Things in RPGs that you used to like but don’t anymore

[Jorren]

Obviously if you are new to rpgs this wouldn’t apply. I’ve been playing rpgs for over 40 years now and now I am looking back to things I enjoyed back in the day that I wouldn’t touch with a 10ft pole nowadays. Been there, done that, and I have too many T-shirts as it is.

The massive dungeon crawl: No way. If I have to go through a dungeon nowadays it better be something like 10 rooms, tops.

Detailed tactical combat with grids, miniatures, etc.: If I want tactical combat, I'll go play a board/war/computer game. It’s not that I have anything against tactical combat in the confines of an rpg. It is that board games and computer games deliver that experience in a way that is superior, in my opinion. Computer games handle the mechanical details, and bugs notwithstanding, this helps improve the flow of the game. In my experience, board games have tighter rules with fewer edge cases and exceptions, once again reducing (although not removing) the need to refer back to the rules.

The Endless Campaign: Yeah, no. Wrap it up at some point. I am fine with a series of short campaigns with the same characters, where you can technically play the same characters forever.

Zero to Hero, chump to god, etc.: It was ok for the first 40 or 50 times. Nowadays I am fine with chump to slightly more competent chump or just starting out as a demi-god.

Incompetent starting characters/High whiff factor for starting characters: Why are we wasting our time taking 5-6 swings at a rat? The humor factor is good for I don’t know, 2-3 minutes tops. In general, character incompetence as a vehicle for humor wears thin fast for me; it’s like a slightly funny joke that goes on for four hours. Critical fumbles fall into that same category; funny for the first 4 or 5 times, after which they just get tedious.

Non-unified mechanics, multiple subsystems, and tactical mini-games: Multiple subsystems and mini-games need a real good reason for me to consider them over a unified mechanic/task system. Look at 3.5 D&D’s undead turning chart; what a mess.

Generic/kitchen sink fantasy: Really, again? I know your elves are cannibals and your dwarves have French accents instead of Scottish but can you put a little effort into a setting? I am constantly baffled by players who are put off by the slightest bit of an exotic or unusual setting. At this point give me anything except the vaguely Tolkienesque setup. Exploring a setting shouldn’t be homework or history class, but come on. In my opinion most fantasy settings would be improved by substituting a variant human culture instead of a separate race.

Highly detailed character generation + high lethality: I am fine with detailed chargen and I am fine with high lethality games, but these two things should never, ever go together. I stopped playing Rolemaster for a reason, and it wasn’t all the charts (the charts were actually kind of cool).

Playing in a canonical universe during the main story: What, you mean you don’t want to shuttle food supplies to the Rebel Base so Luke and Han have enough supplies for the attack on the Empire facility? What about being bodyguards to Midnight and Cyric so they can become gods? Not interesting either? I know, you can run errands for Legolas and Aragorn during the War of the Ring. That’s gotta sound fun, right?

I am curious to what other people used to like in RPGs but dont' anymore.

[Anonymouswizard]

Point but character creation.

I mean, at least in theory I still like it, but not in the 'you have 200 points, go purchase your things with no direction' way. It just takes too long and I don't have time for it anymore. Although I still don't like classes systems in the D&D style I'd much rather be told 'you have X stat points and Y skill points, go and spend them', maybe with the option to shift the numbers with age categories or the like so I can go 'my character is 46, how many stat and skill points do I have'. Been getting into the Year Zero Engine games for that reason.

Tactical combat gets a vote from me as well. If I care about my position beyond what room I'm currently in I might as well just break out the board games.

I'm not going to vote for dungeon crawls because I never cared for them. If I'm moving through a spaceship it's to complete an objective, not see what's there. Most of the time.

[Cluedrew]

Oh yeah I can think of a few, and most of them are tactical combat. (Although very explicitly in role-playing games, its a matter of two things that just don't mix for me.) Which also has a bunch of effects about where I want to be spending time in character creation. Zero-to-hero and really long running campaigns are also something I've... not that I like them less but I think I know better than count on a group being able to play together that long.

There are a couple other things that although I don't dislike them they have been replaced fore me. For instance GM driven adventure - module like structures - is not my go-to campaign format anymore (its why I haven't posted in What's Your Favorite Campaign Premise You've Never Gotten To Play (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?632496-What-s-Your-Favorite-Campaign-Premise-You-ve-Never-Gotten-To-Play)). Now I prefer dynamic player-driven campaigns were the campaign premise is decided after we have the characters.

[Imbalance]

Playing with jaded grognards. Yeah, I've been through all of these same tropes scads of times spanning multiple decades, just with a controller in hand, and now that I'm enjoying tabletop instead I've already run into a few folks who want to veto so many things that they're tired of. It was cool early on with my buds that had a lot of years of pencil & paper under their belts showing me the ropes, and I still like playing with those guys when I can, but other groups, especially online, always have that one curmudgeon who never moved on from whatever edition they started with and never passes up an opportunity to tell you how much better it was than the current version. Every time I hear, "ugh, Forgotten Realms again?" I get the impression that I'm not going to be allowed to enjoy the campaign, either. It's so much more fun playing with new people who engage with a sense of wonder at the possibilities before them, even if a lot of the ideas are old hat.

[Tanarii]

Battlemats.

Although having tried several systems that use zones (a large Mutan Year Zero / Forbidden Lands) I don't find it much of an improvement.

There really doesn't seem to be a great way to balance the distraction that a displayed map causes with the confusion the lack of one causes.

[PhoenixPhyre]

More an "I used to think I liked", but

Detailed, highly-granular rule sets with tons of options and a high degree of mechanical emphasis on fidelity of resolution. That goes for things like bell-shaped probability curves, tightly-balanced math, 3e-D&D style specified DCs for everything, tons of class options, etc. Especially those that wanted NPCs built using the same pieces as PCs[1].

And then I started DM'ing a lot, and realized that most of the time, what those highly granular rule sets did was bog things down. The increased overhead on the parts I didn't need help with (plus the framework getting in the way of improv and on-the-fly adjustment) totally swamped any extra utility on the parts that I struggled with. I discovered that speed of resolution was way more important to me, personally, than fidelity of resolution or depth of tactical[2] play

This became even more true as I realized that challenge, per se, is something I just don't care about. A game where the PCs are expected to win every fight, and the interesting questions are less "will they survive/win" and more "what will they choose to do, and how will the world react to that" is more my style. Who do they ally with, what organizations do they fight against, which ones do they champion, what parts of the world do they reshape, how do they react to certain NPCs, which ones do they hate, which ones do they (contrary to all sanity) try to adopt[4]

[1] I don't have a problem with them playing by the same rules[3] (ie action economy, generally, spell components, attack rolls, etc), but building them using PC-facing classes/levels/feats/etc is just not something that's useful for my personal style.
[2] whether that's combat tactical or not. I want people to take lots of little actions, not agonize about taking the one perfect action that ends the challenge. 5D chess annoys me. It's also draining as a DM. Draining of both motivation and energy.
[3] well, generally. I don't mind 5e-style legendary/mythic actions/resistances, and other such "I can do this special thing" cinematic measures. They're gamist, but I don't really care about that.
[4] my players tend to have the perverse reaction of "oh, cute. Can I adopt it?" whenever things that are gnarly come along. The froghemoth was the first such--their first reaction was "I want that as a mount." Two games so far have the party having adopted ~10-15 kids that they've rescued from various bad situations. And they are deadly serious about those kids--threatening to touch them is one of the best ways to get them to come whoop your hind end.

[Telok]

Over all, I think I've mostly refined and better defined what I like and don't like. The only things I can think of that I once like and no longer feel like putting up with are piles of dice, custom dice, and simplicity for the sake of simplicity.

Piles of dice are fun to roll, but there always seems to be the (at least) one player that just can't deal with totaling, choosing, counting, whatever you're doing with them. Then it gets worse with different types in the pile because they never seem to have the right dice or enough dice. One or two dice types, ten or twelve total dice. That's my preference these days.

Custom dice are not, in and of themselves, bad. But they often obfuscate the actual math going on, disguise the probability spread of the results. I've yet to see (I could be wrong) a game built for/with custom dice that didn'y somehow screw up it's math or the roll results. <snipped rant>

Simplicity for the sake of simplicity is like civic planning based on political ideology. There are places in the world you can play football/soccer in the middle of a beautiful six lane highway because there's nobody using it. Use only one die? Only roll once? Only the players roll? Only one way to modify the rolls? All OK, right up until you've simplified it so much that people start abusing the corners you've cut, or characters can't fulfill their narrative space (strong warrior, skilled archer, smart wizard, etc.) because their abilities or differences got simplified away.

[Yora]

Giving all characters new toys at every level seemed like a good idea at the time.

How are you supposed to give all players opportunities to try out each of their toys more than once or twice?

[Morty]

Symmetry between PCs and NPCs. I used to think it's important that they use the same rules, as otherwise it's not realistic. I've come to realize that trying to keep such symmetry is often more trouble than it's worth. Obviously it's going to depend on the system, but PCs and NPCs are always going to serve different purposes in the game and what works for one won't work for the other. Not to mention that it's not actually very realistic for everyone to learn and use the same abilities in the same way.

[Vahnavoi]

Unified core math, esp. with dice. Yes, there's utility in having basically a single rule or set of rules for covering any type of action... as a fallback for those cases where you couldn't think of a more interesting way to gamify that type of action and because it's impossible to make individual rules for all types of actions. But as the core of a game, that just makes RPGs into glorified Yathzee or, worse, Snakes & Ladders. Making every damn thing into the same sort of simple math puzzle and making rolling dice the chief thing you actually do as a player is very limited design schema for games.

Freeform play-by-post. After ten years of continuous play, I'm exhausted by that format. I actually gained newfound appreciation for traditional GM-driven tabletop play through observing and experiencing flaws of GM-less games. I also developed the opinion that tabletop players who think the path to Game Nirvana is reducing or eliminating GM power and exact rules have not actually played any freeform. :smalltongue:

[Pauly]

Highly detailed mechanics with tons of options, as noted above it bogs play down.
More importantly for me though is that unintended consequences/synergies leave you with less realistic results than simplified rules. Also the highly complex systems take away from the cinematic feel of the game. I grab the chandelier and swing across the room should be an exciting event, not 15 different die rolls on 8 different tables.

As a player: Knowing everything about the rules, setting and potential enemies as possible. Reading the monster manual from cover to cover, knowing all the mechanics for all the actors on the table, building a character with optimization for the next 10 levels in mind at character creation. Now it’s much more fun have a sense of discovery and excitement about new things. If it means taking the suboptimal approach most of the time I’m much more cool with that than grinding for the optimal outcome against things my character has never encountered before. It does mean playing a more forgiving system though as some games out there are built for the Hardcore Henrys

[Warder]

For me I have the opposite experience to many here - I used to enjoy rules-light systems with simple mechanics, but I really don't anymore. That the actual gameplay flow is simple is great, but part of what I enjoy is making many choices for character creation and progression. Stats, feats, skills, traits, flaws, I want as much as I can get. You'd think that it may be because I could be a min-maxer, but it's actually the other way around; with a large pool of options and many choices to make, I feel far more free to make sub-optimal choices, and create a character that's strictly "my own". That really helps me roleplay the character too, as I really enjoy thinking about how mechanical choices might translate into shaping someone's personality.

Edit: This is also why I think the Mystic is the most enjoyable class in 5e and why I see scrapping it as the point where I started falling out of love with the direction of that edition.

[False God]

Paperwork. If my character sheet is over 4 pages (2 front and back) I find that too much time gets devoted to flipping through pages, trying to find the right spell or ability, the right feat description and so on.

Complex, verbose, and "vancian" magic systems. Really stems from the problem above, but it's just so time consuming to sort out the good spells from the fun spells from the useful spells. I much prefer more utilitarian magic that scales with the caster in some method and utilizes a pool-based resource or is restricted/expanded by a dice pool. "Slots" and daily memorization and even spellbooks all just translate into "paperwork".

Number crunching, this is more of a table or Dm or party complaint but I deal all day with money and numbers. I really am not interested in tallying every last copper or detailing every last bolt on the starship.

Sum it up: I'm here to have fun and have a good time, not push pencils.

[Tanarii]

For me I have the opposite experience to many here - I used to enjoy rules-light systems with simple mechanics, but I really don't anymore. That the actual gameplay flow is simple is great, but part of what I enjoy is making many choices for character creation and progression. Stats, feats, skills, traits, flaws, I want as much as I can get. You'd think that it may be because I could be a min-maxer, but it's actually the other way around; with a large pool of options and many choices to make, I feel far more free to make sub-optimal choices, and create a character that's strictly "my own". That really helps me roleplay the character too, as I really enjoy thinking about how mechanical choices might translate into shaping someone's personality.
Did you ever enjoy rules complexity first?

IMX many if not most players go through the phases of discovering the hobby, getting into rules interactions and complex character building, then moving back away from that. There are some who start with roleplaying elitism (not to say that was you) and distancing rules out the gate, but other than that it's by far the most common to get into rules complexity, followed by dialing it back.

[Hytheter]

Battlemats.

Although having tried several systems that use zones (a large Mutan Year Zero / Forbidden Lands) I don't find it much of an improvement.

There really doesn't seem to be a great way to balance the distraction that a displayed map causes with the confusion the lack of one causes.

Have you tried using a zone system with a visual aid? I'm assuming your issue with battlemats is the grid or precise positioning and tedious setup that usually comes with them, but it could be as simple as slapping down a crude drawing of the area with the zones marked so that relative position is understandable without getting tedious about it.

[Tanarii]

Have you tried using a zone system with a visual aid? I'm assuming your issue with battlemats is the grid or precise positioning and tedious setup that usually comes with them, but it could be as simple as slapping down a crude drawing of the area with the zones marked so that relative position is understandable without getting tedious about it.Yup, that's one issue. The other is how a concrete visual of physical figurines and a grid pull folks out of first person thinking about their character's actions, and can constrain decision making. Although many games already have that by having a limited list of effective combat activities anyway.

I landed on primarily using dry erase white boards (one small one medium sized) to draw quick diagrams to clarify anything that needed to be clarified. I still used battlemats for large set piece battles with lots of complexity.

[Saintheart]

Detailed tactical combat with grids, miniatures, etc.: If I want tactical combat, I'll go play a board/war/computer game. It’s not that I have anything against tactical combat in the confines of an rpg. It is that board games and computer games deliver that experience in a way that is superior, in my opinion. Computer games handle the mechanical details, and bugs notwithstanding, this helps improve the flow of the game. In my experience, board games have tighter rules with fewer edge cases and exceptions, once again reducing (although not removing) the need to refer back to the rules.

On one hand I think this situation is because board/war/computer games, simply put, have it easier in this domain. The board game is by definition set up to have a fixed set of choices and options within a fixed "matrix" of choices. There are set win conditions and set loss conditions, and typically a finite number of ways the game can play out. Staggering complexity and replayability is available with a fairly simple set of rules, so long as there are only a given number of ways a game can finish and the rules are heavily based on there being a clear Yes/No answer to a given situation in the game. Chess is the most obvious one (PvP, 9 character classes, tactical combat :) ) but I'd actually look at Go as one of the more significant examples of this. In common is the aspect of fixed starting positions, large expansion of options and choices as the game goes on, and then - typically - condensation of options down to few, leading to defeat or victory (or stalemate). And notice how Chess doesn't actually allow you to carry out any options simultaneously. Even if your assault is set up with Deep Blue precision, you can only make one choice at a time, one piece at a time. My suspicion is that board games only get larger and more tricky the more options players have which can be carried out in an uninterrupted sequence ... or worse still can be carried out simultaneously.

Videogames are a bit different because whether consciously or not the idea of the video game is to deliver a certain experience to the player. They are much more targeted at delivering an adrenaline rush and/or behavioural response. By and large when it comes to conversions of D&D style games into videogame forms, they succeed beautifully because (a) as you say, they get the mechanics out of the way and (b) they also don't allow you the full range of actions that a RPG does. Once again, they limit your options and limit what you can do simultaneously. And even then the mechanics can be ab/used to create characters with powers or abilities way outside what the makers likely intended. Once again, though, the intent is slightly different because the video game is all about getting a hormonal rush out of you. It's all about penetrating past your thinking brain and hacking the flight or fight response by any means they can. Which means you get the mechanics out of the way and deliver an experience. Sure, they'll give you some numbers showing how much damage you're doing from time to time, but the only reason they do it is to provide and hack your biofeedback loop, keep you playing the game because you can see the damage your Sword of Wobblytimes +1 is doing. They'll go for your sense of immersion by getting past your thinking brain and going straight for the adrenaline and the dopamine hits.

RPGs don't fit either of these. They seek that their players are immersed in a fictional reality, but they can't really hit the adrenaline button, and they can't quite hack the boardgame's mechanic of immersion because they have to preserve the illusion of free will. But they also need the objective method of resolving physical conflict because people ultimately won't accept the program without it. It's a damnably hard job to induce a flow state in a RPG if for no other reason than that the moment the situation gets too complex to handle past a dice roll or two without setting off complaints of unfairness, your effortful, 'thinking slow' brain becomes engaged and the magic has to be restarted.

That being said: most RPGs are ****-poor at teaching DMs how to run them, or deliver the immersive experience they claim playing the RPG will deliver. If the industry does not figure out how to overcome this issue, then D&D's seeming present popularity aside, it is headed back for the obscure hobby section of the store.

[PhoenixPhyre]

On one hand I think this situation is because board/war/computer games, simply put, have it easier in this domain. The board game is by definition set up to have a fixed set of choices and options within a fixed "matrix" of choices. There are set win conditions and set loss conditions, and typically a finite number of ways the game can play out. Staggering complexity and replayability is available with a fairly simple set of rules, so long as there are only a given number of ways a game can finish and the rules are heavily based on there being a clear Yes/No answer to a given situation in the game. Chess is the most obvious one (PvP, 9 character classes, tactical combat :) ) but I'd actually look at Go as one of the more significant examples of this. In common is the aspect of fixed starting positions, large expansion of options and choices as the game goes on, and then - typically - condensation of options down to few, leading to defeat or victory (or stalemate). And notice how Chess doesn't actually allow you to carry out any options simultaneously. Even if your assault is set up with Deep Blue precision, you can only make one choice at a time, one piece at a time. My suspicion is that board games only get larger and more tricky the more options players have which can be carried out in an uninterrupted sequence ... or worse still can be carried out simultaneously.

Videogames are a bit different because whether consciously or not the idea of the video game is to deliver a certain experience to the player. They are much more targeted at delivering an adrenaline rush and/or behavioural response. By and large when it comes to conversions of D&D style games into videogame forms, they succeed beautifully because (a) as you say, they get the mechanics out of the way and (b) they also don't allow you the full range of actions that a RPG does. Once again, they limit your options and limit what you can do simultaneously. And even then the mechanics can be ab/used to create characters with powers or abilities way outside what the makers likely intended. Once again, though, the intent is slightly different because the video game is all about getting a hormonal rush out of you. It's all about penetrating past your thinking brain and hacking the flight or fight response by any means they can. Which means you get the mechanics out of the way and deliver an experience. Sure, they'll give you some numbers showing how much damage you're doing from time to time, but the only reason they do it is to provide and hack your biofeedback loop, keep you playing the game because you can see the damage your Sword of Wobblytimes +1 is doing. They'll go for your sense of immersion by getting past your thinking brain and going straight for the adrenaline and the dopamine hits.

RPGs don't fit either of these. They seek that their players are immersed in a fictional reality, but they can't really hit the adrenaline button, and they can't quite hack the boardgame's mechanic of immersion because they have to preserve the illusion of free will. But they also need the objective method of resolving physical conflict because people ultimately won't accept the program without it. It's a damnably hard job to induce a flow state in a RPG if for no other reason than that the moment the situation gets too complex to handle past a dice roll or two without setting off complaints of unfairness, your effortful, 'thinking slow' brain becomes engaged and the magic has to be restarted.

That being said: most RPGs are ****-poor at teaching DMs how to run them, or deliver the immersive experience they claim playing the RPG will deliver. If the industry does not figure out how to overcome this issue, then D&D's seeming present popularity aside, it is headed back for the obscure hobby section of the store.

As for me, what I want out of a TTRPG is something that neither board games nor video games can provide, because they lack the human element. The open-ended human element. I seek exploration--to go beyond what I know. To go beyond the limits of the system. I need the freedom to build and explore worlds. The possibility for things to go "sproing" and take a sharp left turn that no one expected. Mechanics? Flow states? Tactics? Challenge? Even immersion (which I find board games to be horrible at, personally)? Secondary or meaningless. All that matters is the endless vistas.

I don't want rule systems that think of themselves as rule systems. I want UI layers, conscious that their only job is to translate between the fiction of a world that could be real and a bunch of players sitting around a table/around computers. Not opinionated "rules" that see themselves as governing or teaching[1] or guiding. The rules are the servants, not the masters, and I fear that some of the more "well designed" ones forget that. I want the rule system to recede into the background--ideally I'd not have to think about the mechanical layer at all. It would serve its subordinate purpose transparently, helping us resolve uncertainty in a way that, if not "realistic", is acceptable to everyone and provides the atmosphere we seek.

My favorite times as a DM and worldbuilder are when the players find connections and pieces of the world that I'd not seen, even though they've been playing in it for a 100 hours, max, and I've lived in it for years. Especially when those make things "click" and open new areas of the world to my understanding. When they push me to flesh out places I'd only had a surface gloss on, and in doing so, find deepness and richness that wasn't there before. Characters coming alive and claiming their places in the world, whether I like it or not. When the world starts talking back and insisting that it have its way. When I learn things about people and about myself that I'd not considered. All of these take human interaction in a space with structure but no boundaries. Where there's a framework of themes, but no invisible walls set by the programmers.

[1] When I hear about DMs or systems that try to "teach" their players "life lessons" or even "how to play tactically", I cringe a bit. I was a teacher for many years. That's not how it works. You can give tutorial levels, but doing so in TTRPGs is fraught with peril. And doing it in the context of a real game, outside a consciously-declared "here's how you play" quickstart tutorial turns everyone off. DMs, rule designers, build tools. Don't try to teach lessons.

[Jorren]

On one hand I think this situation is because board/war/computer games, simply put, have it easier in this domain. The board game is by definition set up to have a fixed set of choices and options within a fixed "matrix" of choices. There are set win conditions and set loss conditions, and typically a finite number of ways the game can play out. Staggering complexity and replayability is available with a fairly simple set of rules, so long as there are only a given number of ways a game can finish and the rules are heavily based on there being a clear Yes/No answer to a given situation in the game. Chess is the most obvious one (PvP, 9 character classes, tactical combat :) ) but I'd actually look at Go as one of the more significant examples of this. In common is the aspect of fixed starting positions, large expansion of options and choices as the game goes on, and then - typically - condensation of options down to few, leading to defeat or victory (or stalemate). And notice how Chess doesn't actually allow you to carry out any options simultaneously. Even if your assault is set up with Deep Blue precision, you can only make one choice at a time, one piece at a time. My suspicion is that board games only get larger and more tricky the more options players have which can be carried out in an uninterrupted sequence ... or worse still can be carried out simultaneously.

This part is why I prefer to focus on the tactical options presented in these tighter contexts. With an open-ended situation that an RPG provides, I end up thinking 'how can I poison the orc chieftain's dinner' as opposed to 'how can I outmanuever or outfight the orc chieftain in battle'. Because fighting him in battle comes across as tedious in the sense that it delays the more interesting aspects of an open-ended experience for me. With boardgames there is also the PVP aspect of pitting yourself against another person's skills, something that doens't quite gel for me when I am dealing with a referee/GM.


Videogames are a bit different because whether consciously or not the idea of the video game is to deliver a certain experience to the player. They are much more targeted at delivering an adrenaline rush and/or behavioural response. By and large when it comes to conversions of D&D style games into videogame forms, they succeed beautifully because (a) as you say, they get the mechanics out of the way and (b) they also don't allow you the full range of actions that a RPG does. Once again, they limit your options and limit what you can do simultaneously. And even then the mechanics can be ab/used to create characters with powers or abilities way outside what the makers likely intended. Once again, though, the intent is slightly different because the video game is all about getting a hormonal rush out of you. It's all about penetrating past your thinking brain and hacking the flight or fight response by any means they can. Which means you get the mechanics out of the way and deliver an experience. Sure, they'll give you some numbers showing how much damage you're doing from time to time, but the only reason they do it is to provide and hack your biofeedback loop, keep you playing the game because you can see the damage your Sword of Wobblytimes +1 is doing. They'll go for your sense of immersion by getting past your thinking brain and going straight for the adrenaline and the dopamine hits.


Not all videogames are adrenaline fueled action fests. Some are turn based affairs with mundane graphics, yet don't require you to fumble with dice, battle mats, dropping things, set up time, forgetting rules, etc. Many of them are quite transparent in the mechanical sense. The lack of the face to face human element is the main downside.


RPGs don't fit either of these. They seek that their players are immersed in a fictional reality, but they can't really hit the adrenaline button, and they can't quite hack the boardgame's mechanic of immersion because they have to preserve the illusion of free will. But they also need the objective method of resolving physical conflict because people ultimately won't accept the program without it. It's a damnably hard job to induce a flow state in a RPG if for no other reason than that the moment the situation gets too complex to handle past a dice roll or two without setting off complaints of unfairness, your effortful, 'thinking slow' brain becomes engaged and the magic has to be restarted.

With RPGs nowadays I prefer the flow state to be facilitated by quick resolution that comes from a single or short series of rolls. The tactical breakdown of many classic RPGs reminds me of those JRPG videogames that 'woosh' you off to a battle screen when combat starts. Talk about killing immersion.


That being said: most RPGs are ****-poor at teaching DMs how to run them, or deliver the immersive experience they claim playing the RPG will deliver. If the industry does not figure out how to overcome this issue, then D&D's seeming present popularity aside, it is headed back for the obscure hobby section of the store.

