the most relevant part of the game. But I do think there are people for whom that's just not true. And from that POV, yeah, 4e classes do look pretty similar. It can even be hard to see how the effects play out until you do it.

I'm glad that you can see that the build minigame feels samey. Now, it sounds like you disagree with my assessment of the characters in play. Do you disagree on the notes, the tempo, or the instruments portion of my assessment? Or do you not find the notes / tempo / instruments division meaningful (or even understandable)?

EDIT: and do you feel that a core-only 1st level 4e party has anywhere near the list of valid options that I listed for 3e? (Which, apples to apples, you'd need to remove "Strike + Heal (Crusader maneuver or stance)" and "Strike + Heal + Heal (Crusader maneuver and stance)" (and likely add in lots of things I missed).)


For my group D&D 4e became bad because the combats, which was most of D&D 4e anyways, kept getting slower and slower as hp outpaced damage and there were no win conditions except hp damage.

For me it was boring & samey game play in addition tobeing slow that turned me off. I played... warlock, beastform only druid, and a bard. The decision tree in combat was exactly the same for all of them* and all their powers were damage+rider or "let an ally spend a heal". Even the rituals never got used except once, a sort of darklight torch thing that enabled the human rogue to scout.

Wait, I recall the bard did have extra complexity. The powers used melee weapons and ranged weapons and an implement, and I think there was a shield. So a memorable number of wasted turns switching gear. Plus the hilarity of getting to say "bob shoots the jelly charismatically with a bow for X damage and <something rider>".

So, bad game for our group. We gave the system nearly a full year too before ditching it.

My personal metrics of good/bad have been informed by the experiences of the games I've played. That's probably the same for everyone. But I try to recognize the possible sources of bias in my experiences. D&D 4e may have been a good game by the end, after the different power formats, with the online character builder, after they finally fixed all the math errors, etc. But my experience covered the first year and a half, using only physical books. And it quickly became boring.

* Seriously -> move? clump of enemies? use daily? use encounter? which at will? move? roll attack(s) & damage. That was it, all the decisions. Attempts to use anything but an on-sheet power were basically punished by using an off stat and not getting the bonuses that kept you relevant.

This… very much sounds like my experience with and response to 4e.

Cluedrew
2021-04-19, 07:04 PM
1) What you're doing on a turn-by-turn basis, and what effect you can have on the battlefield?Yes, because as we all know, no system has ever differentiated characters off the battlefield.

"A mercenary, a naïve mystic and a reality TV show host (with camera crew) walk into a bar." There is no punchline except for, that was the actual start of the campaign. I supposed I could add "They were later joined by a wildlife photographer and a local pilot." to round out the party. D&D only one has character concept: fighter. The fighter might get angry, be sneaky, use a bow and arrow, have some divine power or swap out there abilities every day but in the end, the fighter fights.*

And yes its a flexible and broad archetype. You can write stories where all the main characters are some variety of fighter, and I have. But disagreements about the breadth of characters in D&D always seem so weird because even is the broadest of D&D editions is a pretty specialised system in terms of the breath of character concepts. Now depth of that concept, that is pretty good I will give you that.

Â… I feel I'm missing something to tie this all together but I got to go.

* OK except for the one fighter that does everything.

Tanarii
2021-04-19, 07:53 PM
Yes, because as we all know, no system has ever differentiated characters off the battlefield.The context was 4e. And while it did provide some powers that affected out of combat, and had a skills system, and the first edition of D&D that had an non-combat rules 'structure' since BECMI, the reality IMX was most of the game was combat focused. Certainly for official play it was.

Basically, exactly the same as 3e before it and 5e after it, except neither had we a non-combat rules 'structure'.

Cluedrew
2021-04-19, 09:29 PM
The things that occurred to me right after I left - to tie it all together - was actually related to that. Which is basically, as long as everyone realises we are talking about within the bounds of combat, which is actually one of many areas a character could be defined over and not the entire thing, then its fine. You can like a focused game but I ask that you remember that stuff outside of that exists. I want to try Lancer and that is very combat focused. But it also seems to recognise that more, or maybe that's just my heading.

Telok
2021-04-19, 09:44 PM
The context was 4e. And while it did provide some powers that affected out of combat, and had a skills system, and the first edition of D&D that had an non-combat rules 'structure' since BECMI, the reality IMX was most of the game was combat focused. Certainly for official play it was.

Basically, exactly the same as 3e before it and 5e after it, except neither had we a non-combat rules 'structure'.

Now that's interesting. What do you consider a non-combat rules structure? Not the AD&D assassination rules or the post-10th doman rules? Not the D&D 3e skill use rules? I'm sure the Pendragon winter court and family rules count, or ShadowRun's matrix/hacking system. What about D&D 5e chase rules? How about Call of Cthulhu/BRP? I think the only general difference in that system between combat and non-combat is a turn order structure and movement limits, otherwise nothing changes.

Jason
2021-04-19, 11:01 PM
Now that's interesting. What do you consider a non-combat rules structure? Not the AD&D assassination rules or the post-10th doman rules? Not the D&D 3e skill use rules? I'm sure the Pendragon winter court and family rules count, or ShadowRun's matrix/hacking system. What about D&D 5e chase rules? How about Call of Cthulhu/BRP? I think the only general difference in that system between combat and non-combat is a turn order structure and movement limits, otherwise nothing changes.
He said "the first edition of D&D that had an non-combat rules 'structure' since BECMI," so other RPGs are irrelevant to his criticism.
I thought 2nd ed AD&D had quite a few out-of-combat rules, forming what might be called a "non-combat rules structure", but I'm also interested in what he thought BECMI's non-combat rules structure was. The domain rules? The quest for immortality? Some of the Gazeteer stuff like the merchant class or the proficiency rules?

Tanarii
2021-04-20, 12:29 AM
BECMI had a structure for dungeon exploration, wilderness exploration, and running domains.

I don't recall 2e having anything like it in the base rules. Certainly Birthright had a very complex structure for domain management though.

Friv
2021-04-20, 10:40 AM
Now that's interesting. What do you consider a non-combat rules structure? Not the AD&D assassination rules or the post-10th doman rules? Not the D&D 3e skill use rules? I'm sure the Pendragon winter court and family rules count, or ShadowRun's matrix/hacking system. What about D&D 5e chase rules? How about Call of Cthulhu/BRP? I think the only general difference in that system between combat and non-combat is a turn order structure and movement limits, otherwise nothing changes.

I would make an argument that while D&D 3.x has a non-combat rules structure, it's not very good at differentiating characters within it. You have a set of 35 skills, some of which are critical to specific classes and some of which are niche. Most classes have barely enough skill points to take the skills that are critical to them. All resolution is d20 + Your Skill Number, with next to no feats (and only one I can think of in Core) that modify your skills or how your actions are able to play out.

The result is that everyone with a given skill does things the same way, and most characters of a given class will have nearly the same skills, so differentiation between them is quite difficult. Compare to some of the other systems you've listed, where skills are a bigger part of the game, and people's unique abilities are much more likely to tie directly into them, or even to 5e with many of its Feats providing narrative permissions to use skills in odd ways, mixed with broader general Skill access and Backgrounds making it easier to take skills that aren't part of your core role.

kyoryu
2021-04-20, 11:59 AM
Yes, because as we all know, no system has ever differentiated characters off the battlefield.

A bit of a strawman, since the conversation has mostly been around battlefield stuff.


Except they won't be the same. Because the resource use differences will affect player decisions on when to use them, on a turn-by-turn basis. Like I said, the third is a subset of the first.

In other words, agreed that resource management was similar (but not identical due to Psionics) for most 4e classes. And varying that would increase the difference/variations in turn-by-turn decisions.

But the turn-by-turn decision making already varied between classes due to the huge difference in power use (criteria, success rate, targets, and effect).

I think you're kinda sidestepping the issue. Again, I said imagine a hypothetical situation where the effect was actually the same.


But that's not what I said.

Let's try again. Here's how it *feels*:

3e

A Warlock deals 1d6 per 2 levels, at range, against touch AC, once per round… with opt-in upgrades, including AoE and rider effects (like… "on fire", maybe? Darn senility).

A Rogue deals (weapon damage plus) 1d6 per 2 levels, in melee or close range, once per attack (up to… 9 attacks per round of properly buffed)… under specified conditions, against certain opponents… with opt-in ability to trade in damage for rider effects (including "reduced movement" and "cannot talk").

An übercharger deals "you're chunky red salsa" damage (with the rider of "glass cannon" AC)

A Wizard deals damage and/or status effects, to one or more targets, AoE or targeting regular or touch AC or saves or unresisted.

4e

Everyone deals 2d6 + optional rider effect.

This is flat out wrong. Flat out.

First off, classes do different damage than each other, and often between various abilities.

What's also interesting is that so many people focus on "damage + rider". When really, 3e just has three options: "damage, damage + rider, rider". 4e just added damage to all of the rider stuff.

And "let an ally heal themselves" is the same thing as "heal an ally" so I don't see why it's an issue.

I mean, presentation, and presentation matters. But practically, no.


I'm saying that the variance between 4e classes is minimal, especially compared to 3e, they're all hitting the same notes. Thus, samey.

You seem to prefer that not everything does damage. Focus on the "riders". "Give yourself temporary hit points" is not the same as "create a flaming orb on the battlefield that you can control".


That is not just "damage + rider" that mantra them comparatively "samey": they also operate on very samey feeling power schedules.
...
4e characters lacked this kind of "flow identity", they were all samey, marching to the same beats compared to their 3e counterparts.

Yes, the resource management games are very similar. No arguing that. As I said, if that's where you're looking for differentiation, 4e will disappoint.


The optimization frame of mind when building (and playing) them is different, too:

3e

Power Attack, Cleave, Great Cleave… a single level dip in Barbarian for pounce… DMM Persist Divine Power… are there any prestige classes I should be aiming for? [Optional: now, how do I not be trivially shut down, and actually deal with ranged / flying / etc?]

Eh, I'll just write "Cleric" on my character sheet, and pick spells later. And I can always convert them to healing.

Oh, I *like* healing. RSoP Diplomacer? That sounds fun. What else can I find to optimize my two tricks? And cloistered Cleric sounds right up this character's alley.

Meh, religious upbringing, chosen by the gods as their Cleric. If he decides he wants into a prestige class later, he'll just have faith that he can desperately struggle to meet the prerequisites at some point. Now, how can I best play 5d Wizard's Chess with a Cleric base? Hmmm…

4e

How do I make the numbers work?

While you're correct about 3.x (and whether people see that as a positive or negative is a subject of opinion), you're really mischaracterizing it. In 4e, mostly what you're looking for is how powers complement each other and combine with each other... most in terms of how the "riders" interact with each other. That's where the optimization and build stuff occurs in 4e.


Now, I'm actually quite curious about this "Powers produced drastically different results in play" bit. I think that, even at 1st level, we've got…

3e

Attack

Trip

Disarm

Sneak attack

Touch attacks (Warlock, thrown flasks)

AoE (burning hands)

Cleave

TWF / rapid shot / Flurry of blows

Natural attacks

Fight defensively / all-out defense

Sleep

Color Spray

Entangle

Grease

Heal

Strike + Heal (Crusader maneuver or stance)

Strike + Heal + Heal (Crusader maneuver and stance)

Aid another

+4 AC nearby allies (stance)

Dropped marbles

Attacks by familiar / animal companion / mount / undead minions / hirelings.