I think many of them might be better off if they stop promising to deliver an experience that they cannot even articulate properly.

[Mastikator]

I used to think realism was super important, but it's not. It was verisimilitude the whole time that I wanted, internal consistency. I don't mind that horses are too slow or too fast, as long as the game makes sense for how fast horses are. I don't mind if fire is an element, just as long as the game sticks to antique physics the whole way through.

[Saintheart]

Not all videogames are adrenaline fueled action fests. Some are turn based affairs with mundane graphics, yet don't require you to fumble with dice, battle mats, dropping things, set up time, forgetting rules, etc. Many of them are quite transparent in the mechanical sense. The lack of the face to face human element is the main downside.

And as time goes on, particularly now that COVID's given videoconferencing a shot in the arm (so to speak) that'll be less and less of an issue. I don't disagree with anything you say.

[Telok]

I want UI layers, conscious that their only job is...

Funny. When I program a UI its only partially to help the user make the right choices. A good chunk of effective UI programming is making it feel easy for the user to select the choices you want them to make, while invisibily removing the ability to make other choices. A great UI feels easy and natural to the users while not letting them do anything that isn't pre-approved. 4e was the closest I ever saw D&D get to that.

[Satinavian]

As for video game analogies, well :

There are people who play and like rail shooters.
There are people who play and like visual novels.
There are people who play and like grand strategy games.
There are people who play and like minecraft.

Tabletop RPGs can be the the equivalent of all of those. And for each approach you will find players who think that is the best and most enjoyable way.

[Anonymouswizard]

I used to think realism was super important, but it's not. It was verisimilitude the whole time that I wanted, internal consistency. I don't mind that horses are too slow or too fast, as long as the game makes sense for how fast horses are. I don't mind if fire is an element, just as long as the game sticks to antique physics the whole way through.

Ah yes, this. I can't remember when I finally let go of realism, but it's been better since I let it go and focused on consistency and feel.


Another thing that's far less important to me now: generic systems. I still likely the ones I own, but I like them for the ways they aren't generic (GURPS is a complex system that's great for technical science fiction stuff, Savage Worlds is a game of 1930s pulp, Fate is for if I want to emulate story pacing). But genericism itself isn't something I like anymore, give me a game that can run literally anything and I'll want to know where the flavour is.

[HeraldOfExius]

Experience points. If I'm playing a system that uses levels, I prefer to use some sort of milestone progression these days. Sure experience points provide that constant trickle of positive reinforcement that you're making "progress," but I feel like they have too many problems compared to their benefits. As a player, they're an extra number to track and an obviously out of character motivator. As a GM, they're an unpredictable constraint, since it can be difficult to know just how the players will interact with the world unless you railroad them.

Related to that, I wouldn't quite say that I dislike level-based systems, but they don't rate as highly for me as they used to. I still like to play them, but they aren't my preferred way to play. "Leveling up" tends to draw too much focus away from the better parts of gaming.

[Cluedrew]

For me I have the opposite experience to many here - I used to enjoy rules-light systems with simple mechanics, but I really don't anymore.Another not quite "used to like but don't anymore" thing is when I started exploring rules-light systems and found some that went further than I want. Still, it seems the systems closest to what I want are a bit on the rules-light side. And I will always respect Roll for Shoes (whose entire rules set fits onto one side of an index card) for being its silly self.

[Vahnavoi]

That being said: most RPGs are ****-poor at teaching DMs how to run them, or deliver the immersive experience they claim playing the RPG will deliver. If the industry does not figure out how to overcome this issue, then D&D's seeming present popularity aside, it is headed back for the obscure hobby section of the store.

Locally, several indie designer acknowledged this problem and this birthed at least two entire new games specifically made for beginners and several supplements and an expanded new edition of an old one.

Not that I expect likes of Praedor or Astraterra to make a big splash in the international market so dominated by D&D, and a particularly dim take on D&D at that. :smalltongue: Lamentations of the Flame Princess has been somewhat more successfull, but it's hard to say if it will continue reaching new players given the old boxed sets with tutorials have sold out and the new Referee book still hasn't come out.

[Spore]

Worlds that do not summarize their intent in a precise manner.

I enjoyed Keith Baker's approach with Eberron to roughly outline the plot points and world, but fill in even the largest gaps yourself (what happened in the Mournland, what is King Kaius planning, is the Silver Flame really evil in disguise?). I liked that. It encouraged the DMs of the time to think for themselves but still be able to use an established setting.

But nowadays I feel that in doubt, assistance should always be given from the writer's side. There will always be stuff the author did not think about or was only implied as an excercise for the reader to fill out one way or another. But the more media I consume, the more worlds I see, more often than not that liberty is just a thinly veiled excuse not the explain stuff, that cannot be explained or ends in a plot hole. You can change active parts of a world, that is not the issue. Not unless your group is a bunch of author evangelists who claim that when Caer Dineval's Speaker was a man named Jensin Brent in 1356, it must even be so in your game.

A world should follow a consistent logic, fractions, large events should have a defined outcome and goal, even if the details or reason for them happening can be shrouded in mystery. And before one has my head for shifting on Eberron: The Church of Silver Flame is a decent example for this being a positive thing. Their goal was to hunt lycanthropes, but their new purpose is to protect humanity from the impurities of monsters. This can mean they are incredibly racist towards non/meta-humans, this can mean their members are stalwart defenders, but any given outlined character connected to that faction should have an opinion towards that topic. You can't just half-write a character and then say: "heres archbishop Lazarus McKinsey. It is heavily implied he is sinister, but make up your mind on your own for that."

[jjordan]

Not unless your group is a bunch of author evangelists who claim that when Caer Dineval's Speaker was a man named Jensin Brent in 1356, it must even be so in your game.Which is why I hold the opposing point of view. I prefer systems that are fairly vague about backgrounds so I have more room to maneuver with storytelling. And it's probably what drove me away from a lot (but not all) crunch. I really enjoyed having reference tables/scales which were internally consistent and can tell me roughly how much damage someone could be expected to take if a house fell on their head (to pick a silly example). I used those as guidelines. When players started treating them like inviolable gospel it sucked the fun out of them and made them a chore.

[Telwar]

Huh.

I realized when running Shadowrun 4e a few years ago that I didn't entirely disagree with the idea of a "lighter" ruleset. Don't get me wrong, I like having rules, since I don't have to remember how I ruled or spend that effort when I could be running the world.

Also, having played with folks who are not insane accounting masters makes me realize that if you are going to have lots of equipment to pore through, it really needs to be better organized.

If a ruleset has a lot of bells and whistles (like Shadowrun or FFG SW), it really needs some form of character builder...and really should have an official one and not require some nice people to make Chummer or Oggdude's. Even with Oggdude's, I had to build out my Gigoran* Hired Gun in Excel because the very nice person who built that character builder still hasn't gotten the supplement into his character builder.

[Anonymouswizard]

Huh.

I realized when running Shadowrun 4e a few years ago that I didn't entirely disagree with the idea of a "lighter" ruleset. Don't get me wrong, I like having rules, since I don't have to remember how I ruled or spend that effort when I could be running the world.

While it's years after it first came out, picking up Shadowrun: Anarchy has made me never want to play any other version. While I have done issues with it is much less of an accounting nightmare, and thanks to bundling spells, drones, cyberware, cyberdecks/technomamcy, and Adept powers into a single DIY 'special stuff' system building a character is no longer an exercise in minutia. If you want enhanced rejected there are two options you have to ask: how good are they, and are they cyberware, bioware, or magical. It also simplifies both the skill list and the meat space/astral/matrix nightmare, Although it has a couple of rules you might want to change (six skills maximum!?)

[Quertus]

"That which I love, I love forever."

Looking at other people's lists, I see nothing that I used to love, but no longer do.

The closest we get is things I used to say "meh" to, that got old. Like how every GM and his clone wanted to run a "you have to speak to the Sage / wise woman / healer / village idiot to learn that werewolves are vulnerable to silver". Yeah, no. My PCs were trained, and I keep track of who trained whom, and what lore they passed along.

I still love both tables and one-off mechanics for everything, and unified mechanics - *if* they're implemented well, and match the game.

I still love both minis / battle maps and theater of mind - *if* they're implemented well, and match the game.

I still love both piles of different dice and a single die - *if* they're implemented well, and match the game.

I still love both handwritten character sheets, and cool printed sheets. I also now like "index card" "sheets".

I still love physical books, and some of the artistry that went into old WoD books.

I still love the old editions of games that I loved, even for those rare systems where the newer editions are actually better.

I still love playing rules-heavy RPGs like 3e D&D with 7-year-olds, or playing multiple PCs simultaneously in a game that spans multiple systems, with kids, and watching them play competently.

"That which I love, I love forever."

[Jay R]

I started role-playing in 1975, with original D&D. I've played a lot of different ways. And based on my experience, what most people here are talking about simply doesn't matter that much.

If I know and trust the GM, then there is no mechanic, approach, or world that could possibly cause a problem.

If I don't know and trust the GM, then no mechanic, approach, or world that could make the game worth playing.

So the one thing I would not play anymore is poor GMs. In the last 20 years, I've only had one GM who hadn't been a close friend for years before the game started. And that one came with impeccable credentials from friends I did know and trust.

[Tanarii]

So the one thing I would not play anymore is poor GMs. In the last 20 years, I've only had one GM who hadn't been a close friend for years before the game started. And that one came with impeccable credentials from friends I did know and trust.
Interesting. I used to enjoy playing with people I know. Now I prefer to play with strangers, or at least initially strangers.

Of course, that's because strangers at a game store are making some kind of commitment, or else it's a game designed for pickup play. Home games with people I know never seem to last.

I've been playing 3 player Gloomhaven as part of a home game that has gone over 15 months, interrupted by the pandemic. That beats any home game RPG I've ever played for longevity by about 12 months.:smallyuk:

[Maat Mons]

Numerical progression.

I used to delight in getting +1 to something. But I eventually realized that just meant I was now going to be facing enemies with +1 to the opposite thing. And so, relatively speaking, there had actually been no change at all.

[Pex]

Theater of the Mind combat

It's what I grew up with, but I have come to appreciate the extra layer of immersion that comes with using a battlemat. I'm not totally against Theater of the Mind. I used to DM that way, but in my current campaign I'm purposely trying to use the mat more. I can see the difference now on the DM side of things. It becomes easier to use tactics when you know where everything is. The more complex the battle the more difficult it is to keep everything in memory. The battlemat allows for very complex battles that are fun to play once in a while.

I want to play no matter what

In reference to the "It's what my character would do" thread, as long as I got to play I would tolerate anything. I had quit games way, way back when, but it took a long time of consistent anger and disappointment. Now I have learned that no gaming is better than bad gaming. I've learned to be ok with stop playing a game where I'm not having fun. I can still be sad about it, but I know and notice I am better off. I don't need that stress and tension.

[Tanarii]

It's what I grew up with, but I have come to appreciate the extra layer of immersion that comes with using a battlemat.
What extra layer of immersion? Battlemats remove immersion, they don't add to it.

They add to the ability to play tactically, but at the cost of immersive elements.

To elaborate on my confusion: The representation of the character by a miniature/token automatically creates a degree of "my guy" thinking about the character instead of "me" thinking. Thats a decrease on immersion, and its unavoidable.

[Zombimode]

Numerical progression.

I used to delight in getting +1 to something. But I eventually realized that just meant I was now going to be facing enemies with +1 to the opposite thing. And so, relatively speaking, there had actually been no change at all.

You know that is not a necessary correlation, right?

[Mastikator]

I started role-playing in 1975, with original D&D. I've played a lot of different ways. And based on my experience, what most people here are talking about simply doesn't matter that much.

If I know and trust the GM, then there is no mechanic, approach, or world that could possibly cause a problem.

If I don't know and trust the GM, then no mechanic, approach, or world that could make the game worth playing.

So the one thing I would not play anymore is poor GMs. In the last 20 years, I've only had one GM who hadn't been a close friend for years before the game started. And that one came with impeccable credentials from friends I did know and trust.

As much as I agree with this I think (at least for my sake) it behooves me to give bad GMs a chance to be better by identifying what I dislike and giving constructive criticism. If they're open to criticism and willing to improve then I may have bought myself a better game. If not I'll feel more justified.

Unless it's a total horror story.

[KineticDiplomat]

Magic.

Not the concept of any and all things magical, but the seemingly endless trend of trying to give players “cool” magic/psionics/insert-your-settings-name-for-magic-or-a-thinly-skinned-variant.

Yes, it seems cool, but then as a GM or a player you start finding that it is hell on a narrative, leads to ridiculous issues where you have to balance people flinging lightning from their fingertips with people with swords/guns (hint: you won’t succeed), and generally manages to slow down the game, make combat ridiculous, cheapen the setting, and turn things into the magic puzzle solving show.

When I think of virtually all of my favorite fiction, magic is never used to casually turn invisible while doing back flips while throwing disintegration rays around on the fly. And it’s definitely not so common that every fifth person is doing it.

I make exceptions for games premised on being nigh unto gods (or just plain gods), or perhaps entirely and only about magic users, but I’m at the point where anyone using magic in a”general” game is a matter for pause and consideration.

[Pex]

What extra layer of immersion? Battlemats remove immersion, they don't add to it.

They add to the ability to play tactically, but at the cost of immersive elements.

To elaborate on my confusion: The representation of the character by a miniature/token automatically creates a degree of "my guy" thinking about the character instead of "me" thinking. Thats a decrease on immersion, and its unavoidable.

We don't like the same thing about something? That's different.

I don't need to defend myself here.

[Willie the Duck]

Playing with jaded grognards. Yeah, I've been through all of these same tropes scads of times spanning multiple decades, just with a controller in hand, and now that I'm enjoying tabletop instead I've already run into a few folks who want to veto so many things that they're tired of. It was cool early on with my buds that had a lot of years of pencil & paper under their belts showing me the ropes, and I still like playing with those guys when I can, but other groups, especially online, always have that one curmudgeon who never moved on from whatever edition they started with and never passes up an opportunity to tell you how much better it was than the current version. Every time I hear, "ugh, Forgotten Realms again?" I get the impression that I'm not going to be allowed to enjoy the campaign, either. It's so much more fun playing with new people who engage with a sense of wonder at the possibilities before them, even if a lot of the ideas are old hat.
Speaking as a self-aware grognard (who hopefully isn't too jaded*), I'll agree that there are plenty of grognards out there that just want everyone to know that they were there first**. That said, please show as much sympathy as you can. As I've hit and rode headlong through middle age, I've been struck by how real the sensation are that society is telling you that you are old and in the way. I don't know how old you are, so I can't say you don't know, but I will say that it was a surprise for me. Wanting to feel like those things you did or cared for when you were young were important, and perhaps even special, is well, kinda natural (obviously less forgivable when that is weaponized, as it seems it has been in your experience).
*and when I am, it is more jaded at internet posturing than newfangled games.
**which isn't true, since Rob Kunze, Mike Mornard, and Ernie Gygax are all still alive and online.


I started role-playing in 1975, with original D&D. I've played a lot of different ways. And based on my experience, what most people here are talking about simply doesn't matter that much.

If I know and trust the GM, then there is no mechanic, approach, or world that could possibly cause a problem.

If I don't know and trust the GM, then no mechanic, approach, or world that could make the game worth playing.

So the one thing I would not play anymore is poor GMs. In the last 20 years, I've only had one GM who hadn't been a close friend for years before the game started. And that one came with impeccable credentials from friends I did know and trust.
In general, I think that is true -- a good GM can make a mechanic you don't love seem fine, and a bad GM can ruin the experience of the best system. There are few mechanics I won't deal with anymore. One exception is massive time sinks -- I'm thinking of games with dozens of tables of modifiers to every roll, or Excel spreadsheet level of creation rules (GURPS 3e Vehicle builder, as the ultimate example). Not because they are inherently good or bad, but simply because I don't have the time or energy to get out of them any value they might provide.

[Slartibartfast]

What extra layer of immersion? Battlemats remove immersion, [...] and its unavoidable.

No, it's avoidable, it is just a different perspective.

You have to ask the question "where am i? what is around me?" and then look at the mat and go "ah, there i am!"

Seeing the miniature as you or not you is a choice, not a necessity. You can twist your mind into all sorts of shapes of you try.

This leads me to my biggest RPG regret:

Self-insert Characters

Even when your are not literally playing yourself, i used to think that my character in the game was me. This is a terrible way to run a game. Your character is explicitly *not* you and this is part of what makes them interesting. They think different than you, they hold different values than you, they have different capabilities than you. Player / character separation is an important understanding to be aware of in order to make more interesting characters who tell more interesting and varied stories. If all your characters are you, you're going to be playing the same story one game after the next unless you change RP groups.

Plus, it leads to drama at the table if someone does something to my character - and that is me! Now *i* have been personally attacked! No, it's a game, stop being in it.

Simulation / Immersion

I used to think that the best way to participate as a player was to understand my character fully and react to the world as it was presented to them. This loses out on a lot of potential in the genre.

Fundamentally, RPs are telling a story. How many authors write a story without any idea where it's going or what the characters are for (narratively)? Definitely not all of them, i can tell you that. You can run a discovery game about the chaotic things your characters do, but you can also run a slightly more narratively structured experience.

I learned this lesson by running a game where each character had a well-defined but entirely open-ended narrative role: the Homestuck classpect. For example, the Bard of Doom brings about doom and destruction as a passive consequence of their existence. The character Kate was therefore vindictive, disruptive, and had a lot of options for collateral damage. This not only gave her a strong identity, but it gave the other players
(remember, not the characters) an understanding of what to expect from her and how to facilitate her narrative purpose.

I don't recommend classpects (the original Homestuck ones or campaign-specific versions) to everyone. They provide useful character building structure and narrative guidance, but they also require a certain mode of abstract alternate-philosophical thinking that isn't going to be for everyone. Instead, you can still achieve a similar effect simply by thinking not "what would my character do" but "what would be the coolest thing to happen, and what's a reasonable thing my character can do to work towards that?" Sometimes this means actively sabotaging your own character's goals by making them take "unexpectedly" counterproductive actions, and those can be great stories. Take advantage of player / character separation and do things which are good for the players, not the characters.

And remember that for this purpose, the GM is a player too! In a narrative game you are working with the GM, not against them. Yes, the GM is providing opposition, but this is in service of the story, not with the intention to defeat you. In a crunch game like Shadowrun that focuses mainly on the mechanical conflict between player and GM this doesn't work, but in a narrative game take advantage of that teamwork.

[Tanarii]

We don't like the same thing about something? That's different.

I don't need to defend myself here.
It's not a matter of like or not like. It's a matter of automatically creating less thinking of being the character. That's less immersive, by definition.

Personally I don't often don't like that, since player-character separation is an unnatural state of things, and it's impossible to eliminate / completely separate, so I generally prefer to minimize it where ever possible. But it's perfectly fine to like 3rd party characters.

[Pex]

It's not a matter of like or not like.

Yes it is because that's the thread question. It's not your place to tell me I'm wrong to like something for the reason I like it.

[RandomPeasant]

To elaborate on my confusion: The representation of the character by a miniature/token automatically creates a degree of "my guy" thinking about the character instead of "me" thinking. Thats a decrease on immersion, and its unavoidable.

And the presence of explicit markings of what's going on make it easier to grasp what's going on and become immersed in it. You're certainly free to feel that the tradeoff doesn't land the way you want; I'm not going to yuck your yum. But it seems pretty obvious to me what the argument for the other side is and from there it should be pretty easy to conclude "he must feel that argument is more compelling than I do".

[Spore]

When players started treating them like inviolable gospel it sucked the fun out of them and made them a chore.

It happened to 3.5, and it starts happening to D&D 5e. People pick up WILDLY imcompatible archetypes, ideas and rules from about 20 books to create the omegazilla cleric, a d2 crusader or a character that could grapple and supplex the planet. While cool ideas in their respective genres, they don't really gel always with the campaign world, in fact they most often do not.

People are starting to PICK Ravenloft's dark GIFTS for their characters on 1st level. Which is entirely not how this is supposed to happen. These are not drawbacks with benefits to pick during creations of a character. These are handed out for characters in a horror campaign, to provide some mystical benefit (in the absence of a magic mart et al.) for a thematic drawback THAT WILL COME UP. You don't get water themed spells and a fear of the seas in a game that is entirely set in a mystical forest. And I don't care if your character has a background as a sailor. You picked the sailor background, you will not get more boni just so I can see you being edgy about PTSD that cannot be triggered because the lack of environmental pieces.

On a similar vein, a DM helping me with gifts and gameplay benefits with a struggling build felt incredibly condescending to me, but it doesn't anymore. the DM is not looking to crush the internal balance, but to preserve it.

[Tanarii]

Yes it is because that's the thread question. It's not your place to tell me I'm wrong to like something for the reason I like it.
Okay then.

I like sittting around for hours playing RPGs while stuffing my face with soda and pizza because it is great exercise. But that doesn't mean I should get defensive about someone 'telling me my likes are wrong' if they object to me using the words in a strange way.

[Willie the Duck]

Okay then.

I like sittting around for hours playing RPGs while stuffing my face with soda and pizza because it is great exercise. But that doesn't mean I should get defensive about someone 'telling me my likes are wrong' if they object to me using the words in a strange way.

Eating pizza and soda isn't great exercise, and that state of affairs is clear and established fact understood by all reasonable potential thread participants. That battlemats remove immersion is a position you have taken, but not backed up. If you were to provide a substantive argument to that position, that would go a long way towards the two situations appearing to be similar.

[Anonymouswizard]

In personally finds that a map increases immersion, and a grid decreases it. Clearly I am insane for this illogical position :smalltongue:

It helps to know roughly where everybody is in order to form a mental picture, but I don't need it in exact detail.

[PhoenixPhyre]

In personally finds that a map increases immersion, and a grid decreases it. Clearly I am insane for this illogical position :smalltongue:

It helps to know roughly where everybody is in order to form a mental picture, but I don't need it in exact detail.

I'm basically the same. My preferences for "battlemaps" go
1. A whiteboard with shapes drawn on it and minis, using a ruler/tape measure as needed for distances. All distances assumed to be rough estimates, not precision things.
2. A VTT with a grid and tokens, but one that can be overriden so things aren't exactly locked to the grid.
3. A physical gridded battlemap, not strictly following the lines (ie being able to point things in any direction)[1]
4. No map at all, simple combats
5. Any grid that's strictly adhered to
6. No map at all, complex combats

[1] This is lower just because it gets in the way and you don't have as many automated tools to deal with things. Most of the downsides, few of the benefits.

[Imbalance]

Speaking as a self-aware grognard (who hopefully isn't too jaded*), I'll agree that there are plenty of grognards out there that just want everyone to know that they were there first**. That said, please show as much sympathy as you can. As I've hit and rode headlong through middle age, I've been struck by how real the sensation are that society is telling you that you are old and in the way. I don't know how old you are, so I can't say you don't know, but I will say that it was a surprise for me. Wanting to feel like those things you did or cared for when you were young were important, and perhaps even special, is well, kinda natural (obviously less forgivable when that is weaponized, as it seems it has been in your experience).

It's not directly an age thing, in my experience, though of course the longer one is alive the more time they will have invested in their hobbies. In the name of disclosure, I've walked this earth since before the Reagan administration, and have marveled at the rate of change I've been witnessing in the world. Not everybody shares that view, I know, but it does perplex me that anyone of any age can deny the constancy of change unless they are in the way. That's not to say that the past was not special to those of us who lived it, and my own youth was full of experiences that will always be important to me, but I often feel alone in my age group being comfortable with most reboots and reimaginings of the things I grew up with because I know that there was always room for improvement. Those things aren't sacred. I don't own them. I only own the memories I have of them.

My related experience is with HeroClix (yep, I was there first). It exists today in direct opposition to what the inventor of the combat dial designed it for. I hate it, it's not my game, and while I still gripe about it, I ultimately got out of the way instead of trying to force undue parameters around others who do like what it became. So, while I can sympathize, I won't be enthusiastic about having someone else's obsolete attitude limit my perspective about the things I enjoy.


It's not a matter of like or not like. It's a matter of automatically creating less thinking of being the character. That's less immersive, by definition.

By that logic, so is the dice, the character sheet, and the narration.


In personally finds that a map increases immersion, and a grid decreases it. Clearly I am insane for this illogical position :smalltongue:

It helps to know roughly where everybody is in order to form a mental picture, but I don't need it in exact detail.

I must be crazy, too. There are various forms of it, but when you employ those tangible elements to set a scene the product is communication, which fosters shared immersion, which I thought was the point of playing with other people. If I'm wrong, I guess I can see where someone might get upset when they perceive that their specific fantasy is spoiled by scale and perspective.

[Tanarii]

Eating pizza and soda isn't great exercise, and that state of affairs is clear and established fact understood by all reasonable potential thread participants. That battlemats remove immersion is a position you have taken, but not backed up. If you were to provide a substantive argument to that position, that would go a long way towards the two situations appearing to be similar.
By definition, anything that makes us think of a situation as external to ourselves is a decrease in immersion.

I have noticed people frequently use 'immersive' when they mean 'engrossing'. For example, non-first-person video games and movies are engrossing. First-person ones can be immersive though. Books are engrossing, not immersive, except for some versions of choose your own adventure. Studying a language in the country of the native speakers is a good example of immersive too.

Edit: in response to a few of the other responses about diagrams, yes technically its the miniature or token representing a character seperate from the player which causes a decrease in immersion.

[Maat Mons]

Wait a minute. *Checks Merriam-Webster*

absorbing involvement

ENGROSSING


Okay, it could be a regional thing. *Checks Oxford English Dictionary*

Deep mental involvement in something.


Where are you getting this "internal/external" thing?

[OldTrees1]

Wizards and Sorcerers.

Generalist casters were cool, until I learned about specialist casters. Then I learned that specialist casters can have actually interesting class features while still being more balanced than the generalists.



PS: Sorry Tanarii, but I am yet another that finds maps more immersive than theater of the mind. The players can only see what the DM lets them see. For me, pictures like maps can describe relative position in more vivid detail than the same effort put into theater of the mind. With a map I can see much more through my PC's eyes than I can with theater of the mind. I think it is best to accept that the impact of maps on immersion is highly subjective.

[Chauncymancer]

If I know and trust the GM, then there is no mechanic, approach, or world that could possibly cause a problem.

If I don't know and trust the GM, then no mechanic, approach, or world that could make the game worth playing.

Ah but, are there mechanical, approach, or world design decisions that would improve or degrade your trust in a GM?

What extra layer of immersion? Battlemats remove immersion, they don't add to it.



It's not a matter of like or not like. It's a matter of automatically creating less thinking of being the character. That's less immersive, by definition.
Has it occurred to you that what creates even more disruption and distance is being in a combat with four other players, five monsters, two environmental effects, and having objects randomly and capriciously flickering in and out of existence because the median human's visual working memory can only hold the relative position of six to eight objects at a time, and 5+5+2=12?
<In which my response became inappropriately vitriolic.>


My related experience is with HeroClix (yep, I was there first). It exists today in direct opposition to what the inventor of the combat dial designed it for. I hate it, it's not my game, and while I still gripe about it, I ultimately got out of the way instead of trying to force undue parameters around others who do like what it became.
As someone who only knows one thing about HeroClix, and it's that you can use them as miniatures in a pinch, what exactly was so radical a change?

[RandomPeasant]

PS: Sorry Tanarii, but I am yet another that finds maps more immersive than theater of the mind. The players can only see what the DM lets them see. For me, pictures like maps can describe relative position in more vivid detail than the same effort put into theater of the mind. With a map I can see much more through my PC's eyes than I can with theater of the mind. I think it is best to accept that the impact of maps on immersion is highly subjective.

It seems like Tanarii has some idiosyncratic personal definition of "immersion" such that certain things can't be immersive. Because the position they're expressing seems pretty incomprehensible to me otherwise. It's not just that they personally feel one way about the tradeoff (a reasonable position for any tradeoff), it's that they don't seem to understand how anyone could feel the other way. And that's bizarre, because it's not like the argument for the other side is especially subtle. It's like a D&D player saying they don't understand how anyone could like Shadowrun. Maybe you don't like Cyberpunk peanutbutter in your Fantasy chocolate, but it should be fairly obvious that other people could like that and that the people who like Shadowrun presumably do.


Ah but, are there mechanical, approach, or world design decisions that would improve or degrade your trust in a GM?

Or more generally, it's not a binary. This type of sentiment seems to come from a notion that there are Good DMs and Bad DMs and Good DMs perfectly understand how to create a good game and Bad DMs have no understanding of how to create a good game. But the reality is that both Good DMs and Bad DMs are very rare. Most DMs (and most players) are average. They have a range of ideas for stuff they might like to do, and some of those ideas are good while others are bad. The point of rules is to provide structure so that ideas are executed well, and to provide guiderails against bad ideas (after all, it's not like the TTRPG Police will put you in jail if you don't follow the rules, they can only ever really be guidelines).

[OldTrees1]

It seems like Tanarii has some idiosyncratic personal definition of "immersion" such that certain things can't be immersive.

I think that is a bit unfair. Tanarii could be using the same dictionary standard definition as me. However I agree that our estimations of what is possible do differ (perhaps even to that extreme).

That is as deep as I will go. We might want to pull back to the topic at hand.



For example:
I don't dislike spellcasting yet, but I have grown fond of non casting mage features. Dread Necromancer's Charnel Touch for example.

[Hytheter]

Has it also occurred to you that your proliferation of extremely niche hot takes has a causal relationship to your inability to get your friends to enjoy games with you for more than three months at a time, and it's that you're actually a terrible, awful DM? And that if you approach the opinions of forumites with a little bit of humility and actually bothered to learn something, you might radically improve your games all the way to mediocrity? And then maybe your friends could stand to go longer than eight sessions with you before they can't go on any longer?

This seems pretty uncalled for.

[Saintheart]

In personally finds that a map increases immersion, and a grid decreases it. Clearly I am insane for this illogical position :smalltongue:

Not at all, this is why MapTools has options to toggle the gridlines on and off!

More seriously, I do agree - even though I do like battlemaps if only for the wholly immature reason that I like pretty pictures. My favourite battlemaps are the ones where the grid is obscured behind bushes, treetops, etc, but is still there to give you a quick idea of the distances if you need them. The ugliest battlemaps are surely the ones where you feel like you're fighting behind chickenwire.

I have a hypothesis that if you are working with battlemaps, a grid's only really needed if the distances at which the battle is being fought are likely to have a significant impact on its resolution, e.g. an encounter that actually is starting with the closest combatants more than 60 feet apart and/or is being fought with long-ish ranged weapons and the like at close to range increment. Below that scale/range, grid references at the edges of the map are enough and are 'out of the way' enough to minimise the disruption to the game experience. Or consider changing the grid colour from default black to something that at least blends a bit with the terrain (most mapping programs should allow one to do this, albeit this won't be as practical with something like Excel and similar.)

[Anonymouswizard]

If I need to know distances better than an eyeball I have a tape measure, but that assumes that the map is to scale. More likely it's a rough approximation drawn too help us all agree on the layout of a warehouse.

[Kane0]

I used to like square grids, now i'm more of a hex man myself.

Conversely, I used to hate starting as a talentless shmuck but now I greatly appreciate playing a game every now and again where i'm not automatically a badass at most if not all things by virtue of being a PC.

[Chauncymancer]

This seems pretty uncalled for.

You're right. I edited my post.

[noob]

Simulation / Immersion

I used to think that the best way to participate as a player was to understand my character fully and react to the world as it was presented to them. This loses out on a lot of potential in the genre.

Fundamentally, RPs are telling a story. How many authors write a story without any idea where it's going or what the characters are for (narratively)? Definitely not all of them, i can tell you that. You can run a discovery game about the chaotic things your characters do, but you can also run a slightly more narratively structured experience.

I learned this lesson by running a game where each character had a well-defined but entirely open-ended narrative role: the Homestuck classpect. For example, the Bard of Doom brings about doom and destruction as a passive consequence of their existence. The character Kate was therefore vindictive, disruptive, and had a lot of options for collateral damage. This not only gave her a strong identity, but it gave the other players
(remember, not the characters) an understanding of what to expect from her and how to facilitate her narrative purpose.

I don't recommend classpects (the original Homestuck ones or campaign-specific versions) to everyone. They provide useful character building structure and narrative guidance, but they also require a certain mode of abstract alternate-philosophical thinking that isn't going to be for everyone. Instead, you can still achieve a similar effect simply by thinking not "what would my character do" but "what would be the coolest thing to happen, and what's a reasonable thing my character can do to work towards that?" Sometimes this means actively sabotaging your own character's goals by making them take "unexpectedly" counterproductive actions, and those can be great stories. Take advantage of player / character separation and do things which are good for the players, not the characters.

And remember that for this purpose, the GM is a player too! In a narrative game you are working with the GM, not against them. Yes, the GM is providing opposition, but this is in service of the story, not with the intention to defeat you. In a crunch game like Shadowrun that focuses mainly on the mechanical conflict between player and GM this doesn't work, but in a narrative game take advantage of that teamwork.

(my disagreement with you about stories in general and not rpgs)
I consider that making characters in a story "act in the way that makes the 'best story' " to be something that ruined hundred thousands of stories by making the characters incoherent with themselves just because it was what the plot needed.
Characters should not "act in the way that makes the best story" because what makes the "best story" is not something people can agree on and for plenty of authors it means "that contains the standard amount of drama" which is a bad thing (in my opinion): I think someone should not make characters suddenly act in X way just because they needed the drama: they should instead make characters with traits and personalities that would naturally create the drama they wanted and possibly have the drama change the characters progressively (for better or worse).
The issue is that I think someone should pick the situation and characters that would make a good story with the right amount of drama rather than deciding "hey those characters are not having drama right now so I will make that character act in a way inconsistent with its overall evolution in order to insert drama for having the 'best story' "

(nitpicking about how you talk about rpgs as if they were all collaborative story telling games)
Rpgs are not about making a story: You might want collaborative story telling games (there is an huge overlap with rpgs but some rpgs are not meant at all to be cooperative story telling games) which is a different genre that could fit better what you want.

A classical example of rpg that is not at all about making a story is the "side a defend opinion x, side b defends the opposite opinion" this rpg is not about making the two sides cooperate to have a good story: the objective is to defend the opinion assigned to you better than the other team and at the end the team which defended its opinion the best is victorious regardless of whenever it was a right opinion or anything like that.

[Willie the Duck]

Eating pizza and soda isn't great exercise, and that state of affairs is clear and established fact understood by all reasonable potential thread participants. That battlemats remove immersion is a position you have taken, but not backed up. If you were to provide a substantive argument to that position, that would go a long way towards the two situations appearing to be similar.

By definition, anything that makes us think of a situation as external to ourselves is a decrease in immersion.

I have noticed people frequently use 'immersive' when they mean 'engrossing'. For example, non-first-person video games and movies are engrossing. First-person ones can be immersive though. Books are engrossing, not immersive, except for some versions of choose your own adventure. Studying a language in the country of the native speakers is a good example of immersive too.

Edit: in response to a few of the other responses about diagrams, yes technically its the miniature or token representing a character seperate from the player which causes a decrease in immersion.

I'm going to believe that this is an actual oversight, but it looks like you forgot to make your actual argument here. You go from giving us a dictionary definition (sort of, and arguably), and then skip ahead to talking about supposed mistakes of others (which is pretty straw-filled without references), but we never actually get to see the argument in support of your position.

[Lacco]

My personal "no more" list:

Saving the World (again)
Been there, done that, have a set of matching t-shirts. Saving world is fun, but my focus now is on more personal stories.
Yeah, there might be an invasion as a backdrop to your attempts to keep your family from falling apart. Royal family, that is. Congrats on the crown, your father's ghost may wish to talk to you in the evening. And watch out for the uncle - his wife seems to be have some poisonous attitudes. No worries about the invasion - that is the least of your concerns.

Combat Omniscience
There are RPGs where knowing where it makes sense to know where everybody is in combat, what the actual distances and actions are. I played those, I liked them. Now I prefer when you can see the world through the eyes of the character, not the player. And of course you can do that with a map and miniatures - but I prefer not to. I have seen combat that turned to a puzzle - and it's not bad. But it's no longer the experience I prefer.

[Tanarii]

I'm going to believe that this is an actual oversight, but it looks like you forgot to make your actual argument here. You go from giving us a dictionary definition (sort of, and arguably), and then skip ahead to talking about supposed mistakes of others (which is pretty straw-filled without references), but we never actually get to see the argument in support of your position.Okay, I'll try again then. It's by definition.

Immersion is believing yourself to be within/surrounded by (the thing).

Miniatures and token decrease that, by definition.

(And again, a mistake I made was assuming that battlemats come with miniatures and tokens as stand-ins / representatives for the characters, but that seems like a reasonable assumption.)

[Max_Killjoy]

(my disagreement with you about stories in general and not rpgs)

I consider that making characters in a story "act in the way that makes the 'best story' " to be something that ruined hundred thousands of stories by making the characters incoherent with themselves just because it was what the plot needed.

Characters should not "act in the way that makes the best story" because what makes the "best story" is not something people can agree on and for plenty of authors it means "that contains the standard amount of drama" which is a bad thing (in my opinion): I think someone should not make characters suddenly act in X way just because they needed the drama: they should instead make characters with traits and personalities that would naturally create the drama they wanted and possibly have the drama change the characters progressively (for better or worse).

The issue is that I think someone should pick the situation and characters that would make a good story with the right amount of drama rather than deciding "hey those characters are not having drama right now so I will make that character act in a way inconsistent with its overall evolution in order to insert drama for having the 'best story' "

(nitpicking about how you talk about rpgs as if they were all collaborative story telling games)
Rpgs are not about making a story: You might want collaborative story telling games (there is an huge overlap with rpgs but some rpgs are not meant at all to be cooperative story telling games) which is a different genre that could fit better what you want.


Agreed on both counts.

And to some degree the prevalence of the former issue in too much fiction, helps fuel my dislike of the latter. "It's about what makes the best story" means, to me, that characters and setting will be as incoherent and inconsistent as the people involved believe necessary to "tell the story".

If anything has reduced my enthusiasm for actually playing RPGs, it's the way that the "this is a game, these are playing pieces" approach, and the "this is a story, you are telling a story, we are all telling a story together" approach, along with the argument between them, have come to dominate the hobby, leaving anyone who doesn't buy into the One True Way that either side pushes to sit on the sideline and get yelled at as both Wrong and "obviously" part of the "other side" if they dare to speak up.

Still, if I had to pick a faction to deal with, it would be the "this is a game" side. At least most of them have some respect for competence for fellow players who can manage to "eat their cake and have it too". I've learned the hard way that if someone says "All RPGs are about telling a story", and I say "for me, they're not" and their response is "yes it is even if you don't realize it, my opinion trumps your personal experience and enjoyment", that the discussion is over -- made their own personal preference and approach an absolute, often by distorting the definitions of "story" and "RPG" to match their own personal preferences.


(Sorry for spacing your paragraphs, it helps me read for detail.)

[Max_Killjoy]

By definition, anything that makes us think of a situation as external to ourselves is a decrease in immersion.

I have noticed people frequently use 'immersive' when they mean 'engrossing'. For example, non-first-person video games and movies are engrossing. First-person ones can be immersive though. Books are engrossing, not immersive, except for some versions of choose your own adventure. Studying a language in the country of the native speakers is a good example of immersive too.

Edit: in response to a few of the other responses about diagrams, yes technically its the miniature or token representing a character seperate from the player which causes a decrease in immersion.


Okay, I'll try again then. It's by definition.

Immersion is believing yourself to be within/surrounded by (the thing).

Miniatures and token decrease that, by definition.

(And again, a mistake I made was assuming that battlemats come with miniatures and tokens as stand-ins / representatives for the characters, but that seems like a reasonable assumption.)

Whereas your definition of "immersion" seems to border on "delusion".

And that's an argument I see people make when they're trying to deride immersion in RPGs and video games.

More broadly, you seem to assuming that everyone's immersion works like your immersion, what whatever increases yours universally does so for everyone, and what decreases yours universally does do for everyone.

[Willie the Duck]

Okay, I'll try again then. It's by definition.

Immersion is believing yourself to be within/surrounded by (the thing).

Miniatures and token decrease that, by definition.

(And again, a mistake I made was assuming that battlemats come with miniatures and tokens as stand-ins / representatives for the characters, but that seems like a reasonable assumption.)

<Underlining added>
This is the part you actually have to support with a functional argument. You are declaring it to be true, but not presenting a supporting argument. If someone comes back with 'no, they don't,' what is your response?


If anything has reduced my enthusiasm for actually playing RPGs, it's the way that the "this is a game, these are playing pieces" approach, and the "this is a story, you are telling a story, we are all telling a story together" approach, along with the argument between them, have come to dominate the hobby, leaving anyone who doesn't buy into the One True Way that either side pushes to sit on the sideline and get yelled at as both Wrong and "obviously" part of the "other side" if they dare to speak up.

It's been my experience that this sort of thing is more prevalent amongst the people who aren't actually playing RPGs, but merely discussing them on the internet. When the dice actually meet the table I've found people's reaction is much more 'look, I don't give two figs about your grand theory regarding what the game is 'about,' I'm playing a half-elf fighter in a fantasy world/Vampire in 1990s Chicago/Ork Cybershaman in fantasy-modern Seattle and making them do what they'd do in the situation my GM presents.' People shouting others down for badwrongfun seems to (me to) be predominantly an internet navel-gazing thing.

[King of Nowhere]

Did you ever enjoy rules complexity first?

IMX many if not most players go through the phases of discovering the hobby, getting into rules interactions and complex character building, then moving back away from that. There are some who start with roleplaying elitism (not to say that was you) and distancing rules out the gate, but other than that it's by far the most common to get into rules complexity, followed by dialing it back.

opposite case here. I liked to keep things simple. I disliked multicalssing and prestige classes and other things making complications.

After a long time of playing "yet another single-classed cleric" i started to appreciate the greater variability offered by complex rules.

[Tanarii]

Whereas your definition of "immersion" seems to border on "delusion".Ha! I sure that's a comparison often made. :smallamused:


<Underlining added>
This is the part you actually have to support with a functional argument. You are declaring it to be true, but not presenting a supporting argument. If someone comes back with 'no, they don't,' what is your response?
I'd express my confusion and ask them to explain it. And now we've come full circle to where I originally did that, and triggered someone. (Edit: Which btw I blame on my delivery.)

Just like I would if some called sitting around eating high calorie stuff "great exercise".

[JNAProductions]

Okay, I'll try again then. It's by definition.

Immersion is believing yourself to be within/surrounded by (the thing).

Miniatures and token decrease that, by definition.

(And again, a mistake I made was assuming that battlemats come with miniatures and tokens as stand-ins / representatives for the characters, but that seems like a reasonable assumption.)

That's not a supported argument. That's just a statement with no backing.

And, as an opinion, that's fine. You don't need to back up opinions with a litany of facts-it can be as simple "That's how I feel," and that's that. But you're presenting it as a universal fact-when it is not.

To address the thread itself, I can't think of much that I used to like and no longer. I've grown fonder of simpler systems over the years, but I still like a good crunchy system sometimes. Different things for different times, and different people.

Edit: Tanarii, let me put it this way.

For some people, seeing the map and the tokens take them out of the story. They start focusing on it as a game, one where they have omniscient view over everything.
For other people, it helps them place the various allies, enemies, and environment with much greater accuracy and with less mental overhead than trying to keep it all straight in the mind does.

Plus, it also ensures consistency across the various people at the table-I've had Theater of the Mind combats where people thought they were closer/farther from various things than they actually were, and a map solves that.

[OldTrees1]

I'd express my confusion and ask them to explain it. And now we've come full circle to where I originally did that, and triggered someone. (Edit: Which btw I blame on my delivery.)

Just like I would if some called sitting around eating high calorie stuff "great exercise".


PS: Sorry Tanarii, but I am yet another that finds maps more immersive than theater of the mind. The players can only see what the DM lets them see. For me, pictures like maps can describe relative position in more vivid detail than the same effort put into theater of the mind. With a map I can see much more through my PC's eyes than I can with theater of the mind. I think it is best to accept that the impact of maps on immersion is highly subjective.

For the same amount of effort on the GM's part, I can see more through my character's eyes when I use a figurine on a battle map than I can when doing theater of mind. This is partially "a picture is worth a thousand words". Something about knowing the positioning helps me believe myself to be within/surrounded by the character/situation.

However this effect is highly subjective and depends on 2 factors:
1) How immersion breaking referencing the figurine is. (very high for you, very low for me)
2) How much the increased detail helps the immersion. (very high for me, very low for you)
This explains your confusion.

[Jay R]

Ah but, are there mechanical, approach, or world design decisions that would improve or degrade your trust in a GM?

Not really, no. If I am noticing those things enough for them to affect the game, then the GM has already failed.

Last Sunday, I was concerned with rescuing the squirrelfolk slave from the six-foot kobold guards who had re-captured him, and with stopping the other six-foot kobolds with the charmed dragon from attacking the bariaur.

I barely noticed the mechanics. Even when rolling the dice, I was concerned with whether my fire attack would do enough damage to stop the dragon, not whether I "rolled high on damage" or whether he "made his saving throw". [Yes, I'm human; I was as annoyed as anyone else when I rolled 29 points of damage on a 10d6 fireball. But I was very quickly brought back in by a DM who interpreted it in D&D-world terms and described the kobolds' reactions.

That's the mark of a good GM.

I can enjoy a good game of original D&D with its 29 8½x11 inch pages (folded over) of rules, or with 3.5e, with its near infinite rule books.

I can enjoy the complexity of Champions or the simplicity of Flashing Blades. In all cases, a good enough GM will keep you focused on the suspenseful situation.

Other than a GM who isn't keeping you focused on the situation, rather than the game, the most immersion-killing aspect is another player who complains about the mechanics or the game system. But that doesn't fit the topic of this thread; I never enjoyed that.

[Quertus]

One can argue that Battlemats reduce immersion; however, doing so is intellectually dishonest without comparing / acknowledging how much the alternatives reduce immersion.

Personally, I find that being able to personally visualize the scene via minis etc, and understand that "I hide under the table by the tree", is better for my immersion than playing 20 questions with the GM for half an hour until i can visualize the scene well enough to understand what my character would do.

*Any* form of "needing to gather information to understand the scene and interact in the shared idea-space" reduces immersion; actually seeing it for yourself is a way to gather that information, and the form that I, personally, find most natural.

[KineticDiplomat]

Re: the great map debate.

I find this actually varies with systems. There are some systems that deliberately revolve around cinematic spacing and assumed action economy - savage worlds, Blades in the Dark, the Expanse, SR Anarchy, etc. - where the intent is that even if being realistic the environment and opposition mostly exists only in the context of the PC. In these systems, maps beyond the most basic sketches can be actively detrimental to both gameplay and immersion (does Conan have a map when he’s charging down the hallway chopping mooks?).

On the other end there are systems where PCs act almost entirely in the context of an existing environment, and in very discrete (in the mathematical sense) possibilities. In those systems, the immersion comes from being able to rapidly visualize and assess the situation without needing to either query the GM constantly (well how far is it to that wall? Is the bad guy at the bottom, middle, or near top of the stair case? Are my friends near where the grenade/fireball might go off?) or end up with disappointment when the mind theaters of multiple people conflict. A character might not know it’s EXACTLY 102m to the river, but most would be able to intuit that it’s about a football field away, that the right side path goes up hill a bit and there’s a swamp on the left, and that really big tree in between is either an obstacle or cover, and then keep that spatial awareness in their head near intuitively as they act. If that sort of information is important to the system, then it is almost certainly more immersive and better gameplay to have easy access to it than not to.

[kyoryu]

I do think the more attention you're paying to the grid, the less attention you're paying to the imaginary space.

From observation, the more grid-based effects there are, the more people focus on the grid.

That's not good or bad, it just is. There's advantages to having grid-based effects, too, as it's a very rich space for interesting gameplay decisions.

You can still have a representation of the space without getting into that - usually by keeping it deliberately crude and not treating it as authoritative in the details - IOW, yes, those characters are over there, but that's not necessarily their position relative to each other.

[Jay R]

People are different.

The grid is distracting for some people, and reduces immersion. There's nothing wrong with that.

I find that the grid makes the mechanics part easier and quicker, so I can get back to thinking about the situation. This aids immersion. There's nothing wrong with that either.

People are different.

[Anonymouswizard]

Is anybody compiling a list? I think we should add 'multi page threads where people argue over a difference of opinion'.

Of course, to be truly classic we'll raise we're all in agreement by about page seventeen.

[kyoryu]

People are different.

The grid is distracting for some people, and reduces immersion. There's nothing wrong with that.

I find that the grid makes the mechanics part easier and quicker, so I can get back to thinking about the situation. This aids immersion. There's nothing wrong with that either.

Hrm. Would be curious about what system that's in.

I mean, definitely, if a system has lots of things that suggest a grid would be useful, I can see that. Like, trying to force No Grid on a system that has a lot of things that depend on precise positioning would increase the time to resolve like anything.

[Willie the Duck]

I'd express my confusion and ask them to explain it.
That's what people are doing of you. You have stated a position, declared it to be true 'by definition,' and then failed to back it up with a substantive argument or support of your position.

And really, you don't have to. All of this can be predicated with an assumed 'if you want to convince anyone other than yourself...'

Even then, I don't care. I'm not even sure I'd disagree with the position (although I'd be clear that it would be an 'IMO' situation). I'm just at this point mildly perplexed and vaguely curious as to how we have gotten this far with the concept of 'but you have to show your work (if you want to convince others)' not getting through.

[Kraynic]

As far as the map bit, I never played with detailed maps until recently (online play). Never played using minis or maps while playing in person all the way back to my start in the '80s. It does seem more difficult to describe things well enough to do without maps for people that are used to having them. But I think it is more a matter of training and habit than anything else. My lament with maps is that it seems to be really confining sometimes. They are great for tight spaces, but when people want everything mapped out to the closest foot while outside... You get ridiculously huge maps if you have a small enough scale to really have the characters show while having a large enough area for somewhat realistic ranged combat. I guess that is why you get penalized when firing at what are really pretty close ranges in Pathfinder for example. It helps keep people from trying to engage with archery at 300 feet when a lot of (digital anyway) maps are in the 75-90 ft range from one side to another.

I think that is the only problem with maps. They can be great for smallish locations, regional/world maps, but once the scale of the map compared to the character/token/unit you are controlling gets beyond a certain point, they get to be a problem in my experience. Still, I think it comes down to what people are used to as far as immersion goes. If I had always been around maps and minis maybe I would want maps at all scales of engagement.

Back on the main topic...
What I have come to dislike is when combat is the primary mechanism for character advancement. Rolling dice, killing things, and taking their stuff was just fine years back, and I had a lot of fun with that sort of play. Now, I want a game to be able to be more flexible on the sorts of characters and adventures it supports without needing to make pretzels with the rules. I want the world around the characters to make sense based on whatever sort of advancement there is. I guess as an extension of that, I don't really like combat as much anymore. I don't mind it, I just don't find it all that interesting anymore unless it really has to do with what the characters are doing or is just integral to the environment. Random encounters for the next 1d4 wolves I can definitely live without.

[Max_Killjoy]

People are different.

The grid is distracting for some people, and reduces immersion. There's nothing wrong with that.

I find that the grid makes the mechanics part easier and quicker, so I can get back to thinking about the situation. This aids immersion. There's nothing wrong with that either.

People are different.


Exactly.

Something I've never liked about gaming is being told how my own enjoyment works by someone else.