Not to mention flanking, higher ground, binding wounds, fighting withdraw, running… and pretty useless options like expertise, power attack, or just spending your turn looking around.

4e

???

Conventional wisdom says 4e is "hit your limited list of buttons in time with the expected tempo". Can you explain how 4e "Powers produced drastically different results in play" that doesn't look samey compared to 3e play?

I mean, if your benchmark is "can you do anything in 4e you could in 3e" then probably not, but I don't think that means that "any set of options less inclusive than 3.x equals samey".

It's been a while since I've played 4e, but I recall a ton of options based on the class - damage, creating zones of control (that had effects in them), self buffs in various ways (healing, creation of temporary hit points), moving enemies in various ways, teleports, blah blah blah. If I get time I'll grab some of my books later.


He said "the first edition of D&D that had an non-combat rules 'structure' since BECMI," so other RPGs are irrelevant to his criticism.
I thought 2nd ed AD&D had quite a few out-of-combat rules, forming what might be called a "non-combat rules structure", but I'm also interested in what he thought BECMI's non-combat rules structure was. The domain rules? The quest for immortality? Some of the Gazeteer stuff like the merchant class or the proficiency rules?


BECMI had a structure for dungeon exploration, wilderness exploration, and running domains.

I don't recall 2e having anything like it in the base rules. Certainly Birthright had a very complex structure for domain management though.


I would make an argument that while D&D 3.x has a non-combat rules structure, it's not very good at differentiating characters within it. You have a set of 35 skills, some of which are critical to specific classes and some of which are niche. Most classes have barely enough skill points to take the skills that are critical to them. All resolution is d20 + Your Skill Number, with next to no feats (and only one I can think of in Core) that modify your skills or how your actions are able to play out.

By "rules structure", I think Tanarii means (and I certainly do) that there's a framework with pacing, specific rules, etc. Like, early D&D had two - "explore the dungeon" (which was done in turns of 10 minutes, with specific things that happened after turns were spent), and "combat". Later, "hexcrawl" was added.

D&D 4e has two - "combat" and "skill challenge".

3.x has skills, but it doesn't have any framework to put them in. It's all left open.

Calthropstu
2021-04-20, 12:20 PM
An rpg is a game. Nothing more, nothing less. A good rpg understands this and creates a game you enjoy. If you don't enjoy it, then it isn't good for you.

But if it's a good game for others, then it's a good game for them.

Jason
2021-04-20, 12:30 PM
I can think of at least one non-combat rules system that 3.5 has that other editions of D&D do not have. That would be the magic item crafting system, which was not present in earlier editions and is only sort of present in 5th.
It's not the "entirely different kind of game" system that the dominion rules in the Companion set are, but if you consider the wilderness rules in BECMI a "rule system" then I think 3rd edition magic item crafting qualifies too.

Willie the Duck
2021-04-20, 01:06 PM
Magic Item crafting is a weird one, because there were magic item crafting rules in most versions of the game (just not as formulaic as 3e instituted, which is definitely it's own thing). oD&D had 'spend time and gold and out comes magic items' rules in the original booklets. The only issue was it had like 7 examples and expected the DM to extrapolate from there. BX and BECMI had a permutation of the same, although I don't have the specifics in front of me. AD&D and 2e had this weird thing where the DM would decide what secret recipe was needed and what reagents were required and you'd quest to get them, then cast Permanency to bind the magic together (which cost a point of Con, which was either too expensive to consider, or trivial if you did evil-mage/magic jar shenanigans).

That said, the wilderness hex generation, encounters, and travel rules in BX are a perfect case of elegant simplicity in game design. I know a lot of people just treated them as useful for random generation, but they can do an amazing amount to shape the game world and how a small group of characters would interact with it. What it doesn't do, and this is something I think D&D has struggled with the whole time, is make wilderness adventure engaging. AD&D's Wilderness Survival Guide tried, but by not adding any metrics outside encumbrance for supplies and hit points, it just ended up being a way to possibly start the wilderness combats with below-max hp.

kyoryu
2021-04-20, 01:10 PM
I can think of at least one non-combat rules system that 3.5 has that other editions of D&D do not have. That would be the magic item crafting system, which was not present in earlier editions and is only sort of present in 5th.
It's not the "entirely different kind of game" system that the dominion rules in the Companion set are, but if you consider the wilderness rules in BECMI a "rule system" then I think 3rd edition magic item crafting qualifies too.

1e had magic item crafting, at least.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-04-20, 01:47 PM
AD&D and 2e had this weird thing where the DM would decide what secret recipe was needed and what reagents were required and you'd quest to get them, then cast Permanency to bind the magic together (which cost a point of Con, which was either too expensive to consider, or trivial if you did evil-mage/magic jar shenanigans).


Which is, interestingly enough (to me at least), basically the same as 5e, except instead of Permanency you're paying gold and time. So a hybrid of oD&D and AD&D/2e. No CON cost, and don't even have to be a spellcaster. That's right, anyone with the right tool proficiency can create magic items. The cost and time are fixed, but the recipe and "special component" are up to the DM, although there's guidance on the estimated CR you should be up against for each rarity step of item. The recipes themselves have to be quested for/received as rewards, so the gating is up to the DM.

Tanarii
2021-04-20, 03:24 PM
I think you're kinda sidestepping the issue. Again, I said imagine a hypothetical situation where the effect was actually the same.I'm not sidestepping it. I'm saying different resource usage will affect turn-by-turn usage.