[Tanarii]

I'm just at this point mildly perplexed and vaguely curious as to how we have gotten this far with the concept of 'but you have to show your work (if you want to convince others)' not getting through.
Probably because I've shown my work 3-4 times already, and yet you keep claiming I'm not.

Meanwhile, most people seem to be focusing on a counterpoint of increased immersion due to a diagram/map. Which may or may not be a valid counterpoint, I haven't thought about it in detail with how it works with what immersion is. But it does seem likely to me that it would increase immersion (by definition), at first glance.

Then it becomes, as OldTrees1 says, a question of degree each of the two opposite effects. Which may be individual effects.

[OldTrees1]

Meanwhile, most people seem to be focusing on a counterpoint of increased immersion due to a diagram/map. Which may or may not be a valid counterpoint, I haven't thought about it in detail with how it works with what immersion is. But it does seem likely to me that it would increase immersion (by definition), at first glance.

Then it becomes, as OldTrees1 says, a question of degree each of the two opposite effects. Which may be individual effects.

Thank you for considering it. I think a lot of things have this same subjective effect resulting from these opposed cost/benefit effects.


Probably because I've shown my work 3-4 times already, and yet you keep claiming I'm not.

A lot of your work relied on a premise that the aggregate effect of "Miniatures and token decrease <immersion>, by definition". However it was that claim in particular that was contentious. As you can see from the counterpoint you are now considering, there might be two opposite effects and it is possible that maybe the aggregate effect might not always be a decrease. Since we respect you too much to assume you were intentionally begging the question, the safer assumption was you were not showing your work to back up that contentious premise.

This might explain why we did not feel you showed your work, but you feel you showed your work 3-5 times already (I increased the count since I don't know if it included itself). I hope this can help deescalate the frustration. This is also why I made sure to try to explain my experience rather than request you show work.

[kyoryu]

I also think people are using "immersion" in different ways.

[OldTrees1]

Hrm. Would be curious about what system that's in.

I mean, definitely, if a system has lots of things that suggest a grid would be useful, I can see that. Like, trying to force No Grid on a system that has a lot of things that depend on precise positioning would increase the time to resolve like anything.

I can't answer for Jay, but I find this effect in D&D (even 5E). The exact strength of the effect also varies based upon the situation. Although it varies based on the situation I don't find it to vary much based on the system. 3E uses the grid more than 5E but I don't notice a difference in the immersion effect. I wonder if I would notice a difference between 5E and 4E (since 4E uses the grid even more).


I also think people are using "immersion" in different ways.

I was using Tanarii's definition (unintentionally initially but intentionally so after they elaborated on the definition they were using).




Oh and topic tax:

I used to like feat trees. Now I prefer synergistic feats where either one could be taken 2nd to unlock the greater effect. However I also like prerequisite to soft level gate effects rather than feat trees to hard level gate effects.

[RandomPeasant]

Probably because I've shown my work 3-4 times already, and yet you keep claiming I'm not.

Because your "work" amounts to "I am using a definition of the term by which I am correct", and that's not really an interesting or meaningful argument. I could define "immersion" as meaning "a precise understanding of the conditions of the game world as it pertains to your character", and that would make a battlemap and miniatures definitionally good for immersion because they increase the precision with which we understand what's going on. But I think that would pretty obviously not be a useful way of engaging with your position.

[MoiMagnus]

Okay, I'll try again then. It's by definition.

Immersion is believing yourself to be within/surrounded by (the thing).

Miniatures and token decrease that, by definition.

(And again, a mistake I made was assuming that battlemats come with miniatures and tokens as stand-ins / representatives for the characters, but that seems like a reasonable assumption.)

The core of your argument seems to be that a bad visual support is worse than no visual support. While that's true in the extreme, it's definitely not the case to the same extend for everyone.

Some peoples are much more likely to lose tracks of important informations or lose focus on the action, in absence of a visual support. And misremembering/misunderstanding the current situation is much more immersion-breaking than having miniatures/tokens.

And after the few conversations I had with my friends on how differently peoples are able to imagine things when they read, I'm not at all surprised that some peoples are almost unable to find immersion without a significant visual support, even one as imperfect as a battlemap with miniatures/tokens.

[Cluedrew]

I consider that making characters in a story "act in the way that makes the 'best story' " to be something that ruined hundred thousands of stories by making the characters incoherent with themselves just because it was what the plot needed.Every time this comes up (both people using this defence and people campaigning about it) people have confused the story and the plot. In my books there are three main building blocks to a story: plot (what happens), character (who it happens to) and setting (where it all happens). When people claim things are for the sake of a good story they usually mean they are sacrificing character or setting for plot. And sometimes this trade-off is worth it - or other things can be adjusted to make the not a trade-off - but it is a trade-off and people shouldn't forget that.


Saving the World (again)Also Known As: Increasing the stakes does not make me care more. This is my main issue with a lot of module-style/linear campaigns because I don't care about the main plot. Now sometimes you can still have fun slotting your characters into this formula, which is why I put it under "I like other things more" group in my list.

[HumanFighter]

I'm kind of with Tanarii on this one. I prefer Theater of the Mind all the way. Like whenever I play D&D with my group, I always roll my eyes when the battelematt comes out, saying to myself,
"Well, I guess I know what we'll be doing for the next 2-4 Hours. This long fight. Ergh."
I like my RPG fights at tabletop to be quick, dirty, and deadly. Pulling out the matt for that every time is just annoying. Finding enough space, knocking over everyone's drinks while you slide the matt on the table, setting the pieces and miniatures. Feels like less of an RPG and more of like a board game now. Maybe I'm just playing the wrong games with the wrong people, I don't know.
As for immersion, I don't care one way or the other if the matt disturbs or enhances immersion, because I gave up on immersion years ago. You can try to get immersed with your character but there's no point because someone will inevitably bring OOC bias and drama into the game itself, targeting your character and singling him/her out because they want to get back at you for a perceived wrongdoing, or maybe they just don't like my face. I don't know. There's my two cents on the matter.
So sorry everyone's been ganging up on you Tanarii.

[Anonymouswizard]

Also Known As: Increasing the stakes does not make me care more. This is my main issue with a lot of module-style/linear campaigns because I don't care about the main plot. Now sometimes you can still have fun slotting your characters into this formula, which is why I put it under "I like other things more" group in my list.

Yeah, all of my favourite games have had city level stakes, partially because it's easier to connect the characters into it. The best villains to take down and epic confrontations weren't with the lich who wanted to destroy the world, they were with the corrupt official trying to turn the law against the party, or the local priest who'd been inciting the conflict for personal gain.

Saving the world is fine, but I'd rather have the world from a villain I care about. More often I'm more concerned with my character's arc of improving his reputation so the priesthood well let him join or whatever.

[Tanarii]

So sorry everyone's been ganging up on you Tanarii.
It's happened before, it'll happen again. /shrug I don't take it personally.

Besides, as usual if I look back I can see where I set myself up for it. :smallamused:

[Max_Killjoy]

I'm kind of with Tanarii on this one. I prefer Theater of the Mind all the way. Like whenever I play D&D with my group, I always roll my eyes when the battelematt comes out, saying to myself,
"Well, I guess I know what we'll be doing for the next 2-4 Hours. This long fight. Ergh."
I like my RPG fights at tabletop to be quick, dirty, and deadly. Pulling out the matt for that every time is just annoying. Finding enough space, knocking over everyone's drinks while you slide the matt on the table, setting the pieces and miniatures. Feels like less of an RPG and more of like a board game now. Maybe I'm just playing the wrong games with the wrong people, I don't know.
As for immersion, I don't care one way or the other if the matt disturbs or enhances immersion, because I gave up on immersion years ago. You can try to get immersed with your character but there's no point because someone will inevitably bring OOC bias and drama into the game itself, targeting your character and singling him/her out because they want to get back at you for a perceived wrongdoing, or maybe they just don't like my face. I don't know. There's my two cents on the matter.
So sorry everyone's been ganging up on you Tanarii.

I don't think anyone is saying that personally finding maps and miniatures less immersive is bad or wrong.

Where people are objecting is in the claim that they're less immersive objectively, universally, or "by definition".


Personally, I like to get out a piece of paper and draw a rough map of major objects and obstacles, and where characters are, real quick, so that the game doesn't get lost in a series of "but I thought you said..."

[Drogorn]

I'm kind of with Tanarii on this one. I prefer Theater of the Mind all the way. Like whenever I play D&D with my group, I always roll my eyes when the battelematt comes out, saying to myself,
"Well, I guess I know what we'll be doing for the next 2-4 Hours. This long fight. Ergh."
I like my RPG fights at tabletop to be quick, dirty, and deadly.

So very much this. I'm utterly sick of battlemats, to the point that the next time my friends want to do a campaign using one I may just not join.

[Max_Killjoy]

I think maybe there's some gap in assumptions about what "maps" and "battlemats" refer to.

[Tanarii]

I think maybe there's some gap in assumptions about what "maps" and "battlemats" refer to.
There may be.

When I think "map" I think either a DM handout, a player drawn map to track where they've been, or ...

Personally, I like to get out a piece of paper and draw a rough map of major objects and obstacles, and where characters are, real quick, so that the game doesn't get lost in a series of "but I thought you said..."

When I think battlemat I think ...


Like whenever I play D&D with my group, I always roll my eyes when the battelematt comes out, saying to myself,
"Well, I guess I know what we'll be doing for the next 2-4 Hours. This long fight. Ergh."
I like my RPG fights at tabletop to be quick, dirty, and deadly. Pulling out the matt for that every time is just annoying. Finding enough space, knocking over everyone's drinks while you slide the matt on the table, setting the pieces and miniatures. Feels like less of an RPG and more of like a board game now. Maybe I'm just playing the wrong games with the wrong people, I don't know.

OTOH I keep the battlemat always on the table, we just put everything on top of it. Even with setup, I can usually knock a 5e battle with 5-6 players out in less than 45 minutes.

But compared to theatre of the mind with sketch references on a white board, battlemats take roughly an extra ten minutes due to setup and slower player turns, as they overthink their options more often.

It's been a while since I did straight theatre of the mind for anything but simple of combat, but I'd hazard a guess it was on par with battlemats time wise, and slower than TotM+diagrams because of clarification questions.

[Cluedrew]

"Well, I guess I know what we'll be doing for the next 2-4 Hours. This long fight. Ergh."Yeah, I remember someone talking about how 5e sped up combat and they could finish an average fight in 45minutes and I was just thinking: I was looking for five. This would never happen (for several reasons) but I always have a vision of someone trying to spring a "deep" combat system on me and as they are pulling out the minis just looking at them and asking for the combat's DC. Impossible, but it gets the point across: Why spend so much more time on this than anything else? I guess because it is its own draw but I'm not into switching between two games back and forth.


It's happened before, it'll happen again. /shrug I don't take it personally.That you do not. To an impressive extent. Anyways, I didn't want to say anything while things were heated but I think I have exactly two cents for this topic.

But really I think the issue is "Immersion is a Meaningless Phrase". There are so many things in a game you can be immersed in and ways to be immersed that its kind of like just saying gameplay. Except you don't even have to be playing. If I'm watching other players do a scene without my character I think I could be immersed in the game and the fiction layer but I'm not thinking about being in character at all.


I think maybe there's some gap in assumptions about what "maps" and "battlemats" refer to.What is the gap? Or what would it be if its there?

[Tanarii]

But really I think the issue is "Immersion is a Meaningless Phrase"
I think after this thread I'm moving it into that category. 😂😂😂

[Max_Killjoy]

What is the gap? Or what would it be if its there?


That we start out talking about visual representation of what's going on, using maps of some sort, and some people picture quickly sketched and drawn on things to keep general positions and movement straight for everyone at the table, and other picture exacting measurements and plotting used to drive core mechanics.

[martixy]

I'm not sure I would qualify it as "love", but I used to be way more simulationist. At one point it just sort of clicked that's not how the game works. No TTRPG can do a good job at that. It's reductionist and abstract by its very nature. These days I view any successful simulationism as a happy and welcome accident.

Otherwise...
I still like complex systems and character building.
I still like saving the world plots. (Mixed with personal stories. I started that way and haven't changed. Think Avatar: The last airbender.)
Don't like Theater of the mind and like having a map. I may have aphantasia of indeterminate severity and definitely need visual aids for spatial reasoning.
Like high magic. Which is not at all incompatible with swords.
Rolling dice is fun, but gets old fast. If I need to roll more than 10 dice at the same time, I'm using a computer. There's no sense in wasting time into something that will strongly tend towards the mean anyway. 20+? Might as well multiply by the average and move on.
Never liked XP.



Symmetry between PCs and NPCs. I used to think it's important that they use the same rules, as otherwise it's not realistic. I've come to realize that trying to keep such symmetry is often more trouble than it's worth. Obviously it's going to depend on the system, but PCs and NPCs are always going to serve different purposes in the game and what works for one won't work for the other. Not to mention that it's not actually very realistic for everyone to learn and use the same abilities in the same way.

This one caught my eye.

I believe in symmetry. Just of a different kind.
I think an NPC with a character sheet should be able to do anything an NPC without a character sheet can.

A PC is just a character in the game controlled by a player that's not the DM.


P.S. This thread has once again turned to a question of semantics, as all long running threads on these boards tend to. It's honestly a fascinating study in effective communication.

[Batcathat]

This one caught my eye.

I believe in symmetry. Just of a different kind.
I think an NPC with a character sheet should be able to do anything an NPC without a character sheet can.

A PC is just a character in the game controlled by a player that's not the DM.

This sounds a lot like my opinion on the matter too. I don't mind if NPCs are built a different way than PCs, but I do mind if they can do things PCs explicitly can't (or the other way around). That is, if there's no in-universe explanation. It's okay if the Big Bad has some special ability because of their race or thanks to some dark ritual, but the PCs better be able to have the same ability if they're part of the same race or start sacrificing orphans to the Dark Lord or whatever.

[Morty]

This sounds a lot like my opinion on the matter too. I don't mind if NPCs are built a different way than PCs, but I do mind if they can do things PCs explicitly can't (or the other way around). That is, if there's no in-universe explanation. It's okay if the Big Bad has some special ability because of their race or thanks to some dark ritual, but the PCs better be able to have the same ability if they're part of the same race or start sacrificing orphans to the Dark Lord or whatever.

I see this brought up a lot, but in my experience, PCs have abilities unattainable to NPCs just as often, if not more so. NPC profiles in games with less symmetry tend to be slimmed down and simplified to keep things easier. And either way, it doesn't bother me. Abilities for PCs and NPCs have different needs and some things just don't work for both of them.

[noob]

I see this brought up a lot, but in my experience, PCs have abilities unattainable to NPCs just as often, if not more so. NPC profiles in games with less symmetry tend to be slimmed down and simplified to keep things easier. And either way, it doesn't bother me. Abilities for PCs and NPCs have different needs and some things just don't work for both of them.

But why would the adventurer not be able to sacrifice babies to heal their own wounds and become younger?
The demon lord that granted that boon to the bbeg would definitively have in their own best interest to grant it to that stronger adventurer that will probably work for them if given cool boons.
let us face it: the gm just does not like verisimilitude and allowing the adventurers to do the evil rituals the bbeg does. It is not a matter of "symmetry being odd" because the adventurer would be willing to act like a bbeg and to plot the downfall of civilisation in exchange for boons and justifications to kill babies.
As for adventurers abilities only it is odd too if the adventurer does X right after going to wizard school and that nobody else going to the same school gets that ability: you should at least be able to find some npcs with that ability in the school (even if it is a non 100% identical variant of the ability).

[Batcathat]

I see this brought up a lot, but in my experience, PCs have abilities unattainable to NPCs just as often, if not more so. NPC profiles in games with less symmetry tend to be slimmed down and simplified to keep things easier. And either way, it doesn't bother me. Abilities for PCs and NPCs have different needs and some things just don't work for both of them.

I don't like PCs having abilities NPCs can't possibly get either. It bothers me since the PC/NPC divide exists only from an OOC perspective and thus messes with my suspension of disbelief if it affects IC abilities. NPCs being simplied is fine, it's "NPC can't never ever do this, it's a PC ability" that I don't like.

[Max_Killjoy]

I don't like PCs having abilities NPCs can't possibly get either. It bothers me since the PC/NPC divide exists only from an OOC perspective and thus messes with my suspension of disbelief if it affects IC abilities. NPCs being simplied is fine, it's "NPC can't never ever do this, it's a PC ability" that I don't like.

Same here.

If a thing is possible within the world/setting of the game or campaign, then it's possible, full stop. Without a very specific in world/setting reason supporting PC/NPC divides (not in character building, but in how they interact with the rest of the rules and what abilities they have access to), this is a hard-no factor when I evaluate game systems.

[noob]

Same here.

If a thing is possible within the world/setting of the game or campaign, then it's possible, full stop. Without a very specific in world/setting reason supporting PC/NPC divides (not in character building, but in how they interact with the rest of the rules and what abilities they have access to), this is a hard-no factor when I evaluate game systems.

In will save the world for gold the setting officially had a "npc, adventurer divide" and a part of the plot in the story is that a specific npc became an adventurer and it started breaking the rules of the universe itself.

[Satinavian]

I see this brought up a lot, but in my experience, PCs have abilities unattainable to NPCs just as often, if not more so. NPC profiles in games with less symmetry tend to be slimmed down and simplified to keep things easier. And either way, it doesn't bother me. Abilities for PCs and NPCs have different needs and some things just don't work for both of them.
I see many slimmed down profiles even in games that don't have such a rule divide. It is just assumed that the stat block represents the likely relevant numbers and abilities of the NPC given their role, but certainly not all of them.

[Batcathat]

I see many slimmed down profiles even in games that don't have such a rule divide. It is just assumed that the stat block represents the likely relevant numbers and abilities of the NPC given their role, but certainly not all of them.

Just to be clear, I don't mind stuff like that. If there's no reason to assume an NPC will use skill X, I understand not putting it in the stat block. My issue is with NPCs not being able to use skill X at all, on account of being NPCs.

[Willie the Duck]

But why would the adventurer not be able to sacrifice babies to heal their own wounds and become younger?
The demon lord that granted that boon to the bbeg would definitively have in their own best interest to grant it to that stronger adventurer that will probably work for them if given cool boons.
let us face it: the gm just does not like verisimilitude and allowing the adventurers to do the evil rituals the bbeg does. It is not a matter of "symmetry being odd" because the adventurer would be willing to act like a bbeg and to plot the downfall of civilisation in exchange for boons and justifications to kill babies.
A DM should have a specific explanation for this, if it is something all sorts* of NPC BBEQ have done, but once a PC tries it, it fails. When it comes to rule sets, I'm a little more forgiving with them simply not having included a baby sacrificer class (some combination of 'we didn't know anyone would want one,' and, 'WoD/D&D3 tried that a few times, and those products have been near-universally panned.'). But yes, the GM had better be prepared for the PCs to say, 'ultimate power? Sign me up!'
*Because if exactly one BBEG has done so, I'm fine with the granting demon lord having not mass-produced the ability


Just to be clear, I don't mind stuff like that. If there's no reason to assume an NPC will use skill X, I understand not putting it in the stat block. My issue is with NPCs not being able to use skill X at all, on account of being NPCs.
Can you think of a specific example? Something beyond 'there are no NPCs in the NPC/Monster section who happen to have this.' and an actual prohibition-level thing?

[Max_Killjoy]

A DM should have a specific explanation for this, if it is something all sorts* of NPC BBEQ have done, but once a PC tries it, it fails. When it comes to rule sets, I'm a little more forgiving with them simply not having included a baby sacrificer class (some combination of 'we didn't know anyone would want one,' and, 'WoD/D&D3 tried that a few times, and those products have been near-universally panned.'). But yes, the GM had better be prepared for the PCs to say, 'ultimate power? Sign me up!'
*Because if exactly one BBEG has done so, I'm fine with the granting demon lord having not mass-produced the ability


Can you think of a specific example? Something beyond 'there are no NPCs in the NPC/Monster section who happen to have this.' and an actual prohibition-level thing?

There are a lot of systems now where NPCs are not just built using different rules, but also have divergent mechanics or lists of abilities.

For example, the game Sentinels of the Multiverse -- the PCs are heroic superhumans and have specific ability lists, while the NPCs are either villainous superhumans with entirely different lists of abilities, or built using entirely threadbare stat blocks, a single die compared to three for resolution, etc.

Or the games where the players do ALL the rolling, and all NPCs have things that the players roll against and the GM never ever picks up a single die.

[Telok]

Can you think of a specific example? Something beyond 'there are no NPCs in the NPC/Monster section who happen to have this.' and an actual prohibition-level thing?

Similar. Pazio's Starfinder game, npcs vs. pcs.

Npc: https://www.aonsrd.com/AlienDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Dragonkin&Family=None
Pc: https://www.aonsrd.com/Races.aspx?ItemName=Dragonkin

Resitances: npc has immunity to fire sleep and paralysis, pc has immunity to sleep a +2 vs paralysis and resist 5 fire.

Breath weapon: npc has a 9d6 ref16 for half with a 1d4 recharge, pc has a 1d6 + 1.5xLevel ref(10+con mod+half level) for half with a 1/rest recharge.

Flight: npc 120', pc 30' and at levels 1-4 they fall at the end of a move.

There's no way in the game for the pc race to get the npc abilities and no way for a rules legal npc to have the pc versions. Technically you supposedly could stat a pc character for use as an npc but you are explicitly not to do that. Part of their balancing is predicated by pcs and npcs having different offense/defense ratios and using a pc style npc breaks that.

[Lord Torath]

Can you think of a specific example? Something beyond 'there are no NPCs in the NPC/Monster section who happen to have this.' and an actual prohibition-level thing?2E AD&D. Halflings in the Monstrous Manual get a +3 to hit with slings and bows. PC halflings in the PHB get +1 to hit with slings and thrown weapons. I think elves have a similar discrepancy.

[FilthyLucre]

Theatre of mind combat.

I get a lot of people like it - and I understand why - but for me and my player's it basically ruins the game. Are the two creatures within 15' of each other? I, as the DM, get to make that decision based on... caprice. So instead of being able to directly point at where things are position and in relation to each other, I'm having to just make up whether or not the PCs abilities work in such-and-such way.

IMHO, if one prefers theatre of mine combat I don't see a principled reason to have almost any rules whatsoever and just enjoy a session of collaborative story telling. It's just not for me/my group.

[Batcathat]

I get a lot of people like it - and I understand why - but for me and my player's it basically ruins the game. Are the two creatures within 15' of each other? I, as the DM, get to make that decision based on... caprice. So instead of being able to directly point at where things are position and in relation to each other, I'm having to just make up whether or not the PCs abilities work in such-and-such way.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but why would theater of mind automatically make combat arbitrary like this? Just because the GM can't point to a detailed map of the battlefield doesn't mean the combatants aren't in specific places in relation to each other. Sure, playing theater of mind probably means the players might have a harder time understanding exactly where everyone is in relation to each other and the GM has an easier time fudging things in one direction or another if they want to, but neither is a certainty.

[kyoryu]

Maybe I'm missing something here, but why would theater of mind automatically make combat arbitrary like this? Just because the GM can't point to a detailed map of the battlefield doesn't mean the combatants aren't in specific places in relation to each other. Sure, playing theater of mind probably means the players might have a harder time understanding exactly where everyone is in relation to each other and the GM has an easier time fudging things in one direction or another if they want to, but neither is a certainty.

The trick is that a game relying on TotM combat shouldn't worry about that level of precision.

[Xervous]

Theatre of mind combat.

I get a lot of people like it - and I understand why - but for me and my player's it basically ruins the game. Are the two creatures within 15' of each other? I, as the DM, get to make that decision based on... caprice. So instead of being able to directly point at where things are position and in relation to each other, I'm having to just make up whether or not the PCs abilities work in such-and-such way.

IMHO, if one prefers theatre of mine combat I don't see a principled reason to have almost any rules whatsoever and just enjoy a session of collaborative story telling. It's just not for me/my group.

I used to be against it but I’ve seen the utility for brief scenes where combat initiates with trivial opponents. Just a step short of an auto battle option really.

[Batcathat]

The trick is that a game relying on TotM combat shouldn't worry about that level of precision.

Oh sure, I just mean that if the PCs have an ability with a 15' range, the GM should probably decide in advance what enemies are within that range. Nothing fancy, just something like "Bandit A, B and C are close to the party, bandits D and E are not". Otherwise, I could see FilthyLucre's point.

[FilthyLucre]

Oh sure, I just mean that if the PCs have an ability with a 15' range, the GM should probably decide in advance what enemies are within that range. Nothing fancy, just something like "Bandit A, B and C are close to the party, bandits D and E are not". Otherwise, I could see FilthyLucre's point.

It's not just an issue of range, but precision relation between two points/positions. My players don't want things to happen because I decide they happen, they want to plan their turns around definite, objective positions.

[FilthyLucre]

Maybe I'm missing something here, but why would theater of mind automatically make combat arbitrary like this? Just because the GM can't point to a detailed map of the battlefield doesn't mean the combatants aren't in specific places in relation to each other. Sure, playing theater of mind probably means the players might have a harder time understanding exactly where everyone is in relation to each other and the GM has an easier time fudging things in one direction or another if they want to, but neither is a certainty.

I never want to *need* to fudge anything. At any given time, all the players should be able to agree on exactly where they and enemies are - I can't achieve that in theatre of mind combat.

[kyoryu]

It's not just an issue of range, but precision relation between two points/positions. My players don't want things to happen because I decide they happen, they want to plan their turns around definite, objective positions.

Right. Which is my point was 'if a system requires that level of precision, you probably want a grid".

[martixy]

Right. Which is my point was 'if a system group requires that level of precision, you probably want a grid".

Poor choice of words.

This is me btw, I do not enjoy ambiguity.

[Telok]

Right. Which is my point was 'if a system requires that level of precision, you probably want a grid".