I can think of at least one non-combat rules system that 3.5 has that other editions of D&D do not have. That would be the magic item crafting system, which was not present in earlier editions and is only sort of present in 5th.
It's not the "entirely different kind of game" system that the dominion rules in the Companion set are, but if you consider the wilderness rules in BECMI a "rule system" then I think 3rd edition magic item crafting qualifies too.I'm really thinking about a structure for resolution of play activities. Not so much downtime activities.

But fair enough, because domain management falls into the same category of "rules for how much time and cost a background thing need". :smallamused:

Jason
2021-04-20, 03:43 PM
1e had magic item crafting, at least.

Well, sort of. Outside of potions and scrolls the rule was basically "The DM Makes it up."

All of the various other magic items will require the use of the magic spell, enchant an item, save clerical items.
With respect to the former, you must determine which spells and ingredients are necessary to the manufacture of each specific magic item.
The example given is a ring of spell storing, which the DM decides requires a 5,000 g.p. platinum ring, enchant item, permanency on a scroll of the spells the player wants stored, and wish to combine the scroll with the ring. The player won't discover what is required until he's already cast enchant item, which is a 6th level spell requiring 2+1-8 days to cast and then gives 24 hours to complete casting all the necessary spells on the item. The DMG notes that the spells and preparations may easily take more than 24 hours to complete, meaning the initial casting of the spell would be wasted and the mage would have to spend another 2+1-8 days casting just enchant item again.

Of course, you could tell the player before, if you are soft-hearted or he or she is intelligent enough to ask before starting the ball rolling.

Clerics or druids don't need as many spells but do need more time and a little luck:

Clerics and druids making an item which is applicable to their profession must spend a fortnight in retreat, meditating in complete isolation. Thereafter, he or she must spend a sennight fasting. Finally, he or she must pray over and purify the item to become magical (this process takes but a day). Of course, the item must be of the finest quality just as detailed in the enchant an item spell description. Thereafter the cleric or druid must place the item upon his or her altar and invoke the direct favor of his or her deity to instill a special power into the item. There is a 1% per day cumulative chance that the item will then be empowered as desired, providing the cleric or druid has been absolutely exemplary in his or her faith and alignment requirements. Furthermore, if the item is one with charges, the cleric or druid must then take it into seclusion and cast the requisite spells upon it, doing so within 24 hours of its being favored by the deity. In other cases, the item need only be sanctified to the appropriate deity in order to complete its manufacture.

kyoryu
2021-04-20, 05:50 PM
4e

Everyone deals 2d6 + optional rider effect.

I'm saying that the variance between 4e classes is minimal, especially compared to 3e, they're all hitting the same notes. Thus, samey.

4e

???


Here's a list of things characters in 4e can potentially bring to the table at 1st level.

Breathe some kind of breath weapon on a bunch of enemies close to you
Teleport up to 25'
Get a free reroll
Force an enemy to reroll an attack
Gain +1 for a turn to attack and charisma bonus to damage
Grant a +2 to an ally to hit
Grant additional armor to yourself and an ally for a turn
Grant additional damage to a nearby ally
Grant temporary hit points to an ally
Force an enemy to run away from you
Grant all nearby allies a +2 to hit
Heal an ally
Daze an opponent
Make an enemy take ongoing damage, which they can't get rid of until they spend a turn not attacking
Heal everyone near you, and make your healing abilities more effective for the rest of the fight
Make an enemy vulnerable to your attacks
Create a guardian that will attack anything that stands next to it, and that you can move
Attack multiple enemies next to you
Attack an enemy in a way that always does at least some damage
Attack an enemy with an attack bonus
Attack an enemy and knock them back
Let a nearby ally move two squares on your turn, not counting against their movement
Attack an enemy, move, and attack another enemy
Knock an enemy down
Halve an enemy's movement for a turn
Do lots of damage
Heal yourself as part of an attack
Give yourself a bonus to attacking and damage against a particular enemy
Help an ally overcome a negative effect
Give yourself a damage bonus
Make enemies weaker attacking people that aren't you
Grant yourself temporary hit points
Give your opponent a penalty to hit
Attack, with a bonus based on how surrounded you are
Grant additional armor to an adjacent ally
Make terrain difficult
Weaken an opponent
Make a flaming sphere that will move around, damaging things next to it, and can attack things as well
Make a cloud that will damage any creature that enters it or stays in it.
And of course Sleep. Because D&D has to have sleep.

plus of course all of the positional stuff - flanking, covering, etc.

.... and I only went through three classes. In only the first PHB.

So, yeah. There's options.


I'm not sidestepping it. I'm saying different resource usage will affect turn-by-turn usage.


Yes, that's why it's a hypothetical situation.

And when I say "imagine if..." and your response is "no", then you're sidestepping the issue.

Practically speaking you're almost certainly correct, but the point of this exercise is to show how the two aspects (internal resource management and external impact) can vary independently, since that apparently matters to many people (I, personally, don't really care).

Tanarii
2021-04-20, 06:46 PM
Here's a list of things characters in 4e can potentially bring to the table at 1st level.
Nicely done.



Yes, that's why it's a hypothetical situation.

And when I say "imagine if..." and your response is "no", then you're sidestepping the issue.

Practically speaking you're almost certainly correct, but the point of this exercise is to show how the two aspects (internal resource management and external impact) can vary independently, since that apparently matters to many people (I, personally, don't really care).You've totally lost me. As I read your hypothetical situation, I think that the two aspects cannot vary independently. If you vary resource management, the external impact varies too. Because "external impact" includes how and when you use it. Doesn't it?

Edit: okay, so here's your statement I was disagreeing with. I was definitely not sidestepping the question. But I was lost of what you meant by "external impact", it looks like you mean "effect you can have on the battlefield".


1) What you're doing on a turn-by-turn basis, and what effect you can have on the battlefield?