I'd say "map" instead. Two groups with modern/future weapons & communications trying to ambush each other in a ruined city and you care about sight lines, building height, etc., over distances of a kilometer or more. If your system does it in a single roll then you can escape maps, otherwise it's a bit difficult to ensure that you the DM are being fair. And that's just not going to play nice on a 2m per inch grid.

I've had mild success at breaking people from grids by using it as a rough scale measure for a map and intentionally placing minis, tokens, etc., across grid lines/intersections.

[Xervous]

I'd say "map" instead. Two groups with modern/future weapons & communications trying to ambush each other in a ruined city and you care about sight lines, building height, etc., over distances of a kilometer or more. If your system does it in a single roll then you can escape maps, otherwise it's a bit difficult to ensure that you the DM are being fair. And that's just not going to play nice on a 2m per inch grid.

I've had mild success at breaking people from grids by using it as a rough scale measure for a map and intentionally placing minis, tokens, etc., across grid lines/intersections.

Curse you for sparking an idea. I may have to code or grab a module for gridless movement in foundry. Surely it can’t be that hard... right?

[Telok]

Curse you for sparking an idea. I may have to code or grab a module for gridless movement in foundry. Surely it can’t be that hard... right?

One way to fake it, in programming at least don't know about foundry, is to set the grid really small and only display every Xth line. Say go from a 2m x 2m grid to a 20cm x 20cm grid, 10x all the objects, and only display every 10th line.

[Batcathat]

I never want to *need* to fudge anything. At any given time, all the players should be able to agree on exactly where they and enemies are - I can't achieve that in theatre of mind combat.

And I'm not saying that's mandatory in theater of mind type combat. I'm saying they could, not that they must or that they should.


Right. Which is my point was 'if a system requires that level of precision, you probably want a grid".

Sure, it might be the better choice for some styles of combat. I wouldn't have argued against "I don't like theater of mind since it's less precise", I argued against "I don't like theater of mind since it means the GM makes arbitrary decisions".

[Darth Paul]

I'm dead certain this has been addressed in the thread already, heck, I think it was obliquely addressed in the opening post, but here's my take anyway:

"Realistic" combat systems. Systems that try to simulate actual gunfire/melee/fisticuffs, to the point that they reduce it to 2.5 second combat rounds (I'm lookin' at you, Phoenix Command) and have a detailed range, accuracy and penetration/damage chart for every single weapon.

Yes, it removed the "ridiculous" factor that came with being able to theoretically shoot someone from 1 foot away in the head with a .44 Magnum and only do 2 points of damage, i.e. a scratch, but then again so do the coup de grace rules, and any halfway competent GM could make those up on the fly- as indeed I did. ("He dispatches you. No, I'm not going to roll the dice. Roll a new character.")

It was fun for a while, seeing exactly where someone gets hit, working out the factors affecting your accuracy, paring down the weight of every piece of equipment so your character had the best possible gear:action point ratio; but when it takes 2 hours to resolve a 2 minute encounter, something's out of whack. In real life people don't think, move, or react that fast.

Where these systems themelves reached the height of ridiculous was when they introduced their armor (meaning TANKS) supplement. Try integrating tanks and APCs with foot combatants. Or try running a tank battle on a scale of hundreds of yards, at 2.5 second intervals... when a vehicle may take 5 rounds to cross a single hex at that map scale.

I concluded that I much prefer the d20 combat for all its undoubted flaws, and if you want tanks, let's get out the Avalon Hill games for a night.

[Telwar]

And I'm not saying that's mandatory in theater of mind type combat. I'm saying they could, not that they must or that they should.



Sure, it might be the better choice for some styles of combat. I wouldn't have argued against "I don't like theater of mind since it's less precise", I argued against "I don't like theater of mind since it means the GM makes arbitrary decisions".

Or, has to spend valuable time and brain power keeping everyone's relative positions in mind and communicate that to everyone, every action.

The downside to the board is that drawing out the map is a non-trivial exercise. People have to move out of the way, move drinks/dice/cats, etc.

While I personally prefer a board, the games I have run have tended not to need them, and/or used "engaged/near/far" range bands, which is a development I do appreciate.

[noob]

Or, has to spend valuable time and brain power keeping everyone's relative positions in mind and communicate that to everyone, every action.

The downside to the board is that drawing out the map is a non-trivial exercise. People have to move out of the way, move drinks/dice/cats, etc.

While I personally prefer a board, the games I have run have tended not to need them, and/or used "engaged/near/far" range bands, which is a development I do appreciate.

the issue is in tight interiors where you have to wonder "If I shoot a rocket in that corridor do we all die and if yes how much destroyed are our corpses?"

[Max_Killjoy]

Or, has to spend valuable time and brain power keeping everyone's relative positions in mind and communicate that to everyone, every action.

The downside to the board is that drawing out the map is a non-trivial exercise. People have to move out of the way, move drinks/dice/cats, etc.

While I personally prefer a board, the games I have run have tended not to need them, and/or used "engaged/near/far" range bands, which is a development I do appreciate.

So have the drawing surface out in its own space as part of the setup for gaming, ready to go, that it doesn't share with drinks, cats, or other stuff.

[Imbalance]

As someone who only knows one thing about HeroClix, and it's that you can use them as miniatures in a pinch, what exactly was so radical a change?

In a nutshell, from my perspective, HeroClix transformed from a miniatures game into a card game.

HeroClix' introduction hailed it as a miniatures skirmish game where the combat dial handles statistics and abilities in place of books full of tables and charts and features dynamic changes to character conditions over the course of a game, with a small amount of modifier tracking by the players. Once a basic understanding of the rules and symbology was attained, players would only ever need to reference what was currently shown through the dial window and the terrain on the board to proceed with the game. Along the way, card elements were introduced, adding off-board data to current combat situations. Later, character cards were added for every piece, granting individual, non-standard abilities to most characters. For most of the game's history, viewing a character's dial beyond what was currently visible was against the rules. At length, character cards now have the entire dial printed on them as a table, and per new rules should be visible to all players. This was the final straw for me. The figures on the grid might as well be chits, the dial is obsolete, and there is far more information present outside of the battlefield than within. It has become exemplary of every barrier it was intended to overcome.



On battlemats, maps, and TotM, first maybe some glossary clarification is needed?

Map - a diagram representing a geographic area
This is the foldout from the printed adventure, or a handout for the players. As an in-game object, accuracy should be suspect. For immersion, of course.

Battlemat, grid, dungeon tiles, 3d terrain build - this is the tabletop setup for the locale where the party presently finds themselves (as simple or as detailed as the DM cares to make it)
The primary purpose should be to communicate relative positioning and spatial recognition within the scene such that all present may share a clear visualization, whether the activity is combat or exploration.

In these discussions, defaulting to "map" as the term for either or both of these distinct means of representation is a sure way to cause confusion. I would advocate that we specify between "paper map" and "encounter map" by openly discussing the codification of clearly distinguishing terms.

Theater-of-the-mind, then, as a communication device, ought to be equally useful at painting a scenario so that everyone at the table may envision a like-minded interpretation. Right? So, if the DM says, "The southern half of the island is relatively temperate, and is covered by a coniferous forest. The central tundra of the island is covered in snow and frequently endures savage blizzards especially to the north. Barren mountains lie to the northwestern side of the island, while one of three rivers flows north to the frigid northeast coast. Beyond the mountains, a massive glacier collapses into the sea. The island's other two rivers flow west and south. A frozen lake to the east is the largest body of water on the island," would everyone at the table imagine something like this?:

https://images.uesp.net/9/9d/Solstheim_map_Bloodmoon.jpg

Based on personal experience, I have doubts.

Personally, I see no reason to omit any kind of communication tool at my disposal. Running Lost Mines of Phandelver MILD SPOILER WARNING, as the old half-elf in the orchard, I described him giving the party directions to Old Owl Well as he grabbed a stick and drew a line and two circles in the dust, emoting his gestures as I said something like, "you can't get there from here, but if you go out the Triboar Trail a piece you can't miss the old watchtower, here, and besides that's the Well, see?" and handed them a napkin sketch IRL.

There is no encounter map in the published adventure, but a simple folding dry-erase board with a 1" grid upon which I drew lines for the road, stacked Jenga blocks in a ring for the ruined tower, and placed another round object for the well plainly fit the old farmer's scribble and description. A crude oragami tent was the only additional feature of note as I told them what they saw (and smelled) on their approach, and I even grabbed an atmospheric illustration of their view that someone else had posted online that I showed via tablet device. For a party of all new players, nobody had to ask where the zombies were coming from or how many there were with a swarm of miniatures spilling forth from the ruins toward their own scale effigies.

And yeah, I'm a toy guy whose tabletop builds are getting progressively more elaborate as I gradually acquire terrain, but I just can't see being all one way and never another when it comes to bringing the game world to my players. I will say that there are elements and props that can detract verisimilitude - I'm not a fan of dollhouse details or anything that I have to place with tweezers that nobody can see from three feet away, using a TV screen seems...un-ergonomic (though I've yet to try it), and there's nothing subtle about LEDs at 25mm scale - but I'm pleased to be able to have a variety of means on hand to aid the imagination.

And since I prep that way, there isn't a lot of shuffling of accoutrements when I fly the scene in for the table. Nobody's drinks get spilled, maybe they needed to tidy their sheets anyway, and for crying out loud keep the pets off the furniture. No joke, if you let your cat walk where we eat or play, I'm not coming to your house. I won't be able to breathe.

[Quertus]

Yeah, I remember someone talking about how 5e sped up combat and they could finish an average fight in 45minutes and I was just thinking: I was looking for five. This would never happen (for several reasons) but I always have a vision of someone trying to spring a "deep" combat system on me and as they are pulling out the minis just looking at them and asking for the combat's DC. Impossible, but it gets the point across: Why spend so much more time on this than anything else? I guess because it is its own draw but I'm not into switching between two games back and forth.

Curious how you would handle the reverse at one of my tables, where 3e combat is handled hyper-competently in a matter of minutes, but conversations can have strategic depth and last for extended periods, and can involve more rolls than combat.


Or the games where the players do ALL the rolling, and all NPCs have things that the players roll against and the GM never ever picks up a single die.

You had me until there.

I could play D&D where the PCs roll their AC against the monster's attack value, roll their DC against their opponents' saves, etc. I'm just adding 10 to the DC rather than to what your accustomed to.

Would you take issue with "player rolled D&D", that was mechanically statistically equivalent to "normal" D&D?

[Cluedrew]

On Theatre of the Mind: I feel like most of the complaints about theatre of the mind are trying to apply a system designed for a grid to it. Which doesn't seem like it would usually go well. There are systems designed to be run without a map, like Fate, and they usually remove the exact numbers from the system anyways, ranges might be melee, near or far.


Curious how you would handle the reverse at one of my tables, where 3e combat is handled hyper-competently in a matter of minutes, but conversations can have strategic depth and last for extended periods, and can involve more rolls than combat.I can't say for sure without trying it out but maybe, my main indicators would be this:
Does it connect to the story? If the conversation is about things and people that stretch beyond this one scene that helps. If we are just going into a lot of detail about how we haggle the prices down then it will probably be kind of boring.
How often does the situation change? Or rather are we making the same kind of decisions again and again through-out the conversation or are significant changes happening.
Plus a few things that I know about but are really hard to describe/make general rules about.

[Pex]

I could play D&D where the PCs roll their AC against the monster's attack value, roll their DC against their opponents' saves, etc. I'm just adding 10 to the DC rather than to what your accustomed to.

Would you take issue with "player rolled D&D", that was mechanically statistically equivalent to "normal" D&D?

That was a mechanic I didn't like about 4E. The attacker always rolls to hit, even for "saving throws". It's an aesthetic dislike, not a reason d'etre why I hated 4E. I can accept as something new and different for D&D as a try, but I prefer the nuance difference between rolling to hit an opponent and rolling a saving throw against an effect. In my opinion it wasn't a Thing of D&D that needed to be changed.

[Max_Killjoy]

You had me until there.

I could play D&D where the PCs roll their AC against the monster's attack value, roll their DC against their opponents' saves, etc. I'm just adding 10 to the DC rather than to what your accustomed to.

Would you take issue with "player rolled D&D", that was mechanically statistically equivalent to "normal" D&D?


I'm not suggesting or promoting the idea, just pointing it out as an example of extreme mechanical disparity between PC and NPC in some systems.

[RandomPeasant]

That was a mechanic I didn't like about 4E. The attacker always rolls to hit, even for "saving throws". It's an aesthetic dislike, not a reason d'etre why I hated 4E. I can accept as something new and different for D&D as a try, but I prefer the nuance difference between rolling to hit an opponent and rolling a saving throw against an effect. In my opinion it wasn't a Thing of D&D that needed to be changed.

The fact that 3e casters could reasonably often go entire sessions without having cause to pick up the dice (particularly in combat) was a real issue. However, I think there is a legitimate mechanical problem there: if you hit a group of enemies with an AoE in a "players roll all the dice" system, it's very all-or-nothing. If fireball is a pile of fire damage each target saves against, individual results flow naturally. But if it's an AoE fire attack against the targets' Reflex defenses, it tends to either kill all of them or none of them (particularly because your group of enemies is probably "six standard MM Orc Warriors" and not "six individually-designed Orc Warriors"). 4e "solved" that by having group enemies be Minions and accepting that they would behave like video game mobs, but that's a solution that they rightfully took a ton of flak for, and it causes problems elsewhere in the system. I've yet to see a proposal that squares that circle without making major compromises elsewhere, so I'm inclined to write the mechanic off as not worth trying to make work.

[KorvinStarmast]

As for me, what I want out of a TTRPG is something that neither board games nor video games can provide, because they lack the human element. The open-ended human element. I seek exploration--to go beyond what I know. To go beyond the limits of the system. That for me has always been the best part of D&D. It was for the little Traveller that I got to play, but we had the darnedest time keeping a game going for a variety of RL reasons.

When I hear about DMs or systems that try to "teach" their players "life lessons" or even "how to play tactically", I cringe a bit. Likewise.

I used to think realism was super important, but it's not. It was verisimilitude the whole time that I wanted, internal consistency. Took me a long time to appreciate that.

In personally finds that a map increases immersion, and a grid decreases it. {snip} It helps to know roughly where everybody is in order to form a mental picture, but I don't need it in exact detail. Our first maps didn't have a grid. Used gridded battle maps for years, and I prefer a map with no grid now. IMO: What 13th age does with the three different kinds of distance is a good ToTM approach.

I like my RPG fights at tabletop to be quick, dirty, and deadly. That means that the players are paying attention and the DM requires people to take their turn or lose their turn. I still like that.

Theatre of mind combat. some systems lend themselves better to it than others.

The trick is that a game relying on TotM combat shouldn't worry about that level of precision. Thanks, you put into words what I was thinking.

What I used to love: detailed and varied equipment choices. (See AD&D weapons and armor tables as an example). I now dislike it.

I used to like: marathon RPG (D&D, Runequest, Chivalry and Sorcery, Met Alpha, etc) game sessions that lasted hours and hours and hours. Entire weekends devoted to one or two campaigns. (Give a DM a break so that he can play before we go back to class on Monday, so two campaigns full of players from Friday afternoon to Sunday early evening).

I now can't do them; not sure if I'd like to do one again.

[HappyDaze]

What extra layer of immersion? Battlemats remove immersion, they don't add to it.

They add to the ability to play tactically, but at the cost of immersive elements.

To elaborate on my confusion: The representation of the character by a miniature/token automatically creates a degree of "my guy" thinking about the character instead of "me" thinking. Thats a decrease on immersion, and its unavoidable.

I agree that battlemaps promote tactical thinking over immersion, and it's not just for the players. As a GM, when the battlemap is in play, my thinking cab revert to my old days of wargaming. I'm really good (and vicious) at such gaming, and I can often turn balanced and even supposedly easy encounters into TPKs if I'm not very careful--and then my players know I'm pulling punches, which isn't satisfying either. With TotM, things tend to go more smoothly for us.

[Jorren]

For me it is not so much the battlemat/miniatures themselves as it is the sudden transition from a descriptive, conversational style to a tactical minigame.

I suppose if the characters are cyborgs with wireless combat computers designed to coordinate their actions it might seem immersive to me. It is part of the whole top-down perspective which makes it feel more like a war-room scenario than a skirmish. I think if there was a way to provide a first person perspective to the players while reserving a top-down one for the GM it would seem more immersive, but the tools to make that work on a practical level are not here yet.

[noob]

For me it is not so much the battlemat/miniatures themselves as it is the sudden transition from a descriptive, conversational style to a tactical minigame.

I suppose if the characters are cyborgs with wireless combat computers designed to coordinate their actions it might seem immersive to me. It is part of the whole top-down perspective which makes it feel more like a war-room scenario than a skirmish. I think if there was a way to provide a first person perspective to the players while reserving a top-down one for the GM it would seem more immersive, but the tools to make that work on a practical level are not here yet.

a first person perspective would already avoid the common pit of TOTM: "I am surrounded by 30 soldiers and somehow they are all within 1 meter of me how are they all fitting in?"

[Quertus]

a first person perspective would already avoid the common pit of TOTM: "I am surrounded by 30 soldiers and somehow they are all within 1 meter of me how are they all fitting in?"

The last time a GM did that to me, I said, "are you sure?" before great-cleaving through them all, and the horse they rode in on. :smallbiggrin:

[RandomPeasant]

I agree that battlemaps promote tactical thinking over immersion,

Those things aren't opposites. If the situation your character is engaged in is a tactical combat (as I would imagine is typically the case if you're breaking out the battlemat), promoting tactical thinking is promoting immersion.

[Pex]

a first person perspective would already avoid the common pit of TOTM: "I am surrounded by 30 soldiers and somehow they are all within 1 meter of me how are they all fitting in?"


The last time a GM did that to me, I said, "are you sure?" before great-cleaving through them all, and the horse they rode in on. :smallbiggrin:

In my previous campaign I ran a Theater of the Mind combat where the party faced a creature with a breath weapon. As it was Theater of the Mind exact distances and placement weren't prioritized, It was enough that you were near or not near someone or one or two Movement speeds away. In this combat most of the party moved up to the creature and attacked. If it was a battle mat grid that couldn't happen. They wouldn't have had the exact space and movement required. When the monster went it used its breath weapon and all PCs who went near it were affected. It was officially a cone, and if there was a grid they all wouldn't have been affected. However, because I allowed them all to attack it even when by grid they couldn't have the monster could breathe on them in return. The players accepted the logic when I was asked about it. It was this encounter though that got me thinking I should be using the grid more for this group. Using the grid in my new campaign has made combat play more smoothly for us.

[Hytheter]

Despite the 5e PHB presenting grid combat as an optional rule (to dodge "too much like a video game" criticisms, I'd bet), it's pretty obviously designed around it. Playing all TotM is doable, but it's definitely awkward and leads to either a lot of hand-waiving or a lot of clarifying questions about the layout of the battlefield thanks to everything having very specific ranges and sizes in 5' increments. How are you really supposed to properly adjudicate who gets hit by a cone attack without any visual reference?

The system could have been built from the ground up to support TotM play if they were really committed to it. Maybe not without sacrificing the identity of the game, though, and at the end of the day a lot of people do actually like grid-based combat systems.

[Willie the Duck]

Despite the 5e PHB presenting grid combat as an optional rule (to dodge "too much like a video game" criticisms, I'd bet), it's pretty obviously designed around it. Playing all TotM is doable, but it's definitely awkward and leads to either a lot of hand-waiving or a lot of clarifying questions about the layout of the battlefield thanks to everything having very specific ranges and sizes in 5' increments. How are you really supposed to properly adjudicate who gets hit by a cone attack without any visual reference?

Other than a lot of the distances being divisible by five, is that any difference from AD&D or basic/classic?

[noob]

Other than a lot of the distances being divisible by five, is that any difference from AD&D or basic/classic?

In ad&d it was normal (according to the rules) to say "oh so you threw a fireball? let us see how it bounces then let us do volume calculations to see if you are caught in the blast and how much of the corridor is burnt" even if you could in theory do TOTM for that you better have interest to know at an high precision the 3D shape of the dungeon. (in fact a mere grid will be insufficient if you do not have low amount of roof height variation.)

[Morty]

I think the PC/NPC symmetry thing is an outgrowth of my general growing lack of care for RPGs simulating anything consistently. They're not going to model reality and I'm fine if they're just abstracting things based on the kind of experience they want to produce.

[noob]

I think the PC/NPC symmetry thing is an outgrowth of my general growing lack of care for RPGs simulating anything consistently. They're not going to model reality and I'm fine if they're just abstracting things based on the kind of experience they want to produce.

And the issue I have with this view is if you wanted the system to be simpler why not simplify both npcs and player characters by making all of them use the simplest system?

[Max_Killjoy]

I think the PC/NPC symmetry thing is an outgrowth of my general growing lack of care for RPGs simulating anything consistently. They're not going to model reality and I'm fine if they're just abstracting things based on the kind of experience they want to produce.

What if the "experience"* I want to produce is one where the mechanics of the game give results that are in line with the range and likelihood of results that could occur given the current circumstances withing the setting/character layer of the game? That is, I don't want the dice to produce results that throw me out of what's going on between the characters, etc.

This is part of why I've lost interest in some dice systems I used to like. WEG d6, oWoD, etc... variable dice pools in general.



(* Kinda hate that word at this point, between RPG design/theory discussions, and tech idiots talking about "user experience".)

[JNAProductions]

And the issue I have with this view is if you wanted the system to be simpler why not simplify both npcs and player characters by making all of them use the simplest system?

Because a DM has to handle many NPCs, while players only have to handle one PC.

The players can handle much more complexity without bogging anything down, and without any complexity, will likely be bored of their mechanics quickly.

[Vahnavoi]

Other than a lot of the distances being divisible by five, is that any difference from AD&D or basic/classic?

First edition AD&D was outright designed to be played with miniatures, to the point where a lot of spell ranges (etc.) were given in inches - you were supposed to physically measure distances between units. I imagine OD&D had a good bit of that as well, since it was originally meant as companion game to Chainmail, a miniature wargame.

It was less obvious in B/X, BECMI and 2nd AD&D, but giving distances in 5' increments or other increments easy to scale or measure on a grid was still the norm.

D&D can be played as "theater of mind", but it was definitely designed from the ground up to be used with miniatures or other visual aides. (Personally, I've favored drawing instead of miniatures.) If this somehow isn't explicit in 5th edition (I wouldn't know, I don't have the books to check), that's another case of the game developers sticking to old rules while failing to explain why those rules are as they are. :smalltongue:

[RandomPeasant]

I think the PC/NPC symmetry thing is an outgrowth of my general growing lack of care for RPGs simulating anything consistently. They're not going to model reality and I'm fine if they're just abstracting things based on the kind of experience they want to produce.

I think there's two sides to it. I don't have a huge problem with lack of symmetry between PCs and monsters (though the asymmetry points chosen are often stupid, like decoupling HD from CR in 3e). I do have a problem with asymmetry between PCs and NPCs, because that almost always leads to absolute nonsense where the NPC Assassin has abilities that are not available to the PC Assassin, which is a huge verisimilitude break. I think what the game really wants is some kind of mid-point way of making NPCs that have a simplified subset of PC abilities (for example in 4e, NPCs like this might have only the at-will powers of their class or something).

[Morty]

And the issue I have with this view is if you wanted the system to be simpler why not simplify both npcs and player characters by making all of them use the simplest system?

Why would I want to do that? Simplifying NPCs has a greater value than simplifying PCs, because the GM is going to have to juggle many of them in any given game.


What if the "experience"* I want to produce is one where the mechanics of the game give results that are in line with the range and likelihood of results that could occur given the current circumstances withing the setting/character layer of the game? That is, I don't want the dice to produce results that throw me out of what's going on between the characters, etc.

This is part of why I've lost interest in some dice systems I used to like. WEG d6, oWoD, etc... variable dice pools in general.

I used to agree, but nowadays I see this goal as neither very realistic nor worth the effort of trying to achieve it.

[RandomPeasant]

Why would I want to do that? Simplifying NPCs has a greater value than simplifying PCs, because the GM is going to have to juggle many of them in any given game.

That's a reason why simplifying NPCs is more important than simplifying PCs, but it's not a reason you wouldn't want to simplify PCs. The real answer, of course, is that you want things at a range of complexities. Some players want a character that is easy to play because they're new or because they're not very interested in the mechanical aspect of the game. Some DMs are able to deal with a higher level of complexity and find it produces a more rewarding experience. Some PCs like complex decision trees and want a character with lots of moving parts. Some fights pit the party against a single powerful enemy (like a Dragon or a Demon Prince), which can afford to be more complicated because there aren't a bunch of mooks running around. The reason you don't want to make everything maximally simple is because simplicity isn't the only goal, not because simplicity is a goal for NPCs but not for PCs.

[Telok]

I think there's two sides to it. I don't have a huge problem with lack of symmetry between PCs and monsters (though the asymmetry points chosen are often stupid, like decoupling HD from CR in 3e). I do have a problem with asymmetry between PCs and NPCs, because that almost always leads to absolute nonsense where the NPC Assassin has abilities that are not available to the PC Assassin, which is a huge verisimilitude break. I think what the game really wants is some kind of mid-point way of making NPCs that have a simplified subset of PC abilities (for example in 4e, NPCs like this might have only the at-will powers of their class or something).

Truth. Also, that whole discussion is something like a 99% post-3.x-D&D-only thing that only occurred when people started thinking they had to build every npc from scratch, perfectly following all the guidelines like they were rules, and using all published options. Which is something I think I did maybe of 3 times per levels 3-16 campaign in that system.

Seriously, no almost systems make you do that. Call of Cthulhu? You think a hound of tinaldos or a ghost is built with pc rules? Paranoia? The DM just chooses, the hardest part is coming up with a punny name for an npc. Pendragon, Traveller, WoD, Warhammer, AD&D, etc., etc. You always have the option to build npcs with pc building rules, but it's never a required thing.