By the first classification, they'd be the same.No, by the first classification, which includes "What you're doing on a turn-by-turn basis", they would not be the same, when you vary resources required but otherwise identical effect you can have on the battlefield.

Cluedrew
2021-04-20, 07:20 PM
Yes, because as we all know, no system has ever differentiated characters off the battlefield.A bit of a strawman, since the conversation has mostly been around battlefield stuff.Sorry, that isn't actually directed at you. You just happened to have stated the best one line that expressed how I think the thread in general was forgetting about. We can talk about what happens in the combat mini-game (not "small", has a different core loop then the main game) for quite a while - because there is a lot there - but it will never be all the diversity of characters a role-playing game could cover. I don't think its a strawman anyways.

On Sidestepping: Does it matter? Just say what you think now and you can then debate whether a decision made within a turn but effecting later turns counts as turn-by-turn or not.

Tanarii
2021-04-20, 07:35 PM
On Sidestepping: Does it matter? Just say what you think now and you can then debate whether a decision made within a turn but effecting later turns counts as turn-by-turn or not.
I took turn-by-turn to mean "across the span of some number of turns". Not this turn right now. A birds eye view of the sum of individual decisions being made on many turns, as it were.

If it's meant to mean "on any one given turn" then I need to start all over from the top 🤔😂

kyoryu
2021-04-20, 10:25 PM
Nicely done.


You've totally lost me. As I read your hypothetical situation, I think that the two aspects cannot vary independently. If you vary resource management, the external impact varies too. Because "external impact" includes how and when you use it. Doesn't it?

Not completely independently, likely.

Maybe another example would help?

Let's take three classes:

Class 1 does healing and damage. It uses Vancian spell slot/refresh stuff.
Class 2 also does healing and damage. It uses power points.
Class 3 does mostly battlefield and control, but uses Vancian spell slot/refresh stuff.

Is Class 1 more similar to Class 2 or 3? I'd personally say it's more similar to 2, but I suspect that many of the people arguing that 4e is "samey" would say it's more similar to 3. The external effects are more similar between 1 and 2 (healing and damage), while the internal management is more similar for 1 and 3.



No, by the first classification, which includes "What you're doing on a turn-by-turn basis", they would not be the same, when you vary resources required but otherwise identical effect you can have on the battlefield.

What I meant, and probably communicated poorly, is the internal resource management/state management vs. the external effects you have. Spell points and spell refresh slots and fatigue and whatever else vs. damage and effects.

Witty Username
2021-04-28, 09:24 PM
... Did you read the section that explained why I made that comparison? I mean you probably did at the time but it is about using a statement about the structure of the argument.

Repeatedly bringing up something that sounds terrible is degrading. Especially if that terrible sounding this is unimportant and false, and I will maintain both of those things until someone forwards a reasonable argument to the contrary.The way powers were organised were the same and apparently that was enough for people. Which is weird because the no-refresh/short-rest/long-rest called problems before but put at-will/encounter/daily on the power and suddenly everything is uniform. And you can add frills but I think 5e is the first edition where spell-slots are more than a bunch of daily power pools.

I don't get it either really. I found 4th edition's combat system to be the most engaging of any of the systems. Which is more a comment on the low bar set by other editions than the quality of 4th. (5e is at second at one and a half combats.)

Weren't the powers also standardized in how many characters had? Everyone having the same number of at will/encounter/and daily powers. And if I recall correctly PC's didn't have actions outside of powers (I don't recall very well and as said I don't grok 4e)?

Calthropstu
2021-04-29, 09:05 AM
Weren't the powers also standardized in how many characters had? Everyone having the same number of at will/encounter/and daily powers. And if I recall correctly PC's didn't have actions outside of powers (I don't recall very well and as said I don't grok 4e)?

I played one 4e character. It was a control psion from the 3e phb. There was literally nothing my powers could affect outside of combat. I had a power that I could move an enemy and force him to attack. I couldn't use this on an ally, it had to be an enemy.

The game made zero sense in so many circumstances. It was like you were playing 2 different characters. One a useless bufoon who could do nothing and the other a combat monster.

4e was not a good game.

Telok
2021-04-29, 10:36 AM
The game made zero sense in so many circumstances. It was like you were playing 2 different characters. One a useless bufoon who could do nothing and the other a combat monster.

Not totally true. I had a druid that could turn into a small bird for 5 minutes, a cat sized spider for 5 minutes, and a small fish for 5 minutes, each once a day. Of course you literally couldn't do anything but move around and none of your stats changed at all, so if you couldn't outrun something normally you still couldn't. Oh, the spider one gave some pathetic plus to stealth that never made a difference. And for some reason they didn't do anything to disguise you so it was still trivial to identify your race.

The character did have a perception bonus more than 11 higher than anyone else. The DM hated that (and the rogue at like 12 high than anyone else) because the take 10 default was better than everyone else's natural 20s. The DM basically couldn't have any stealth stuff going because we were off the die and the system wasn't set up that way.

Xervous
2021-04-29, 02:46 PM
The game made zero sense in so many circumstances. It was like you were playing 2 different characters. One a useless bufoon who could do nothing and the other a combat monster.

Given the choice between half a buffoon or a full buffoon I’d take 4e over 5e. If the noncombat stuff is handwavium in either case it’s nice to have a fighter that feels like more than an RTS unit set to attack-move.

But again that’s just me. 5e did a great job with hitting its design intent of being an easy entry game vs it’s immediate predecessors that presents the D&D feel the broad audience expected. Sure it misses on balance here and there but can I really call it bad if that was never the prime intent? (I do recall Mearls saying options and choice were bad in so many words. Shaving that off certainly worked for their marketing.)

But if we’re using mass adoption as a metric does that make McDonald’s good? Eh, I’m not going to point at sales figures.

Calthropstu
2021-04-29, 02:48 PM
Not totally true. I had a druid that could turn into a small bird for 5 minutes, a cat sized spider for 5 minutes, and a small fish for 5 minutes, each once a day. Of course you literally couldn't do anything but move around and none of your stats changed at all, so if you couldn't outrun something normally you still couldn't. Oh, the spider one gave some pathetic plus to stealth that never made a difference. And for some reason they didn't do anything to disguise you so it was still trivial to identify your race.

The character did have a perception bonus more than 11 higher than anyone else. The DM hated that (and the rogue at like 12 high than anyone else) because the take 10 default was better than everyone else's natural 20s. The DM basically couldn't have any stealth stuff going because we were off the die and the system wasn't set up that way.

This just makes 4e sound so much worse. I didn't even look at the druid.

Telok
2021-04-29, 04:37 PM
This just makes 4e sound so much worse. I didn't even look at the druid.

It was just that it was a very "rules first" system and encouraged the "if the power doesn't say it then it doesn't do it" thing. So thunder powers didn't technically make noise, fire powers didn't technically burn anything, archery powers couldn't use non-magic non-standard arrows that weren't their own special attack power. If you played narrative first and saved all the mechanics for in combat only, well it was better at least. Then a "turn into a small bird" was what you expect it to be instead of "you are size:tiny(2.5 ft high) and fly at your regular ground speed, plus maybe feathers".

kyoryu
2021-04-29, 04:46 PM
It was just that it was a very "rules first" system and encouraged the "if the power doesn't say it then it doesn't do it" thing. So thunder powers didn't technically make noise, fire powers didn't technically burn anything, archery powers couldn't use non-magic non-standard arrows that weren't their own special attack power. If you played narrative first and saved all the mechanics for in combat only, well it was better at least. Then a "turn into a small bird" was what you expect it to be instead of "you are size:tiny(2.5 ft high) and fly at your regular ground speed, plus maybe feathers".

The weirder thing is that while combat was that way, non-combat was very much "fiction first" and freeform.

And of course the weird split between "powers" (stuff in combat) and "rituals" (stuff out of combat) made it easy to miss the latter.

Calthropstu
2021-04-29, 07:30 PM
The weirder thing is that while combat was that way, non-combat was very much "fiction first" and freeform.

And of course the weird split between "powers" (stuff in combat) and "rituals" (stuff out of combat) made it easy to miss the latter.

Except that doesn't work. "I am a mental control psion, so I use my psychic powers to charm the queen into marrying me so I become the king." Free form roleplay technically allows this but it gets stupid. It gets stupider when thieves start stealing stuff (imagine that) and suddenly loot tables start becoming irrelevant. The game literally breaks itself.

Cluedrew
2021-04-30, 07:37 AM
Weren't the powers also standardized in how many characters had? Everyone having the same number of at will/encounter/and daily powers. And if I recall correctly PC's didn't have actions outside of powers (I don't recall very well and as said I don't grok 4e)?Maybe? I do no the relative focus on different types of powers did change between classes from reading character guides and that sort of thing, but maybe that was entirely on the relative power of the powers. I only played one game of 4e and only played one class and although I was doing very different things than the other players I wasn't keeping track of there resources.


Free form roleplay technically allows this but it gets stupid.Having actually done a lot of free-form role-playing; yes that can happen. Sometimes you just got to call someone out or not get upset when someone points out what you said was stupid. And the end result works surprisingly well. Main issue is attendance.

Max_Killjoy
2021-04-30, 07:59 AM
It was just that it was a very "rules first" system and encouraged the "if the power doesn't say it then it doesn't do it" thing. So thunder powers didn't technically make noise, fire powers didn't technically burn anything, archery powers couldn't use non-magic non-standard arrows that weren't their own special attack power. If you played narrative first and saved all the mechanics for in combat only, well it was better at least. Then a "turn into a small bird" was what you expect it to be instead of "you are size:tiny(2.5 ft high) and fly at your regular ground speed, plus maybe feathers".


The weirder thing is that while combat was that way, non-combat was very much "fiction first" and freeform.

And of course the weird split between "powers" (stuff in combat) and "rituals" (stuff out of combat) made it easy to miss the latter.

Those are two things that made if feel very much like a tabletop version of a video game. The former because that's exactly how spell effects, etc, work in most video games -- doesn't matter how much fire gets thrown around, it's just damage numbers and nothing catches on fire. The latter because I it feels like those games where you wander around in one mode, and then when you hit a combat encounter, you switch to an entirely different screen and do a little turn-based series of attacks back and forth.

And it's part of why I don't consider 4e to be a good RPG -- that jarring disconnect between "combat mode" and "freeform mode". (5e retains some of that, compare the combat rules to the "OK, cool, whatever" feel of the skills, etc.)

But I guess that's subjective, there's a mechs in space game called Lancer that some people adore, despite the fact that anything outside of combat in the mechs is handled in a manner barely more detailed than "tell us what you do now" improv, including any combat or conflict that takes place outside the mechs.

Tanarii
2021-04-30, 09:20 AM
The weirder thing is that while combat was that way, non-combat was very much "fiction first" and freeform.

And of course the weird split between "powers" (stuff in combat) and "rituals" (stuff out of combat) made it easy to miss the latter.

As unbelievable as it is, the authors are heavy believers in narrative/fiction/story. They're the kind of folks that think 'mechanics' and and 'flavor' are separate and separable concepts (explicitly in this case), and that super detailed and complex rules are fine because you can provide your own narrative to go with it.

Unsurprisingly a lot of the worst offenders of bad mechanics are believers in narrative/fiction/story like Palladium's Seimbeida and Wujcik and anything White Wolf and Burning Wheel's Luke Crane, and they're often believers in the mechanics-flavor myth, even the explicit concept came later.