The closest I can think of is Champions, but that's because in a supers game character building is about the powers and you're just picking from the same power/options lists as a pc. Even then the DM doesn't need to keep to a point buy limit, restrict the time & dimension travel powers, or follow other character building rules.

I actually wonder if people confuse character building rules with "running the game" rules on this subject. But yeah, stuff like "dragon kin soldier npcs are immune to fire & paralysis while dragon kin soldier pcs get fire resist 5 & +2 save vs paralysis because immunities on pcs are op" or "npc mages get special bonus actions in their homes because magic wards and pc mages can never get those because they're pcs", is just really annoying to players.

[Max_Killjoy]

I used to agree, but nowadays I see this goal as neither very realistic nor worth the effort of trying to achieve it.


The problem is that (at least the more severe) WTH moments that arise from the dissonance / incoherence are game-ruining for me.

[Morty]

That's a reason why simplifying NPCs is more important than simplifying PCs, but it's not a reason you wouldn't want to simplify PCs. The real answer, of course, is that you want things at a range of complexities. Some players want a character that is easy to play because they're new or because they're not very interested in the mechanical aspect of the game. Some DMs are able to deal with a higher level of complexity and find it produces a more rewarding experience. Some PCs like complex decision trees and want a character with lots of moving parts. Some fights pit the party against a single powerful enemy (like a Dragon or a Demon Prince), which can afford to be more complicated because there aren't a bunch of mooks running around. The reason you don't want to make everything maximally simple is because simplicity isn't the only goal, not because simplicity is a goal for NPCs but not for PCs.

Sure, and many systems simplify both PCs and NPCs to great effect. I was responding to a post that gave me the impression of a false dichotomy.


The problem is that (at least the more severe) WTH moments that arise from the dissonance / incoherence are game-ruining for me.

I'm sorry to hear that, but I'm talking about my perspective and how it has shifted.

[Psyren]

The massive dungeon crawl: No way. If I have to go through a dungeon nowadays it better be something like 10 rooms, tops.
...
The Endless Campaign: Yeah, no. Wrap it up at some point. I am fine with a series of short campaigns with the same characters, where you can technically play the same characters forever.

Non-unified mechanics, multiple subsystems, and tactical mini-games: Multiple subsystems and mini-games need a real good reason for me to consider them over a unified mechanic/task system. Look at 3.5 D&D’s undead turning chart; what a mess.
...
Highly detailed character generation + high lethality: I am fine with detailed chargen and I am fine with high lethality games, but these two things should never, ever go together. I stopped playing Rolemaster for a reason, and it wasn’t all the charts (the charts were actually kind of cool).

All these are on my list as well.



Playing in a canonical universe during the main story: What, you mean you don’t want to shuttle food supplies to the Rebel Base so Luke and Han have enough supplies for the attack on the Empire facility? What about being bodyguards to Midnight and Cyric so they can become gods? Not interesting either? I know, you can run errands for Legolas and Aragorn during the War of the Ring. That’s gotta sound fun, right?

Well yes and no - I agree that I wouldn't want to be following the main characters around and holding their bags, but a sidestory where I'm doing something important somewhere else contemporaneously with the main story would be fine. For example, a story set during Mass Effect 2 where I'm part of the Cerberus squad that discovers the Shadow Broker's location and delivers it to Liara and Shepard - that could involve a lot of intrigue and combat in its own right without putting me on the Normandy.

[kyoryu]

And the issue I have with this view is if you wanted the system to be simpler why not simplify both npcs and player characters by making all of them use the simplest system?

A lot of reason for getting rid of PC/NPC symmetry has to do with how they're used.... PCs go through many encounters, NPCs go through one in most cases. This can make for situations where abilities that make sense for one situation don't make sense for another.

It's also not a big deal if an NPC dies in a hit, but tends to upset players if it happens to them, at least frequently. Killing one enemy on the battlefield just makes the battle easier... killing one PC has a much bigger impact. So you want to balance abilities around that. That and PCs do tend to focus fire a lot, while it's usually somewhat poor sport for GMs to do the same.

Sure, there are ways around that - luck points, Revolving Door of Death, etc., but at the end of the game, PCs and NPCs in games just do different things inherently, even if they're using the same rules. I have no problems having the rules be tailored to the things that they do.

Part of that is complexity, too, as the GM has more characters to learn in much less time, so if every encounter had five creatures that were as complex as a typical PC, that could quickly become overwhelming. So, yeah, that's part of it, but I don't think it's anywhere near the whole picture.

[Jay R]

Hrm. Would be curious about what system that's in.

I mean, definitely, if a system has lots of things that suggest a grid would be useful, I can see that. Like, trying to force No Grid on a system that has a lot of things that depend on precise positioning would increase the time to resolve like anything.

Pretty much anything. In D&D, looking at a grid lets me (for example) pick a spot to center a hypnotic pattern where it hit three foes and no allies. Or it's the fastest way to line up a lighting bolt. It's the fastest way to see where to stand so missing an enemy with an arrow doesn't risk hitting a friend. I can plan a bullrush much more quickly and intuitively.

The easier and quicker I can apply the mechanics, the less I have to focus on them, and the more immersed I can be.

[Tanarii]

Despite the 5e PHB presenting grid combat as an optional rule (to dodge "too much like a video game" criticisms, I'd bet), it's pretty obviously designed around it. Playing all TotM is doable, but it's definitely awkward and leads to either a lot of hand-waiving or a lot of clarifying questions about the layout of the battlefield thanks to everything having very specific ranges and sizes in 5' increments. How are you really supposed to properly adjudicate who gets hit by a cone attack without any visual reference?
The DMG tells the DM how to handle this.

[RandomPeasant]

Seriously, no almost systems make you do that. Call of Cthulhu? You think a hound of tinaldos or a ghost is built with pc rules? Paranoia? The DM just chooses, the hardest part is coming up with a punny name for an npc. Pendragon, Traveller, WoD, Warhammer, AD&D, etc., etc. You always have the option to build npcs with pc building rules, but it's never a required thing.

In fairness, a lot of the creatures you're alluding to wouldn't be built under the NPC rules in D&D either. A Hound of Tinaldos is a monster, and would be built under the monster creation rules, which have pretty much always said "eyeball it".


I actually wonder if people confuse character building rules with "running the game" rules on this subject. But yeah, stuff like "dragon kin soldier npcs are immune to fire & paralysis while dragon kin soldier pcs get fire resist 5 & +2 save vs paralysis because immunities on pcs are op" or "npc mages get special bonus actions in their homes because magic wards and pc mages can never get those because they're pcs", is just really annoying to players.

I think it's more that it's a complicated subject and people can mean related-but-distinct things by it.

Consider, for example, the distinction between "monsters" (things like magical beasts, spirits, dragons, or demons that are not intended to be PCs) and "NPCs" (conceptually similar to PCs, but controlled by the DM). If you have a monster like D&D's Vrock, or Shadowrun's various spirits, or whatever the hell is in an Exalted bestiary, most people are going to be okay with it being a largely-arbitrary pile of stats that happens to do whatever job the game needs it to do. It might be nice if those things come naturally out of some kind of progression, so that you can elegantly make Greater Vrocks, but it's not essential.

But you could also make a point about how these things interact with the system. What happens when an Ogre tries to climb a wall? What dice do you roll when a Dragon tries to lie to the PCs? What happens if an NPC Orc attacks and NPC Guard when the players are defending the castle? No one seriously defends "you must simulate the entire world in the same level of detail as the PCs at all times", but at the same time if you let an abstraction leak where the PCs can see it that can piss people off (especially if it's perceived as working against their interests).

You could also make it about what kinds of abilities are available to PCs and NPCs/monsters. The idea that every ability should be on offer to PCs is tempting, but it doesn't really work. Some abilities are simply not appropriate for adventures to have. A prime example of this is immobility. A Roper can't move at all. A Dryad can't stray far from her tree (at least, some incarnations of the concept can't). Those are not appropriate abilities for PCs to have, because they prevent you from doing the primary thing PCs do: adventure. But that doesn't make those monsters bad monsters.

Finally, the reality is that the boundaries between "PC" and "NPC" are blurry at the best of times. "Giant" is an NPC concept, until you play a Norse campaign and Greg wants to be a Jotun priest of the Rimtursar. "Wizard" is a PC concept, until the party decides that picking a fight with the local Mages' Guild is the way to solve whatever problem they have. You can't play a Demon as your character, but demon-summoning is an iconic ability for Warlocks to have, and it's pretty unsatisfying if your pet demon is a pile of stats totally disconnected from the demons you fight as monsters.

There are a lot of different ways to interpret the topic, and the positions you can have on them run the gamut from "uncontroversially true" to "completely insane" on either side of the divide.


A lot of reason for getting rid of PC/NPC symmetry has to do with how they're used.... PCs go through many encounters, NPCs go through one in most cases. This can make for situations where abilities that make sense for one situation don't make sense for another.

This is a very dangerous line of thinking. It's true that most NPCs are only going to be in one combat encounter, but plots still need to be driven by NPCs, so they still need to have abilities that matter at a scope larger than a single fight.


It's also not a big deal if an NPC dies in a hit,

Depends on the NPC. It's true that "spells kill your character in one hit and that sucks" is the largest reason people hate Rocket Launcher Tag, but "spells kill the BBEG in one hit and that's unsatisfying" is a close second. The reality is that NPCs fill a lot of different niches. Some are expected to last multiple encounters (animal companions, recurring villains). Some are expected to go toe-to-toe with the whole party (dragons, BBEGs). Some are expected to have a lasting impact on the overall campaign (BBEGs, rivals). It's certainly true that you want some NPCs that are simple. You want mook demons and undead and elementals and humanoids and constructs and vermin that you can put in fights without having to track half a dozen abilities for each infernal footsoldier. But you also want more powerful NPCs whose impact on the game (and, therefore, complexity) is much closer to that of a PC.

[Telok]

A Roper can't move at all. A Dryad can't stray far from her tree (at least, some incarnations of the concept can't). Those are not appropriate abilities for PCs to have, because they prevent you from doing the primary thing PCs do: adventure.

Since when can ropers not move? Sure, they were never fast, but an immobile monster simply isn't a real threat. At best it's a roadblock or puzzle. And dryads? The tree isn't a problem, it just means you need a bigger luggage cart. Are they complications? Yeah, but not unsolvable. Do they limit what sort of adventures they go on? Probably, at least until D&D mid-level magic starts really kicking in.

I totally get what you're saying. Some creatures and creature abilities in some game systems don't fit the "4 to 7 foot tall humanoids travel around the world killing & looting" generic fantasy adventure game paradigm. In other systems "dryad/treant starship captain cyborg werewolf in power armor dual weilding lightsabers and casting fireball" is a thing (seriously, like 5 different systems, minimum).

But that's not what people care about. It's the times when we're told "pc fighter Bob can never learn the sword move that nameless npc bandit #3 just did because Bob is a pc" or "DM: the dragon bashes on a cave wall and rocks fall on you, take damage. PC: i'm polymorphed into a dragon, i bash the wall to make rocks fall on him. DM: nope, npc only ability" that people care about. Especially it's that sort of stuff being held up as some sort of exemplar of good game design, or as a requirement to make the game playable, that annoys me.

You want a shortcut to make quick npcs that are just detailed enough to work for as long as you need them? Great, that's the sort of content I'd like to pay money for. The game starts to fail (mechanically or in verisimilitude & fun) when pcs interact with npcs in ways that aren't "kill them and take their stuff"? Yeah, no. Not buying it. Not when there are other games without that problem. I lost interest in trying to fix or deal with that sort of systemic failure a while ago.

[RandomPeasant]

Since when can ropers not move? Sure, they were never fast, but an immobile monster simply isn't a real threat. At best it's a roadblock or puzzle.

Huh, apparently they can. Pretend I said Elemental Weird or something. There are immobile creatures out there. More generally, there's nothing really wrong with monsters being tied to specific locations. If you've ever fought a Wizard in his tower or a Dragon in its lair, I don't see how you can reasonably object to "some monsters are fought in specific set-pieces" as a game design choice.


In other systems "dryad/treant starship captain cyborg werewolf in power armor dual weilding lightsabers and casting fireball" is a thing (seriously, like 5 different systems, minimum).


That seems like you're missing the point. There are certainly interpretations of "dryad" your system could use where they can adventure. Some settings have dryads that are merely "tree spirits" rather than tied to a particular tree. But the point is that there are monsters that do things that simply don't work for PCs (for a more extreme example, consider the Iron Golem's lack of free will or the Warg's lack of thumbs).


But that's not what people care about.

My broader point is that there's not one thing that people mean when they say "lack of transparency between PCs and NPCs". You may mean that there should not be abilities that don't work for PCs simply because they're PCs. Someone else may be talking about how monsters or PCs are created, or about the possibility of playing various sorts of monsters as a PC. The topic is sufficiently vague that someone taking a stance on it needs to be clear about what they mean (and to be fair, you have done this).

[False God]

This is a very dangerous line of thinking. It's true that most NPCs are only going to be in one combat encounter, but plots still need to be driven by NPCs, so they still need to have abilities that matter at a scope larger than a single fight.

Then the 5 baddies who go beyond one encounter can be built as PCs.

The other 700 nameless kobolds, orcs and bandits can all be built like the redshirts they are.

[Tanarii]

The other 700 nameless kobolds, orcs and bandits can all be built like the redshirts they are.
Speaking of which, I used to like having/making enemies quirky, interesting, etc. Names called out to their allies in danger in combat (or when they died), interesting things in their pockets, etc. "Grounds the campaign" I'd think, "makes the world seem more real!"

Then I realized what I needed most of the time, both as a player and a DM, was storm-orcs. Faceless, nameless, bad guys.

I still always seem to inadvertently throw in a "the bandit you just killed was just a kid" type situation from time to time. And player reactions reinforce I need usually storm-Orcs. Unsurprisingly. Because when I flip the script and think about it as if I were a player and that happened, I get it.

Humanizing the enemy is usually a terrible idea. Especially when it always seems to be about guilt tripping the players.

[MoiMagnus]

Humanizing the enemy is usually a terrible idea. Especially when it always seems to be about guilt tripping the players.

More precisely, you want the level of humanization of the enemy to be in line with the expected gameplay.

If you expect most combat encounters to be avoided (diplomacy, infiltration, etc), then it make sense to humanize the enemy (and you might want to search for RPGs that are less combat-focussed than D&D), as it reinforces the feeling of failure when weapons have to be drawn.

But if most of the peoples around the table are here for some tactical combat on a grid, humanizing the minor enemies is counterproductive. (You might still want to humanize main antagonists to make them memorable).

[noob]

A lot of reason for getting rid of PC/NPC symmetry has to do with how they're used.... PCs go through many encounters, NPCs go through one in most cases. This can make for situations where abilities that make sense for one situation don't make sense for another.

It's also not a big deal if an NPC dies in a hit, but tends to upset players if it happens to them, at least frequently. Killing one enemy on the battlefield just makes the battle easier... killing one PC has a much bigger impact. So you want to balance abilities around that. That and PCs do tend to focus fire a lot, while it's usually somewhat poor sport for GMs to do the same.

Sure, there are ways around that - luck points, Revolving Door of Death, etc., but at the end of the game, PCs and NPCs in games just do different things inherently, even if they're using the same rules. I have no problems having the rules be tailored to the things that they do.

Part of that is complexity, too, as the GM has more characters to learn in much less time, so if every encounter had five creatures that were as complex as a typical PC, that could quickly become overwhelming. So, yeah, that's part of it, but I don't think it's anywhere near the whole picture.

This still does not forces player characters to be more complicated than the bbeg the gm will manage.
BBEGS already have protection against "single hit ko"(going from "the first encounter with the bbeg, it flees" to "the bbeg needs two fighting checks to defeat") as well as descriptions defining what they do outside of the combat(ex: this bbeg recruited 10 people and makes them work on digging up the world exploding artifact)
So I still do not see how your arguments indicates player characters needs to be more complicated than the high end npcs or to use another system.

[Tanarii]

More precisely, you want the level of humanization of the enemy to be in line with the expected gameplay.How dare you make sense with reasonable statements! :smallamused:

It can depend on the game you're playing (given this is the general forum), and the goals of the campaign, adventure, and encounters. But IMO it's best to avoid humanizing the enemy until the PCs make an alliance, or intentionally signaling to the PCs that a group might be considered not enemies.

[Zombimode]

[COLOR="#0000FF"]But IMO it's best to avoid humanizing the enemy until the PCs make an alliance, or intentionally signaling to the PCs that a group might be considered not enemies.

Why? Isn't the tone and mood of the campaign the important factor here? Combat focus or not I don't see mattering at all in this question.

[Pex]

I too used be a strong supporter of the bad guys must use the same rules as players. The attitude came from my, non-realization to me at the time, growing dislike of 2E. Monsters and NPCs in 2E were notorious for breaking the rules, letting the DM "cheat". Multiple attacks, free spellcasting - no spell slot and no material components, godly ability scores, immunities. When 3E made monsters and NPCs follow the same rules I was thrilled. They were bound by rules in their creation. However, as I DMed more in 3E I would soon learn how tedious it got to create NPCs.

Now in 5E i can appreciate as DM plug and play. I can change things around and use what I need the bad guys to have. Of course it still must be relatively or appropriately balanced to the PCs as the encounter requires, but when I have a bad guy at AC X but realize too late that included a shield while he's been firing a bow all this time it really doesn't matter. The challenge was not more difficult than it was intended. Now I'm ok with the bad guys not following the same rules as PCs, but I still don't want the 2E level of cheating.

[Max_Killjoy]

As others have pointed out, there's often a difference between NPCs having to be created exactly as PCs are, and NPCs having to follow the same rules that PC's follow.

Two different kinds of symmetry.

I care less about the build phase, than I do about the gameplay, when it comes to this question. Building NPCs shouldn't be a chore, especially if they're going to be nameless foes in an encounter, and the NPC who surprises can get a character-sheet upgrade later if needed. But I want all characters to have hypothetical access to the same abilities, and to interact with the rules and each other in exactly the same way. If an NPC is rolling to hit, that should work exactly the same as when a PC is rolling to hit.

[False God]

Speaking of which, I used to like having/making enemies quirky, interesting, etc. Names called out to their allies in danger in combat (or when they died), interesting things in their pockets, etc. "Grounds the campaign" I'd think, "makes the world seem more real!"

Then I realized what I needed most of the time, both as a player and a DM, was storm-orcs. Faceless, nameless, bad guys.

I still always seem to inadvertently throw in a "the bandit you just killed was just a kid" type situation from time to time. And player reactions reinforce I need usually storm-Orcs. Unsurprisingly. Because when I flip the script and think about it as if I were a player and that happened, I get it.

Humanizing the enemy is usually a terrible idea. Especially when it always seems to be about guilt tripping the players.

As others have said, it depends on the sort of game people want to play and the sort of outcomes you expect. If every encounter "could be a fight, but doesn't have to be", it's good to have humanized enemies. In the context of this discussion it may be better to have enemies who are built like PCs, because you are likely to encounter them multiple times and they are likely to play a larger role in the campaign. If every encounter is just a time/resource gate between the party and more loot, then yeah, faceless, nameless baddies it is.

My experience has been that guilt tripping humanization is done on the fly, and humanization that's planned in advance is typically not so guilt-trippy.

[Morty]

If the purpose of a thread is to say "I used to care about this thing but I no longer do", replying to people with "okay, but I still care about this thing a lot" strikes me as counter-productive, I must say.

[Lord Torath]

If the purpose of a thread is to say "I used to care about this thing but I no longer do", replying to people with "okay, but I still care about this thing a lot" strikes me as counter-productive, I must say.No, the way I play is better!

On-topic, I don't care as much as I used to about realism, caring more about verisimilitude. Is it realistic that you can only shoot two arrows a minute? No. Can I work with that anyway? Sure.

[Willie the Duck]

I too used be a strong supporter of the bad guys must you the same rules as players. The attitude came from my, non-realization to me at the time, growing dislike of 2E. Monsters and NPCs in 2E were notorious for breaking the rules, letting the DM "cheat". Multiple attacks, free spellcasting - no spell slot and no material components, godly ability scores, immunities. When 3E made monsters and NPCs follow the same rules I was thrilled. They were bound by rules in their creation. However, as I DMed more in 3E I would soon learn how tedious it got to create NPCs.

Now in 5E i can appreciate as DM plug and play. I can change things around and use what I need the bad guys to have. Of course it still must be relatively or appropriately balanced to the PCs as the encounter requires, but when I have a bad guy at AC X but realize too late that included a shield while he's been firing a bow all this time it really doesn't matter. The challenge was not more difficult than it was intended. Now I'm ok with the bad guys not following the same rules as PCs, but I still don't want the 2E level of cheating.

For me, what I want is for -- if the PCs have access to the same avenues, they should be able to do the same stuff (NPCs can make pacts with demons for power, then PCs can as well; if NPC halflings can be competent slingers, than PC halflings can as well). If the creation method to get them there or the exact numbers don't match because of constraints of convenience, that's fine. Particularly for monster rules if the monsters are built using points or to a specific challenge rating or similar, since something can be significantly more or less useful to a PC than to a monster you are likely to meet once.

[kyoryu]

Then the 5 baddies who go beyond one encounter can be built as PCs.

The other 700 nameless kobolds, orcs and bandits can all be built like the redshirts they are.

Yes, exactly this.

Even the recurring antagonists don't have to be built as PCs, though they should be similar in many ways. And usually in a session, they have the "1 encounter" issue as well, so long term resource management still isn't an issue.

But even then, I think you can look at builds as two intertwined subsystems - "how stuff works" and "what it costs". For building significant NPCs, I'm more concerned about the first, and not at all about the second.


For me, what I want is for -- if the PCs have access to the same avenues, they should be able to do the same stuff (NPCs can make pacts with demons for power, then PCs can as well; if NPC halflings can be competent slingers, than PC halflings can as well). If the creation method to get them there or the exact numbers don't match because of constraints of convenience, that's fine. Particularly for monster rules if the monsters are built using points or to a specific challenge rating or similar, since something can be significantly more or less useful to a PC than to a monster you are likely to meet once.

Yeah, I think that's fair. I want fictional symmetry, not mechanical symmetry. Like, PC and NPC wizards should both have access to roughly the same spells if they represent similar kinds of things - but I don't really care if how they manage their spells is the same or not - and, to some extent, I don't necessarily care that they're mechanically the same spell (though fireball seems fairly reasonable). And mostly I don't want NPCs to have access to things the PCs don't, especially if there's no fictional reason for that (halfling slingers)

[Quertus]

I used to agree, but nowadays I see this goal as neither very realistic nor worth the effort of trying to achieve it.

How is arranging for the results of the dice to map roughly to real-world probability distribution not very realistic? :smallconfused:


I too used be a strong supporter of the bad guys must you the same rules as players. The attitude came from my, non-realization to me at the time, growing dislike of 2E. Monsters and NPCs in 2E were notorious for breaking the rules, letting the DM "cheat". Multiple attacks, free spellcasting - no spell slot and no material components, godly ability scores, immunities.

Now I'm ok with the bad guys not following the same rules as PCs, but I still don't want the 2E level of cheating.

Are you poking fun at Halls of the High King?

Wait a minute…

If other 2E modules were like this and DMs accepted them without question, even if innocently not knowing any better, combined with particular advice in the 2E DMG it could explain the origin of my distaste of tyrannical DMing. :smalltongue:


NPC immunity to whatever the players do. NPCs can do things and have game mechanics PCs could never have. NPCs essentially break the rules players must game by. Oh look, another bad guy spellcaster without a spellbook.

I certainly don't think that this level of "cheating" was ubiquitous to or intent in 2e D&D. Sorry that that's been your experience.


If the purpose of a thread is to say "I used to care about this thing but I no longer do", replying to people with "okay, but I still care about this thing a lot" strikes me as counter-productive, I must say.

Lol. I can't speak for others, but, for myself, I did say such things to detail exactly how big my "nothing" response was.

[Xervous]

The d20. It was exotic and alluring after seeing only d6s everywhere.

Now it’s a miserable, rigid, flat probability spread that lacks granularity at the trailing ends.

[Tanarii]

How is arranging for the results of the dice to map roughly to real-world probability distribution not very realistic? :smallconfused:
How often do people actually know the real world probability distribution of something that is being handled by a given dice-based game mechanic?

[Vahnavoi]

How often do people actually know the real world probability distribution of something that is being handled by a given dice-based game mechanic?

In case of general resolution systems? Almost never. Indeed, the whole point of such systems is to give a simple, quick and easy to remember way to solve arbitrary actions in absence of expert knowledge.

[False God]

Relative to the above, I've become far less fond of the d20 as a resolution mechanic. Every number having the exact same chance of appearing as any other has really started to bother me. Yes, modifiers increase the chance of success, but ultimately what the die is saying is that extreme success is weighted just as evenly as extreme failure. I like dice pool mechanics, but they too don't seem to really reflect the fact that an average result is far more likely in any given situation than the extremes. Having more dice may mean more chances of success, but it doesn't really mean more average success.

I played around with using 2d10 instead of 1d20. I liked being able to call a "nat 1" "snake eyes". It did better with providing average levels of success which on the whole produced a smoother game, but I think my players preferred the "swingyness" of the d20. Being able to reliably do something, especially if you were good at it, seemed, in my testing, less fun than betting extreme success against extreme failure.

[Telok]

How often do people actually know the real world probability distribution of something that is being handled by a given dice-based game mechanic?

Real world stuff? Mostly the normal distribution. That's why it's called "normal". Nice pretty bell curve too.

[RandomPeasant]

Particularly for monster rules if the monsters are built using points or to a specific challenge rating or similar, since something can be significantly more or less useful to a PC than to a monster you are likely to meet once.