The end result is of course what we often get when people do that in an RPG. Something that people complain feels board-gamey (or nowadays video-gamey), because all they got out of the published game were the 'mechanics' rules as part of the game.

4e just made it far worse because it required a battle-mat. Nothing makes D&D feel like a board game like a battlemat.

Telok
2021-04-30, 10:15 AM
But I guess that's subjective, there's a mechs in space game called Lancer that some people adore, despite the fact that anything outside of combat in the mechs is handled in a manner barely more detailed than "tell us what you do now" improv, including any combat or conflict that takes place outside the mechs.

I feel that Lancer is more of a well done homage to Battletech and it's rpg, with a heavy leavening of mecha anime. It's explicit and open about the break, which works pretty well because of the scale (people -> giant robots) and source materials. You don't go into it expecting fully mechanically supported teen angst rules or a crafting system that cares about the difference between glazed & unglazed pottery.[/hyperbole]

Cluedrew
2021-04-30, 09:15 PM
On Lancer: Its a system that is pretty high on my list of systems to try because it feels like it might be able to "rescue" combat-focused RPGs. Might of course and I will not know until I try. But there are a couple of things that make me hopeful:
Lancer may be described as unapologetic of its combat/non-combat divide but other systems I have seen with similar divides might be better described as ignorant of it. The designers were probably aware of it but the system itself seems to gloss over it much more. This is a "soft" point in that it is a matter of my perception and its not actually an improvement on its own, but addressing make me feel more like the designers knew what they were doing with it.
The combat-mini-game better matches the character abilities. In Lancer, PCs are lancers - elite military mech pilots - and the mini-game is just mech-combat, regular combat and everything else characters can do but is not there specialty is resolved in the rules-light mode.
But wait, don't all combat focused RPGs do that? Some of them, but I'm going to say not D&D and some other famous examples. Consider the rogue, the stealthy rogue, except that stealth is not really part of the combat mini-game. Nor is the ranger's wilderness skills nor the bard's social skills or non-combat uses for wizard spells. In a word, D&D might be combat focused but its character's always came off as more adventure focused. Or just a random fantasy archetype smooshed into the fighter shaped hole.

The non-combat rules are actually different to (hopefully) make them work better in a rules-light environment. The actual rolling the same but both scores and targets are calculated more coarsely and downtime activity roles uses trinary results and fail-forward like its Powered by the Apocalypse.
I feel a bit weird that my longest point was to head off a counter-point.

kyoryu
2021-05-01, 09:43 AM
As unbelievable as it is, the authors are heavy believers in narrative/fiction/story. They're the kind of folks that think 'mechanics' and and 'flavor' are separate and separable concepts (explicitly in this case), and that super detailed and complex rules are fine because you can provide your own narrative to go with it.

Unsurprisingly a lot of the worst offenders of bad mechanics are believers in narrative/fiction/story like Palladium's Seimbeida and Wujcik and anything White Wolf and Burning Wheel's Luke Crane, and they're often believers in the mechanics-flavor myth, even the explicit concept came later.

The end result is of course what we often get when people do that in an RPG. Something that people complain feels board-gamey (or nowadays video-gamey), because all they got out of the published game were the 'mechanics' rules as part of the game.

4e just made it far worse because it required a battle-mat. Nothing makes D&D feel like a board game like a battlemat.

I also think there was a push from WotC for more support for organized play, and trying to apply the lessons from M:tG to 4e.

I mean, I can draw parallel after parallel after parallel.

Tanarii
2021-05-01, 11:06 AM
I also think there was a push from WotC for more support for organized play, and trying to apply the lessons from M:tG to 4e.

I mean, I can draw parallel after parallel after parallel.
That's probably consistent with Skill Challenges being a defined system. Although IiRC very few of the organized play official WotC modules included them, at least in the parts done in official play. Which was just levels 1-3 over and over again, unless your group organized itself and used the 3rd party but wotc authorized adventures.

kyoryu
2021-05-01, 11:58 AM
That's probably consistent with Skill Challenges being a defined system. Although IiRC very few of the organized play official WotC modules included them, at least in the parts done in official play. Which was just levels 1-3 over and over again, unless your group organized itself and used the 3rd party but wotc authorized adventures.

For sure.

Additionally, all of the combat stuff, and how explicitly defined it was, seems directly cribbed from M:tG. Even the format of "here's the mechanical effects, now here's the flavor text" matches it pretty directly.

Tanarii
2021-05-01, 12:14 PM
For sure.

Additionally, all of the combat stuff, and how explicitly defined it was, seems directly cribbed from M:tG. Even the format of "here's the mechanical effects, now here's the flavor text" matches it pretty directly.
Maybe. But Heinsoo clearly wanted it too. After all, he used it in 13th age, which is basically "4th edition the way I should have done it" for him.

OTOH ... was he part of MtG at some point? I don't know his background.

Talakeal
2021-05-01, 12:39 PM
Here's a list of things characters in 4e can potentially bring to the table at 1st level.

snip

plus of course all of the positional stuff - flanking, covering, etc.

.... and I only went through three classes. In only the first PHB.

So, yeah. There's options.


How about being useful to the party WITHOUT dealing direct damage?

kyoryu
2021-05-01, 02:19 PM
How about being useful to the party WITHOUT dealing direct damage?

So... the issue is that in addition to the other stuff that they're doing, that there's always at least some token amount of damage? I mean, we've pretty clearly established that the things that can be done are, at least potentially, at least as varied as 3.x. But the issue is that there's always a token amount of damage?

Talakeal
2021-05-01, 03:11 PM
So... the issue is that in addition to the other stuff that they're doing, that there's always at least some token amount of damage? I mean, we've pretty clearly established that the things that can be done are, at least potentially, at least as varied as 3.x. But the issue is that there's always a token amount of damage?