Having monster creation rules is pretty much an afterthought. Every edition of D&D that has every existed has approached the problem of "how you do you get new monsters" with "buy more monster books", and that has worked out at least as well as any monster creation system I've seen a game of non-trivial complexity. The real issue is PC-like NPCs, and that's an inherently harder problem because you can't just cheat. A Gargoyle is not supposed to be a PC. It doesn't matter if its Stone Form ability is different from PCs abilities, because it is not presented as being the same. But once you start talking about differences between PC Wizards and NPC Wizards, you're on thin ice very quickly. There's a real chance that what you want is not any kind of mechanical change, but some kind of easy-to-use online character generator. If you could just say "give me an NPC Wizard at X power level" and have a website spit out a useable stat block, that would be fine for 99% of use-cases and require few-to-no sacrifices in terms of transparency.

If you do want a mechanical alternative, the easy thing to do is not to create some bespoke NPC-generating system, but to identify some adequately PC-feeling chunk of a PC and design it so it can be stapled to some stats on its own. If there's a Wizard sub-class or lifepath or whatever that gives some mechanically simple Wizard-y abilities that you can rapidly turn into an expendable NPC, that solves your problem without needing to try to marry distinct mechanics into a single in-world concept.

But the idea that you can get adequate results while having NPCs and PCs work fundamentally differently is something I am very suspicious of.


For building significant NPCs, I'm more concerned about the first, and not at all about the second.

Your "what stuff costs" system is (or at least should be) closely tied to your system for assessing power levels. That's something you care a great deal about when creating an NPC, particularly one PCs expect to fight.


Being able to reliably do something, especially if you were good at it, seemed, in my testing, less fun than betting extreme success against extreme failure.

I don't think that's an accurate assessment of how a d20 RNG works. At the extreme end, a d20 allows more consistent results than dicepools (though equivalent to something like 2d10). If you have a +10 bonus on a d20 roll, you will succeed on a DC 10 check 100% of the time (barring epicycles like nat-1 auto-fails). Conversely, if you roll a dicepool of five six-sided dice that hit on 4+, you will fail at a task requiring one hit a bit under 5% of the time (again, barring some epicycle like allowing people to default). Flat RNGs simply do different things than dicepools, and are suited to different sorts of games. In a game where hard-core badasses can expect to take on armies of normals, a flat RNG is better because you can push people off the RNG without needing any extra mechanical work. In a game where "the cops showed up" is supposed to be a lose condition for even high-power characters, a dicepool is better because it limits how powerful characters can be.

[Satinavian]

How often do people actually know the real world probability distribution of something that is being handled by a given dice-based game mechanic?
If they honestly don't know, no other kind of resolution will work any better.

Furthermore, as Telok said, normal distribution is never a bad guess if you don't really know. It is a consequence of the law of large numbers stating that anything that is the sum by lots of tiny (identical) chances always gravitates there. And for the exact same reason dice pools are a good way to handle that.

[Max_Killjoy]

Relative to the above, I've become far less fond of the d20 as a resolution mechanic. Every number having the exact same chance of appearing as any other has really started to bother me. Yes, modifiers increase the chance of success, but ultimately what the die is saying is that extreme success is weighted just as evenly as extreme failure. I like dice pool mechanics, but they too don't seem to really reflect the fact that an average result is far more likely in any given situation than the extremes. Having more dice may mean more chances of success, but it doesn't really mean more average success.

I played around with using 2d10 instead of 1d20. I liked being able to call a "nat 1" "snake eyes". It did better with providing average levels of success which on the whole produced a smoother game, but I think my players preferred the "swingyness" of the d20. Being able to reliably do something, especially if you were good at it, seemed, in my testing, less fun than betting extreme success against extreme failure.

Not liking the d20 and its wonky flatness is why several systems have been 3d6 for a long time (GURPS and HERO having been around for decades now). And yeah, die pool mechanics largely don't address the issue.

What's funny about this thread for me is that I have to go back decades in some cases to find when things that bother me now related to RPGs... didn't bother me at all or at least not nearly so much.

[RandomPeasant]

One advantage d20 (and linear RNGs in general, especially d100) has is that it's dead easy to calculate success probabilities. What's the highest number you fail on? Multiply that by 5 and that's your probability of failure. There's no similarly-easy trick for 2d10 or 3d6, though they're not too bad to do offhand. Dicepools are easy to calculate average successes for, but figuring out the probability of "x or more hits" for non-trivial x is something very few people even know how to do without looking it up. I don't even remember what the formula for expected value on roll-and-keep is.

[Willie the Duck]

Having monster creation rules is pretty much an afterthought. Every edition of D&D that has every existed has approached the problem of "how you do you get new monsters" with "buy more monster books", and that has worked out at least as well as any monster creation system I've seen a game of non-trivial complexity. The real issue is PC-like NPCs, and that's an inherently harder problem because you can't just cheat. A Gargoyle is not supposed to be a PC. It doesn't matter if its Stone Form ability is different from PCs abilities, because it is not presented as being the same. But once you start talking about differences between PC Wizards and NPC Wizards, you're on thin ice very quickly. There's a real chance that what you want is not any kind of mechanical change, but some kind of easy-to-use online character generator. If you could just say "give me an NPC Wizard at X power level" and have a website spit out a useable stat block, that would be fine for 99% of use-cases and require few-to-no sacrifices in terms of transparency.

I mean, if that's what you see as the real issue, more power to you. However, upthread there were at least some people who were comparing if/how a PC could something compared to the monster entries.

[Xervous]

One advantage d20 (and linear RNGs in general, especially d100) has is that it's dead easy to calculate success probabilities. What's the highest number you fail on? Multiply that by 5 and that's your probability of failure. There's no similarly-easy trick for 2d10 or 3d6, though they're not too bad to do offhand. Dicepools are easy to calculate average successes for, but figuring out the probability of "x or more hits" for non-trivial x is something very few people even know how to do without looking it up. I don't even remember what the formula for expected value on roll-and-keep is.

I find the complex probability calculations are potentially a good thing. If people can’t grasp the numbers they can’t fret over minutiae. More dice in a pool is certainly better, but people generally won’t be drilling down and weighing the exact statistical benefit of +2 against some other effect in the middle of play.

[Telok]

I find the complex probability calculations are potentially a good thing. If people can’t grasp the numbers they can’t fret over minutiae. More dice in a pool is certainly better, but people generally won’t be drilling down and weighing the exact statistical benefit of +2 against some other effect in the middle of play.

Sort of yes and no for me. In my rewrite of DtD40k7e I've done and checked lots of probabilities. When DMing it I also check probabilities to make sure that things like epic drinking marathon challenges have the right balance*. That's cool for me, I'm a programmer who enjoys math and I can whip out basic simulations and dice rollers easily. For this system there's also a chart of the 50 possible dice combos for the game that's easy for anyone. So as a player & in game, yes more dice is better and don't worry too much. As a DM easy probabilities, or a simple lookup table, are nice for planning.

Funny thing is, I don't think the current D&D has a simple set of probabilities. For just the base no-frills d20 roll, sure, that's simple. But then there's disadvantage and advantage that change value between different +mod vs DC, triple advantage, minimum 10, rerolls, and +/-1d4 to xdy. Calculating that for any one specific character alone is OK, almost none get all those modifiers. But trying to account for more than that and maybe the persn playing the bard can't make it that game and... Thats just messy.

* that was an interesting challenge. It was basically having one drink at each of ~200 bars over the course of a week. It needed to be doable by slightly above average normal people but possible for functionally supers type characters to fail. I crossed rl alcohol poisoning stats with the number of bars and distances between them to make it 30% doable by normals who took the whole 7 days and walked it, but probably kill almost anyone who tried to do a 3 day speed run by teleporting or such.

[Quertus]

How often do people actually know the real world probability distribution of something that is being handled by a given dice-based game mechanic?

"We recognize that we have no clue what 'realistic' looks like, therefore we no longer attempt to change games for the purpose of making them more realistic" is a consistent and highly self-aware stance.

"We recognize that we have no clue what 'realistic' looks like, therefore we now reject anyone's attempts to change games for the purpose of making them more realistic"? That's a bit trickier.

I guess it depends on what the post I was replying to was attempting to convey.

[Morty]

How often do people actually know the real world probability distribution of something that is being handled by a given dice-based game mechanic?


Real world stuff? Mostly the normal distribution. That's why it's called "normal". Nice pretty bell curve too.

To be clear, what I meant in that post was that I don't think a game of dice and numbers is likely to accurately model the statistical likelihood of something happening, so trying to do that is not a very realistic goal. In the sense that it's probably not going to succeed anyway.

[RandomPeasant]

I find the complex probability calculations are potentially a good thing. If people can’t grasp the numbers they can’t fret over minutiae. More dice in a pool is certainly better, but people generally won’t be drilling down and weighing the exact statistical benefit of +2 against some other effect in the middle of play.

Writing rules to make it harder for people to make informed decisions is not a good thing. It's bad when it's THAC0, it's bad when it's intentionally using a harder-to-understand RNG. Decisions people make should be meaningful, and the should be able to understand which of the choices they can make is "correct" for which measure of correctness. In fact, if you care about speed of play, you should make the underlying math as easy as possible so that people spend less time thinking about what the +2 will do and more time deciding if it's what they want.

[False God]

I don't think that's an accurate assessment of how a d20 RNG works. At the extreme end, a d20 allows more consistent results than dicepools (though equivalent to something like 2d10). If you have a +10 bonus on a d20 roll, you will succeed on a DC 10 check 100% of the time (barring epicycles like nat-1 auto-fails). Conversely, if you roll a dicepool of five six-sided dice that hit on 4+, you will fail at a task requiring one hit a bit under 5% of the time (again, barring some epicycle like allowing people to default). Flat RNGs simply do different things than dicepools, and are suited to different sorts of games. In a game where hard-core badasses can expect to take on armies of normals, a flat RNG is better because you can push people off the RNG without needing any extra mechanical work. In a game where "the cops showed up" is supposed to be a lose condition for even high-power characters, a dicepool is better because it limits how powerful characters can be.

A "1" on a d20 is a 5% chance.

But your logic follows my general movement in gaming, as I've grown less fond of games in general where "the cops showing up" don't mean anything. Even in D&D, the "cops" or town guard or whatever, very quickly become meaningless threats, and it shows with how prevalent murderhoboing is in the system. In systems where "the cops" (average joes with average weapons and armor) are a very real and present danger outside of the most insane of characters, I find players behave less like gamblers and more like rational people.


Not liking the d20 and its wonky flatness is why several systems have been 3d6 for a long time (GURPS and HERO having been around for decades now). And yeah, die pool mechanics largely don't address the issue.

What's funny about this thread for me is that I have to go back decades in some cases to find when things that bother me now related to RPGs... didn't bother me at all or at least not nearly so much.

I get the feeling that there's a happy medium in dice-pool systems somewhere between 3 and 6 dice. I've generally found that large dice pools don't really produce that much more success. Sure, 5/15 successes can really wallop an enemy, but it's still statistically about the same as 2-3/5 successes. Some kind of reduction in the number you need for every 5 dice you'd have beyond 5, I dunno or something, I dunno. More dice, like higher modifiers, should mean more success, but it really doesn't.

And I find 7+ dX to be kinda wonky to hold anyway.


One advantage d20 (and linear RNGs in general, especially d100) has is that it's dead easy to calculate success probabilities. What's the highest number you fail on? Multiply that by 5 and that's your probability of failure. There's no similarly-easy trick for 2d10 or 3d6, though they're not too bad to do offhand. Dicepools are easy to calculate average successes for, but figuring out the probability of "x or more hits" for non-trivial x is something very few people even know how to do without looking it up. I don't even remember what the formula for expected value on roll-and-keep is.

As above, for the people who understand this math, and I mean REALLY understand it, unless there is a flat 0% chance of success or failure (depending on the case) it leads to poor decision-making via gambling. When a d20 has a 5% chance to roll a 1 and a 5% chance to roll a 20, even if your only chance of success/failure is on one of those numbers, I find people more likely to gamble at "winning big" rather than take approaches that may lessen the difficulty but consume resrouces.

As I mentioned before, when I tested out 2d10, it was a much smoother game, with far more successes for the players, but far fewer "OMG A NAT 1 I'M SO DEAD!!!" and far less "OMG A NAT 20 I WIN OMG OMG OMG!!!!" Which is an unhealthy (IMO) gamblers mentality.

Not to say risks shouldn't be taken, but if you're always gambling on the "big wins", the game itsself becomes background noise to the extremes.

[Chauncymancer]

I like dice pool mechanics, but they too don't seem to really reflect the fact that an average result is far more likely in any given situation than the extremes. Having more dice may mean more chances of success, but it doesn't really mean more average success.

There is a normal distribution of results in a dice pool, but it's only a factor in games where the variable is number of successes as opposed to target number or number of dice.

Real world stuff? Mostly the normal distribution. That's why it's called "normal". Nice pretty bell curve too.
This is funny, but that's not what normal means.

I don't even remember what the formula for expected value on roll-and-keep is.
I'm pretty sure the EV of xKy on a die of N sides is Sum{ni *x/N} where ni=N, N-1, N-2... and nn=y/(x/N)

"We recognize that we have no clue what 'realistic' looks like, therefore we no longer attempt to change games for the purpose of making them more realistic" is a consistent and highly self-aware stance.

"We recognize that we have no clue what 'realistic' looks like, therefore we now reject anyone's attempts to change games for the purpose of making them more realistic"? That's a bit trickier.

I guess it depends on what the post I was replying to was attempting to convey.
If the only benefit of a system I am asked to evaluate is that it increases in immeasurable metric, I must evaluate it's use as minimal.

[NichG]

I find I don't really like dice rolls for resolving things at all now, but I'm also not sure I ever really liked that or if it was just entangled with other things. I'm generally moving away from 'asking to see if you succeed' as a design element entirely, and seeing randomness more in a 'hand of cards' fashion than a pass/fail fashion.

Dice rolls for inspiration I still like though...

One thing where my tastes probably have shifted is stuff like the Deck of Many Things but where they don't go away after being used. I guess this is a subtle shift - not a shift away from the existence of things like that, but away from any kind of unbounded number of draws or interactions, because they can take over a session with people just wanting yet another draw.

[Xervous]

Writing rules to make it harder for people to make informed decisions is not a good thing. It's bad when it's THAC0, it's bad when it's intentionally using a harder-to-understand RNG. Decisions people make should be meaningful, and the should be able to understand which of the choices they can make is "correct" for which measure of correctness. In fact, if you care about speed of play, you should make the underlying math as easy as possible so that people spend less time thinking about what the +2 will do and more time deciding if it's what they want.

At what point did I say the probability system was chosen for this purpose? Start with a simple to resolve structure like Xd6>4 for its smooth response to inputs and handling of dicepool sizes at the extremes. Default speed of play is driven by required extra steps and their complexity. Hunting down five or so shifting modifiers for a d20 roll will naturally decrease the default speed of play. Acting on a player opted choice of one modifier or the other for a roll, be it d20 or dicepool or whatever, is a simple task that has no failure states stemming from neglect compared to missing some modifier the game system holds up as mandatory.

So we are both discussing observed speed of play. I’m not going to sit there and give a player time to estimate how many swings he thinks he can kill an ogre in and how a +2 to hit or +2 to damage will perform there. Pick an action and play. If he’s instead confronted with +2 dice or +2 damage it’s less likely they’ll obsess over minor differences in performance. This is of course assuming we’re running a table at a moderate pace, not heavily structured for war gaming. If we were really all about 0.5 dpr difference mattering more than the flow of gameplay there would be calculators, charts, excel spreadsheets and the like readily accessible.

[oxybe]

I find I don't really like dice rolls for resolving things at all now, but I'm also not sure I ever really liked that or if it was just entangled with other things. I'm generally moving away from 'asking to see if you succeed' as a design element entirely, and seeing randomness more in a 'hand of cards' fashion than a pass/fail fashion.

I think the problem is more that some games don't make it clear enough when to roll, or simply ask for too many rolls.

I usually veer on the side of characters being competent when running a game.

When I ask for rolls it's usually because the PCs are being clearly stressed and failure would mean losing time/resources/health, or they're attempting something difficult/dangerous without preparation. Otherwise I assume they know what they're doing if they have the relevant tools or skills at hand.

I've definitely played in campaigns and non-dnd systems that had us rolling for far too much stuff though.

As for stuff that i've grown to dislike?

Theater of the Mind combat for anything beyond simplistic fights and "rule-lite" or "narrative" focused systems; these just don't grok me and i can't get into them. I need me some decent crunch.

[NichG]

I think the problem is more that some games don't make it clear enough when to roll, or simply ask for too many rolls.

I usually veer on the side of characters being competent when running a game.

When I ask for rolls it's usually because the PCs are being clearly stressed and failure would mean losing time/resources/health, or they're attempting something difficult/dangerous without preparation. Otherwise I assume they know what they're doing if they have the relevant tools or skills at hand.

I've definitely played in campaigns and non-dnd systems that had us rolling for far too much stuff though.


This can be part of it, but I think there are two other things as well.

One has to do with the ability to plan. The more front-loaded chance is, the more possible it is to have more involved plans. So randomness, especially of the success/failure sort rather than the 'reacting to changing situations' sort, has a consequence of shortening the planning horizon and favoring brute force or direct approaches to situations. Which in turn has knock-on effects to the importance of e.g. the character-building minigame versus the importance of decisions made during on-screen play.

The other has to do with momentum and maintaining the importance of choices and actions. The success/fail kind of resolution has a format of 'I do this', 'no you don't', which just sort of makes things get stuck or makes decisions or ideas feel wasted. Something like a dice system that says 'you succeed, but it costs you X' or 'you succeed, but in the time that takes your antagonist gets X benefit' or whatever would resolve this. But 'check if you can do a thing' seems inferior to me to 'do a thing (and)' now. This kind of goes hand in hand with a distaste for checks which the GM calls for, which strike me as a kind of 'go fish' game - in the character building minigame you're supposed to guess which checks you're likely to be asked to make, and then the GM calls for checks which basically see whether you guessed correctly. So the model I prefer now is 'the player knows well what they can and can't do, and decides from that what to do, then the GM (and GM tools like dice if you want) decide how the world responds to the fact that that happened'. But less focus on calling into question whether in fact the character can do what they think they can.

[oxybe]

This can be part of it, but I think there are two other things as well.

One has to do with the ability to plan. The more front-loaded chance is, the more possible it is to have more involved plans. So randomness, especially of the success/failure sort rather than the 'reacting to changing situations' sort, has a consequence of shortening the planning horizon and favoring brute force or direct approaches to situations. Which in turn has knock-on effects to the importance of e.g. the character-building minigame versus the importance of decisions made during on-screen play.

The other has to do with momentum and maintaining the importance of choices and actions. The success/fail kind of resolution has a format of 'I do this', 'no you don't', which just sort of makes things get stuck or makes decisions or ideas feel wasted. Something like a dice system that says 'you succeed, but it costs you X' or 'you succeed, but in the time that takes your antagonist gets X benefit' or whatever would resolve this. But 'check if you can do a thing' seems inferior to me to 'do a thing (and)' now. This kind of goes hand in hand with a distaste for checks which the GM calls for, which strike me as a kind of 'go fish' game - in the character building minigame you're supposed to guess which checks you're likely to be asked to make, and then the GM calls for checks which basically see whether you guessed correctly. So the model I prefer now is 'the player knows well what they can and can't do, and decides from that what to do, then the GM (and GM tools like dice if you want) decide how the world responds to the fact that that happened'. But less focus on calling into question whether in fact the character can do what they think they can.

Understandable.

[Trafalgar]

Relative to the above, I've become far less fond of the d20 as a resolution mechanic. Every number having the exact same chance of appearing as any other has really started to bother me. Yes, modifiers increase the chance of success, but ultimately what the die is saying is that extreme success is weighted just as evenly as extreme failure. I like dice pool mechanics, but they too don't seem to really reflect the fact that an average result is far more likely in any given situation than the extremes. Having more dice may mean more chances of success, but it doesn't really mean more average success.

I played around with using 2d10 instead of 1d20. I liked being able to call a "nat 1" "snake eyes". It did better with providing average levels of success which on the whole produced a smoother game, but I think my players preferred the "swingyness" of the d20. Being able to reliably do something, especially if you were good at it, seemed, in my testing, less fun than betting extreme success against extreme failure.

I like the old 2d6 NPC reaction tables from B/X. I have played around with using a 2d10 reaction table for 5e because of the possible +5 charisma bonus. It's worked alright. I like that instead of a straight pass or fail, you can add different levels of success. So a roll of 11 gets the merchant to sell you the magic item, a roll of 19 gets you 20% off the asking price.

[Tanarii]

"We recognize that we have no clue what 'realistic' looks like, therefore we no longer attempt to change games for the purpose of making them more realistic" is a consistent and highly self-aware stance.

"We recognize that we have no clue what 'realistic' looks like, therefore we now reject anyone's attempts to change games for the purpose of making them more realistic"? That's a bit trickier.

I guess it depends on what the post I was replying to was attempting to convey.
I mean fair enough. I was commenting on the likelihood of anyone playing an RPG actually knowing real world probability distributions of tasks they're attempting to determine success/failure for. E,g. Basic resolution mechanic

But tracking back the comment chain, it's possible that it was more about totally ridiculous outlier results that are sometimes included in games

e.g. x% chance per attack you fumble and stab yourself, and y% chance on crit table that stabbing yourself nicks a femoral artery and you die

[KorvinStarmast]

Things in RPGs that you used to like but don’t anymore
A very niche answer, confined to D&D.
The Deck of Many Things.
Used to like it, both as DM and as player. Now, not so much.

The result is that the Deck has been removed from the RNG table (when I DM) and replaced with a note:

"Roll again, or hand select two very rare items"

I like the old 2d6 NPC reaction tables from B/X. I still use it, although my ref table is from Original (Men and Magic, page 12) three brown books.

[Balmas]

Sadly enough, D&D as a system?

It's not that I dislike D&D. It's the gateway drug, if that makes sense--it got me into tabletop, and it's still the system that people default to when you wanna do some pen-and-paper. But I'm also aware that D&D has some weaknesses, like its simulationist ruleset, its emphasis on GM vs. Player, and how little the rulesets encourage storytelling.

If you're GMing, you need to be ready, at any time, to set DCs for anything the players do, adjudicate which check it uses, have statblocks/names/voices ready for any and all NPCs the players can interact with. You create the world, the lore, the adventure, because if you don't have a dungeon full of goblins, gnolls, and beholders, you just end up staring at each other for five hours. What's more, because it is largely the GM vs. the party, players often feel the need to fill traditional party rolls, and any opportunity for non-standard parties or interpersonal conflict gets largely stifled.

Compare that to a system like Apocalypse World or its derivatives Masks, Thirsty Sword Lesbians, and Fellowship. To start with, much of the world is player-generated. Each system primes you with player relations, past deeds, stuff like that, which is all fitting to the archetypes of the players. So right from square one, you're set up with plot hooks and threads to chase down and tase out or forget, as appropriate. Wow, the Brainer stole something from the Hardholder? What was it? Why'd they need it? What are they doing with it? Is it still around? And it's totally legit, as a GM, to turn to a player and say, "Yeah, I don't know the answer to that. But Barbecue, you're the hardholder, whatcha got? You know the troublemakers in New Manhattan, alright. What's the nasty on the people harassing your supply caravans?" Players are invested because it's not just your world; it's a shared world that everyone's contributing towards. And what's more, due to the greatly simplified ruleset, you're basically always set for whatever direction the players go towards! And what's more, interesting characters are not only possible, but encouraged!

Seriously, PBTA games are just a tutorial on how to run fun, interesting games, and I can't recommend them enough.

[vasilidor]

Character classes.
Rolling for stats.
Rolling for hit points.
Chump to god, as one guy put it. Chump to Conan is nice, or to Dresden if I want to be a wizard.

[Tanarii]

But I'm also aware that D&D has some weaknesses, like its simulationist ruleset, its emphasis on GM vs. Player, and how little the rulesets encourage storytelling.3e tried to be simulationist bit failed. For any other edition, no way, not even close.

The first rule of D&D Club is if it is DM vs Player you are Doing It Wrong (TM)

Not encouraging storytelling is a feature, not a bug. (Okay, this one is obviously just a preference :smallamused: )


Compare that to a system like Apocalypse World or its derivatives Masks, Thirsty Sword Lesbians, and Fellowship. To start with, much of the world is player-generated. Each system primes you with player relations, past deeds, stuff like that, which is all fitting to the archetypes of the players. So right from square one, you're set up with plot hooks and threads to chase down and tase out or forget, as appropriate. Wow, the Brainer stole something from the Hardholder? What was it? Why'd they need it? What are they doing with it? Is it still around? And it's totally legit, as a GM, to turn to a player and say, "Yeah, I don't know the answer to that. But Barbecue, you're the hardholder, whatcha got? You know the troublemakers in New Manhattan, alright. What's the nasty on the people harassing your supply caravans?" Players are invested because it's not just your world; it's a shared world that everyone's contributing towards. And what's more, due to the greatly simplified ruleset, you're basically always set for whatever direction the players go towards! And what's more, interesting characters are not only possible, but encouraged!
This is a pretty good summary of why it's hard to find players that enjoy PtbA, and D&D type games are wildly popular but always short on GMs. Most players want to play, they don't want to do the GMs work for them.

It's a good game if you've got a table full of GMs though. Or budding improv actors / authors. And there are definitely some
fish like that in the sea. It's just you usually need to hit a large convention or play online to find them.

[kyoryu]

3e tried to be simulationist bit failed. For any other edition, no way, not even close.

The first rule of D&D Club is if it is DM vs Player you are Doing It Wrong (TM)

Not encouraging storytelling is a feature, not a bug. (Okay, this one is obviously just a preference :smallamused: )

People really misunderstand the nature of old school D&D - probably because they played it when they were 10 at best, or heard about it from people that played it when they were 10. And 10 year olds are usually pretty bad GMs, especially in a system that gives them a lot of freedom.


This is a pretty good summary of why it's hard to find players that enjoy PtbA, and D&D type games are wildly popular but always short on GMs. Most players want to play, they don't want to do the GMs work for them.