For me, yes.

The vast majority of abilities in 4E have some sort of rider that either breaks my verisimilitude or doesn't fit the character, and when I intentionally don't select those, the list of powers grows very small indeed.

I also don't like that your forget your lower level powers as you progress, which both limits options and breaks immersion. Its been a long time since I have read it, but don't 4E character's never have more than some-teen powers to choose from at any given time, whereas a 3E caster can have dozens or even hundreds.

Ravens_cry
2021-05-01, 05:48 PM
This may well be already covered, but a couple things I like.
The mechanics are as complex as they need to be, but no more.
We're not mentats. We are geeks, so we're willing to do some math, but don't over complicate things to no good end.
Second, the mechanics should reinforce the tone. If the game encourages non-lethal take downs and mercy, yet all combatants fight to the death and the mechanics don't offer any good way to engage in captures and restraint, then the mechanics are at odds with the tone. As a further, if the game is presented as a gung ho 80's action movie romp, yet the mechanics make for highly lethal combat where every bullet counts, again, they are at odds with the tone. In a different setting, it would totally work.
Finally, mechanics should be fun to play. This is my personal opinion, but, while I'm not a super fan of 5th edition D&D, I really like the Advantage/Disadvantage system. It feels like such a great moment when Advantage snatches a success from the jaws of failure, and vice versa for Disadvantage, much more than if you just had a flat bonus or penalty statically equal.

Quertus
2021-05-04, 08:13 AM
So... the issue is that in addition to the other stuff that they're doing, that there's always at least some token amount of damage? I mean, we've pretty clearly established that the things that can be done are, at least potentially, at least as varied as 3.x. But the issue is that there's always a token amount of damage?

I was quite surprised at how extensive the list of 4e options was - that was certainly beyond what my group could grok when 4e came out, and we tried our hands at it. So I've been thinking about this for a boot.

There's… numerous potential issues with the… "grouping" of these effects, but… understanding "damage" as an issue might help get the general principle: having Gandalf have a "the sun comes up behind me" attack that targets some defense and deals some damage, with a rider effect of "blinded"? It just doesn't feel quite right.


The mechanics are as complex as they need to be, but no more.

Second, the mechanics should reinforce the tone. If the game encourages non-lethal take downs and mercy, yet all combatants fight to the death and the mechanics don't offer any good way to engage in captures and restraint, then the mechanics are at odds with the tone.

Finally, mechanics should be fun to play. This is my personal opinion, but, while I'm not a super fan of 5th edition D&D, I really like the Advantage/Disadvantage system. It feels like such a great moment when Advantage snatches a success from the jaws of failure, and vice versa for Disadvantage, much more than if you just had a flat bonus or penalty statically equal.

Agreed.

Humans generally prefer simplicity, to the point that they oversimplify habitually. Complexity for complexity's sake is a hard sell.

The Determinator should be encouraged to play the game "correctly" - or, rather, the game should be marketed as played by the Determinator, not by how you *want* it played.

Fun mechanics is… tricky. Subjective. Perhaps, rather, we should say that the mechanics should lend themselves to, rather than oppose, the theme and complexity (and pacing? Through pacing?).

That is, exploding dice and fiddly modifiers take *time*. They force you to *focus* on those bits. Battletech *uses* this to make the tactical "getting fiddly numbers" a big part of the game, of the thought process and tone. Some systems leverage their exploding dice to make the "wow, look what you did!" moments even more memorable, with more buildup.

Other systems seem to just throw in random mechanics for no discernable reason.

So… the mechanics should support and not disrupt the flow? The pacing? The tone? The fun? The source of fun? I'm struggling with chicken and egg wording here.

Unless you just literally mean "I find rock paper scissors fun to play, so that should be the resolution mechanic in all systems". In which case, I… agree much less.

kyoryu
2021-05-10, 10:51 AM
For me, yes.

The vast majority of abilities in 4E have some sort of rider that either breaks my verisimilitude or doesn't fit the character, and when I intentionally don't select those, the list of powers grows very small indeed.

I also don't like that your forget your lower level powers as you progress, which both limits options and breaks immersion. Its been a long time since I have read it, but don't 4E character's never have more than some-teen powers to choose from at any given time, whereas a 3E caster can have dozens or even hundreds.

Sure, and I can't really argue those points. But those are very different points than "everything is just damage". (Though I could probably argue a number of the versimillitude arguments, but I'm not going to as a blanket)

Especially the limited selection compared to 3E casters - that's a deliberate design choice for sure, just one that works against what you want.


I was quite surprised at how extensive the list of 4e options was - that was certainly beyond what my group could grok when 4e came out, and we tried our hands at it. So I've been thinking about this for a boot.

There's… numerous potential issues with the… "grouping" of these effects, but… understanding "damage" as an issue might help get the general principle: having Gandalf have a "the sun comes up behind me" attack that targets some defense and deals some damage, with a rider effect of "blinded"? It just doesn't feel quite right.

Sure, but again, "I don't like that everything has a damage component" is a very different argument than "everyone just does damage with some minor rider". In a lot of cases, the rider is the meat.

I won't argue "I don't like that everything has a damage component." It's a true statement, and how can I argue preference?

Leonard Robel
2021-06-08, 04:13 AM
To crush your enemies, drive them before you...
I don't know, this is like an existential question I wrestle with all the time.
I think it probably comes down to balance and flexibility.
You want strong rules but also opportunity to be inventive.
You want rules that make you feel like you're really doing something but not too much complexity.
You want to feel at risk yet survive, over and over again.
Some of the stuff you want isn't really possible.
Maybe a good role playing game is like a really good lie.