It's a good game if you've got a table full of GMs though. Or budding improv actors / authors. And there are definitely some
fish like that in the sea. It's just you usually need to hit a large convention or play online to find them.

That nature is often overemphasized, I think. While it's true that in the first session of AW you're supposed to do a bunch of that, that's fairly limited (per the examples, not explicitly) to the first session. The examples from other areas tend to be more traditional in their approach.

That said, there's a huge culture around AW and other "narrative" games that emphasizes that. However, the games work just fine without it. It's the "what's in the box" question - if you ask the GM what's in the box, how do they answer? It can be predetermined, it can be random, it can be made up, or they can ask you. Or, often, some combination of the above. But each answer will appeal to different people.

Personally, I prefer avoiding the last one outside of game setup. Most player input beyond that is what I call "implicit" input - if a player is obviously assuming something to be true or real, and it's reasonable, then they're correct in their assumptions. I might also play with letting players not involved in the current scene come up with stuff to keep them involved.

But the "EVERYTHING MUST BE MADE UP BY THE PLAYERS" (okay, I overemphasize slightly) crowd is real, and they're very vocal, and I frankly push back against them where I can (I do have a bit of a voice in the Fate community overall).

[PhoenixPhyre]

Sadly enough, D&D as a system?

It's not that I dislike D&D. It's the gateway drug, if that makes sense--it got me into tabletop, and it's still the system that people default to when you wanna do some pen-and-paper. But I'm also aware that D&D has some weaknesses, like its simulationist ruleset, its emphasis on GM vs. Player, and how little the rulesets encourage storytelling.

If you're GMing, you need to be ready, at any time, to set DCs for anything the players do, adjudicate which check it uses, have statblocks/names/voices ready for any and all NPCs the players can interact with. You create the world, the lore, the adventure, because if you don't have a dungeon full of goblins, gnolls, and beholders, you just end up staring at each other for five hours. What's more, because it is largely the GM vs. the party, players often feel the need to fill traditional party rolls, and any opportunity for non-standard parties or interpersonal conflict gets largely stifled.

Compare that to a system like Apocalypse World or its derivatives Masks, Thirsty Sword Lesbians, and Fellowship. To start with, much of the world is player-generated. Each system primes you with player relations, past deeds, stuff like that, which is all fitting to the archetypes of the players. So right from square one, you're set up with plot hooks and threads to chase down and tase out or forget, as appropriate. Wow, the Brainer stole something from the Hardholder? What was it? Why'd they need it? What are they doing with it? Is it still around? And it's totally legit, as a GM, to turn to a player and say, "Yeah, I don't know the answer to that. But Barbecue, you're the hardholder, whatcha got? You know the troublemakers in New Manhattan, alright. What's the nasty on the people harassing your supply caravans?" Players are invested because it's not just your world; it's a shared world that everyone's contributing towards. And what's more, due to the greatly simplified ruleset, you're basically always set for whatever direction the players go towards! And what's more, interesting characters are not only possible, but encouraged!

Seriously, PBTA games are just a tutorial on how to run fun, interesting games, and I can't recommend them enough.

It's interesting how much of this is pure taste.

I've never seen D&D as simulationist (especially not 5e) nor as GM vs party (if you're doing it that way, you're explicitly going against core system assumptions). And the type of stories it encourages you to tell (which yes, contra @Tanarii, it does encourage creating stories) are the kinds of stories I find interesting. It encourages discovering the story of the characters as they explore a world. Where it "fails" is at providing authored-fiction-style stories with clean story beats, closely-plotted events, beginnings, climaxes, and ends. But I find that to be a feature, not a bug. If I want a clean narrative, I've got tons of fiction to read/watch. I want things that could spiral out of anyone's control at any minute. Where me, as DM, having to improv and react to the players' actions and them having to react to my actions is the story. I don't want players thinking "but the story demands...." or "this is better for the narrative...". I want them thinking like characters. Let me weave it (or not) into a coherent narrative--that's a chunk of my fun in trying to fit these disparate aspects into a retrospective "story"[1].

And for me, world building is much of the fun. Having people interact with the world in character stance, not in author stance. Where the world reacts and responds to what they do through their characters, not what they do acting as players. I've found that having a living world that reacts to the players and in which the players' actions (filtered through the characters) have lasting effects (including for other groups) provides all of the benefits...without the stance switching and heavy workload on anyone's part.

I find PbtA to be opinionated and constraining, because it has its model of what is "interesting" and "how to play TTRPGs right". And that model doesn't fit anything but a narrow slice of possibilities. None of which I'm personally interested in. So for me, PbtA is the model of how to do it wrong, how to create preachy, uninteresting, constraining games. But that's a matter of pure taste, not some objective statement.

[1] I don't plan in advance. But I do look at what's happened and look for pieces I can weave into future sessions so that in retrospect it appears like a linear story despite having been anything but that. Self-laying railroad tracks--you look backward and you see the tracks you've laid behind you. But you can go anywhere.

[kyoryu]

Where it "fails" is at providing authored-fiction-style stories with clean story beats, closely-plotted events, beginnings, climaxes, and ends. But I find that to be a feature, not a bug. If I want a clean narrative, I've got tons of fiction to read/watch. I want things that could spiral out of anyone's control at any minute. Where me, as DM, having to improv and react to the players' actions and them having to react to my actions is the story.

Strangely, this is exactly why I play Fate/PbtA games.


I don't want players thinking "but the story demands...." or "this is better for the narrative...". I want them thinking like characters. Let me weave it (or not) into a coherent narrative--that's a chunk of my fun in trying to fit these disparate aspects into a retrospective "story"[1].

I actively tell players in my Fate/PbtA games not to do things "to make a better story". Story comes between the players, their goals, and the opposition to them. And, yes, things spiral in interesting ways.


And for me, world building is much of the fun. Having people interact with the world in character stance, not in author stance. Where the world reacts and responds to what they do through their characters, not what they do acting as players. I've found that having a living world that reacts to the players and in which the players' actions (filtered through the characters) have lasting effects (including for other groups) provides all of the benefits...without the stance switching and heavy workload on anyone's part.

While there is definitely a group that plays both games in heavily- or almost exclusively-author stance mode, it's not necessary. There's some mandatory author stance stuff in Fate, but it can be pretty minimized. Most decisions in PbtA games can be framed as player-facing.


I find PbtA to be opinionated and constraining, because it has its model of what is "interesting" and "how to play TTRPGs right". And that model doesn't fit anything but a narrow slice of possibilities. None of which I'm personally interested in. So for me, PbtA is the model of how to do it wrong, how to create preachy, uninteresting, constraining games. But that's a matter of pure taste, not some objective statement.

It's interesting, because maybe, in this case, that's a good thing? AW is a tool designed to do a fairly narrow set of things, and do them pretty well. It's up front about that. And if that's not the thing you want to do, cool. I'd rather have a game be honest about what it does and let me decide up front if I want to play it or not.

As far as narrow vs. broadly scoped? I find that most games are more narrowly scoped than people think... it's just when you're used to the walls being in particular places, you don't go there and don't notice them. But that's me.


[1] I don't plan in advance. But I do look at what's happened and look for pieces I can weave into future sessions so that in retrospect it appears like a linear story despite having been anything but that. Self-laying railroad tracks--you look backward and you see the tracks you've laid behind you. But you can go anywhere.

Pretty similar to what I do. I've had players amazed that my games weren't prepped or pre-written.

I'm not saying you're wrong. But I do think it's interesting that we seem to have reasonably similar goals, and you dislike games for not achieving them, while I like the same games for facilitating them greatly. But, as I've said, there's also that very vocal "hyper-narrative" crowd that asserts everything must be cooperative GM, full author stance, blah blah blah stuff even that's very weakly supported by the texts of the games themselves.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Strangely, this is exactly why I play Fate/PbtA games.



I actively tell players in my Fate/PbtA games not to do things "to make a better story". Story comes between the players, their goals, and the opposition to them. And, yes, things spiral in interesting ways.



While there is definitely a group that plays both games in heavily- or almost exclusively-author stance mode, it's not necessary. There's some mandatory author stance stuff in Fate, but it can be pretty minimized. Most decisions in PbtA games can be framed as player-facing.



It's interesting, because maybe, in this case, that's a good thing? AW is a tool designed to do a fairly narrow set of things, and do them pretty well. It's up front about that. And if that's not the thing you want to do, cool. I'd rather have a game be honest about what it does and let me decide up front if I want to play it or not.

As far as narrow vs. broadly scoped? I find that most games are more narrowly scoped than people think... it's just when you're used to the walls being in particular places, you don't go there and don't notice them. But that's me.



Pretty similar to what I do. I've had players amazed that my games weren't prepped or pre-written.

I'm not saying you're wrong. But I do think it's interesting that we seem to have reasonably similar goals, and you dislike games for not achieving them, while I like the same games for facilitating them greatly. But, as I've said, there's also that very vocal "hyper-narrative" crowd that asserts everything must be cooperative GM, full author stance, blah blah blah stuff even that's very weakly supported by the texts of the games themselves.

From my reading, FATE is way more conducive to my style than PbtA. May just be tone--FATE came across as "here's how we do it, and here's why" while PbtA came across as "here's how you have to do it if you want to not be a bad person". And FATE leaves it way more open for the GM and the players to collaborate (or not), while PbtA seems to demand that they do, and do so in particular ways (especially the "rules for GMs" section).

And if I seriously played one of those games, I might revise my opinions. But a quick read through the rules (and lots of experience with very vocal, very pushy fans online) makes me unwilling to try (in the case of PbtA specifically). Lots of the fans come across as "One True Way" believers (whether they really are or not), often pushing themselves into non-PbtA discussions and insisting that you have to read and follow the ideas in PbtA systems or you're not running interesting games/you're being a bad DM. Instead of accepting that PbtA has its niche and so does D&D. Or Exalted. Or whatever.

[kyoryu]

From my reading, FATE is way more conducive to my style than PbtA. May just be tone--FATE came across as "here's how we do it, and here's why" while PbtA came across as "here's how you have to do it if you want to not be a bad person". And FATE leaves it way more open for the GM and the players to collaborate (or not), while PbtA seems to demand that they do, and do so in particular ways (especially the "rules for GMs" section).

And if I seriously played one of those games, I might revise my opinions. But a quick read through the rules (and lots of experience with very vocal, very pushy fans online) makes me unwilling to try (in the case of PbtA specifically). Lots of the fans come across as "One True Way" believers (whether they really are or not), often pushing themselves into non-PbtA discussions and insisting that you have to read and follow the ideas in PbtA systems or you're not running interesting games/you're being a bad DM. Instead of accepting that PbtA has its niche and so does D&D. Or Exalted. Or whatever.

Baker's tone is very divisive and often unnecessary. And yeah, a lot of the fans are just waaaay too vocal.

If you're ever interested in a one shot of either, lemme know.

[Tanarii]

And the type of stories it encourages you to tell (which yes, contra @Tanarii, it does encourage creating stories) are the kinds of stories I find interesting. It encourages discovering the story of the characters as they explore a world. Where it "fails" is at providing authored-fiction-style stories with clean story beats, closely-plotted events, beginnings, climaxes, and ends. But I find that to be a feature, not a bug. If I want a clean narrative, I've got tons of fiction to read/watch. I want things that could spiral out of anyone's control at any minute. Where me, as DM, having to improv and react to the players' actions and them having to react to my actions is the story. I don't want players thinking "but the story demands...." or "this is better for the narrative...". I want them thinking like characters. Let me weave it (or not) into a coherent narrative--that's a chunk of my fun in trying to fit these disparate aspects into a retrospective "story"[1].
None of that sounds like creating stories to me, other than in the colloquial sense of giving you something after the fact to tell stories about in retrospect. It sounds like the DM giving a world (fantasy environment) and circumstances, and the players playing their characters as if their characters are living in that fantasy environment and circumstances, and making decisions for them.

As I've said before, personally I live through events, I don't create a story of my life. And playing a character (or running a game for others playing characters) isn't different for me.

[Max_Killjoy]

Sadly enough, D&D as a system?

It's not that I dislike D&D. It's the gateway drug, if that makes sense--it got me into tabletop, and it's still the system that people default to when you wanna do some pen-and-paper. But I'm also aware that D&D has some weaknesses, like its simulationist ruleset, its emphasis on GM vs. Player, and how little the rulesets encourage storytelling.

If you're GMing, you need to be ready, at any time, to set DCs for anything the players do, adjudicate which check it uses, have statblocks/names/voices ready for any and all NPCs the players can interact with. You create the world, the lore, the adventure, because if you don't have a dungeon full of goblins, gnolls, and beholders, you just end up staring at each other for five hours. What's more, because it is largely the GM vs. the party, players often feel the need to fill traditional party rolls, and any opportunity for non-standard parties or interpersonal conflict gets largely stifled.

Compare that to a system like Apocalypse World or its derivatives Masks, Thirsty Sword Lesbians, and Fellowship. To start with, much of the world is player-generated. Each system primes you with player relations, past deeds, stuff like that, which is all fitting to the archetypes of the players. So right from square one, you're set up with plot hooks and threads to chase down and tase out or forget, as appropriate. Wow, the Brainer stole something from the Hardholder? What was it? Why'd they need it? What are they doing with it? Is it still around? And it's totally legit, as a GM, to turn to a player and say, "Yeah, I don't know the answer to that. But Barbecue, you're the hardholder, whatcha got? You know the troublemakers in New Manhattan, alright. What's the nasty on the people harassing your supply caravans?" Players are invested because it's not just your world; it's a shared world that everyone's contributing towards. And what's more, due to the greatly simplified ruleset, you're basically always set for whatever direction the players go towards! And what's more, interesting characters are not only possible, but encouraged!

Seriously, PBTA games are just a tutorial on how to run fun, interesting games, and I can't recommend them enough.



First, "D&D" and "simulationist" (to the degree one takes the GNS model seriously in 2021) don't belong in the same sentence without a lot of qualifiers. I'm never quite sure how D&D and "sim" got lumped together, but I suspect it has to do with some people taking two things they wanted to dump on, and pretending they were one and the same to make it easier. (I like a lot of "sim" in my RPGs, and I don't like D&D because it kinda fails at that in so many ways.)

Second, as a player, the last thing I want to do is to ask the GM a question about the world, and have them turn to me and say "I don't know, what do you think is...." I'm not here for "author stance", I'm here to experience a "world" through the lens of a "person" (the character).

...



None of that sounds like creating stories to me, other than in the colloquial sense of giving you something after the fact to tell stories about in retrospect. It sounds like the DM giving a world (fantasy environment) and circumstances, and the players playing their characters as if their characters are living in that fantasy environment and circumstances, and making decisions for them.

As I've said before, personally I live through events, I don't create a story of my life. And playing a character (or running a game for others playing characters) isn't different for me.


^ THIS.

I have nothing against those who want some storytelling in their RPGs. It's their experience, their enjoyment, and their choice.

I have no patience for those who insist that playing an RPG is inherently and inevitably an act of storytelling. No one gets to tell me how I experience or engage with the things I do, or how I get enjoyment out of the things I enjoy.

[PhoenixPhyre]

None of that sounds like creating stories to me, other than in the colloquial sense of giving you something after the fact to tell stories about in retrospect. It sounds like the DM giving a world (fantasy environment) and circumstances, and the players playing their characters as if their characters are living in that fantasy environment and circumstances, and making decisions for them.

As I've said before, personally I live through events, I don't create a story of my life. And playing a character (or running a game for others playing characters) isn't different for me.

We fundamentally disagree on the basic definitions of what it means to "create a story", so yeah. Not going to take that digression further; I probably shouldn't have even put that parenthetical in there.

[Xervous]

We fundamentally disagree on the basic definitions of what it means to "create a story", so yeah. Not going to take that digression further; I probably shouldn't have even put that parenthetical in there.

I’d hazard a guess that within a broad definition of “everything is a story if you look at it this way” one person may be producing a story by another’s metric without that being the intent or focus of the first person’s actions. For instance I fold pieces of paper to pass the time in a boring high school class. Others call the good looking pieces art, but those pieces are just byproducts of a task whose purpose was the task itself. Or road trip vs. driving to a specific destination.

[Max_Killjoy]

I’d hazard a guess that within a broad definition of “everything is a story if you look at it this way” one person may be producing a story by another’s metric without that being the intent or focus of the first person’s actions. For instance I fold pieces of paper to pass the time in a boring high school class. Others call the good looking pieces art, but those pieces are just byproducts of a task whose purpose was the task itself. Or road trip vs. driving to a specific destination.

Under broad enough definitions, anything is everything.

But intent and motivation matter.

You'll see people claim that brushing your teeth every night is a "ritual", totally ignoring what makes a ritual a ritual, and not just part of your routine.

[kyoryu]

Under broad enough definitions, anything is everything.

But intent and motivation matter.

You'll see people claim that brushing your teeth every night is a "ritual", totally ignoring what makes a ritual a ritual, and not just part of your routine.

I've seen two arguments for the "it's all storytelling" angle.

1) You're sitting around talking about events. That's storytelling.
2) All human activity creates story, we're inherently storytelling creatures.

So.... I think the first is defensible, but is a bit of a stretch, and not really useful in any interesting way. I think the most useful thing for it is bringing certain people into the hobby that might recoil from "game" and "roleplaying", but "storytelling" sounds hipster enough to pique their interest.

The second one is just so ridiculously broad that everything is storytelling. Driving your car to work is storytelling.

The big problem is that in almost every case either of these are used in a kind of narrow/broad swap. It starts out with "all roleplaying is storytelling" using one of the very broad definitions, and then draws conclusions on what should happen in RPGs based on a much more narrow definition of storytelling.

[KorvinStarmast]

The first rule of D&D Club is if it is DM vs Player you are Doing It Wrong (TM) +1.

Most players want to play, they don't want to do the GMs work for them. I spent so many years in DM / GM stance as my default that it's easy for me to slip in to DM/GM brain mode, and I have to sometimes force myself into "player only" mode. I'm glad when I can.

It's just you usually need to hit a large convention or play online to find them. Me going to a con any time soon is a no-go until or unless my wife has a change of heart. She, for sure, doesn't want to hang around a few thousand geek/nerds/gamers at a Con.

People really misunderstand the nature of old school D&D - probably because they played it when they were 10 at best, or heard about it from people that played it when they were 10. And 10 year olds are usually pretty bad GMs, especially in a system that gives them a lot of freedom. Yeah, and a lot of teenagers are poor DMs although some are very good.

I might also play with letting players not involved in the current scene come up with stuff to keep them involved. Another way to keep them off of their cell phones during play time. :smallbiggrin:

But the "EVERYTHING MUST BE MADE UP BY THE PLAYERS" (okay, I overemphasize slightly) crowd is real, and they're very vocal, and I frankly push back against them where I can (I do have a bit of a voice in the Fate community overall). Fight the good fight.

It encourages discovering the story of the characters as they explore a world. I like to phrase it this way: the PCs go out and do things, and then they tell stories, after the fact, about the stuff that happened. Kind of like real life. Dramatic "aw crap" moments (like my bard's rolling a 1 on a persuasion check the other knight) can make for fun story telling in a way that killing off three Grells might not.

And for me, world building is much of the fun. Having people interact with the world in character stance, not in author stance. Yeah, the players hang the flesh onto the bones of some parts of the imagined world.

I actively tell players in my Fate/PbtA games not to do things "to make a better story". Story comes between the players, their goals, and the opposition to them. And, yes, things spiral in interesting ways. The time we played Fellowship it took us all (each of us first time through) a bit of time to get the bonds between PCs thing going ... but it made for some fun spirals. :smallsmile:


Most decisions in PbtA games can be framed as player-facing. Our Fellowship run was like that; the GM was pretty experienced with that game, which I think helped.

But, as I've said, there's also that very vocal "hyper-narrative" crowd that asserts everything must be cooperative GM, full author stance, blah blah blah stuff even that's very weakly supported by the texts of the games themselves. Echoes from The Forge, perhaps.

Baker's tone is very divisive and often unnecessary. And yeah, a lot of the fans are just waaaay too vocal. Forge-ites did get a bit of a rep, perhaps for a good reason. :smallcool:

None of that sounds like creating stories to me, other than in the colloquial sense of giving you something after the fact to tell stories about in retrospect. It sounds like the DM giving a world (fantasy environment) and circumstances, and the players playing their characters as if their characters are living in that fantasy environment and circumstances, and making decisions for them.

As I've said before, personally I live through events, I don't create a story of my life. And playing a character (or running a game for others playing characters) isn't different for me. You tell stories about the interesting bits that happened along the way. Similar thing to Sea Stories told among salty old Navy veterans. You aren't telling the stories about the mind numbing tedium of many of the mundane things you did at sea: you tell stories about the highlights, or the unusual stuff, like the guy hanging onto the lifelines behind the high power turning aircraft, pretending to be Superman as the exhaust and prop wash tried to blow him overboard ... yeah, truth is stranger than fiction. :smalleek:

First, "D&D" and "simulationist" (to the degree one takes the GNS model seriously in 2021) don't belong in the same sentence without a lot of qualifiers.
Second, as a player, the last thing I want to do is to ask the GM a question about the world, and have them turn to me and say "I don't know, what do you think is...." I'm not here for "author stance", I'm here to experience a "world" through the lens of a "person" (the character). *nods*

I have no patience for those who insist that playing an RPG is inherently and inevitably an act of storytelling. No one gets to tell me how I experience or engage with the things I do, or how I get enjoyment out of the things I enjoy. IIRC, Robin Laws had a great essay on "the various way people engage with, or get enjoyment out of, RPGs" that put a nice finger on a point I had vaguely understood before.

The big problem is that in almost every case either of these are used in a kind of narrow/broad swap. It starts out with "all roleplaying is storytelling" using one of the very broad definitions, and then draws conclusions on what should happen in RPGs based on a much more narrow definition of storytelling. Almost a bait and switch approach. :smallcool:

[Max_Killjoy]

I've seen two arguments for the "it's all storytelling" angle.

1) You're sitting around talking about events. That's storytelling.
2) All human activity creates story, we're inherently storytelling creatures.

So.... I think the first is defensible, but is a bit of a stretch, and not really useful in any interesting way. I think the most useful thing for it is bringing certain people into the hobby that might recoil from "game" and "roleplaying", but "storytelling" sounds hipster enough to pique their interest.

The second one is just so ridiculously broad that everything is storytelling. Driving your car to work is storytelling.

The big problem is that in almost every case either of these are used in a kind of narrow/broad swap. It starts out with "all roleplaying is storytelling" using one of the very broad definitions, and then draws conclusions on what should happen in RPGs based on a much more narrow definition of storytelling.


Exactly.

The assertion almost always starts out with the broad definition as a supposed descriptive, and then flips to a very narrow definition as a prescriptive.

[Max_Killjoy]

I like to phrase it this way: the PCs go out and do things, and then they tell stories, after the fact, about the stuff that happened. Kind of like real life. Dramatic "aw crap" moments (like my bard's rolling a 1 on a persuasion check the other knight) can make for fun story telling in a way that killing off three Grells might not.


Which is a lot like life. We can tell stories about life, but we're not making stories just by living our lives.




Echoes from The Forge, perhaps.
Forge-ites did get a bit of a rep, perhaps for a good reason. :smallcool:


I still have a bit of Forge-induced twitch... in case it's not obvious. Ran into a lot of those hyper-narrative, hyper-author-stance, hyper-players-do-everything types who were aggressive and disdainful towards any other approach.

And even before that, there was the start on Usenet when someone dropped into the RPG groups and started saying, much like above, "all gaming is about story, if you're not doing story, you're doing it wrong".




IIRC, Robin Laws had a great essay on "the various way people engage with, or get enjoyment out of, RPGs" that put a nice finger on a point I had vaguely understood before.


I think I've read that before.




Almost a bait and switch approach. :smallcool:


That's the first thing I thought of to, bait and switch.

[Luccan]

I used to think grid combat was overly complicated and a pain to set up. I still think it's often a pain to set up but I prefer if to TotM now, at least for big/important combats, because you can point at a map or grid and say "that's where you are, that's where the bad guy is" without people having to correct their mental picture of everyone's position. Honestly, the main reason I haven't switched over to a VTT for live groups is because I don't know how to use any and not everyone in my group owns a tablet or small laptop that would make using those practical during an IRL game.

[Willie the Duck]

I spent so many years in DM / GM stance as my default that it's easy for me to slip in to DM/GM brain mode, and I have to sometimes force myself into "player only" mode. I'm glad when I can.
I find trying to make sure I always have one group where I am a player, even if I'm usually DMing, helps me keep out of the a monomindset. Even if it is a pickup, once-every-six-weeks kind of game.

Me going to a con any time soon is a no-go until or unless my wife has a change of heart. She, for sure, doesn't want to hang around a few thousand geek/nerds/gamers at a Con.
Snort! My wife too, although she has no trouble with me going. If your wife likes antiquing or wine tours, there'd be things for her to do if you ever wanted to hit up ConVergence.

IIRC, Robin Laws had a great essay on "the various way people engage with, or get enjoyment out of, RPGs" that put a nice finger on a point I had vaguely understood before.
Almost a bait and switch approach. :smallcool:
Good read that. I like the 'this is a way to divide people's approaches, but it's just a model' attitude over the 'this is what people are doing!' one we seem to be discussing that gets people into trouble.

I still have a bit of Forge-induced twitch... in case it's not obvious. Ran into a lot of those hyper-narrative, hyper-author-stance, hyper-players-do-everything types who were aggressive and disdainful towards any other approach.
And even before that, there was the start on Usenet when someone dropped into the RPG groups and started saying, much like above, "all gaming is about story, if you're not doing story, you're doing it wrong"
This explains things. :smallbiggrin:
I keep revising my guesstimate regarding how many people here are old enough to have been on Usenet. I bet that means you remember 'Roleplay, not Rollplay?'

I used to think grid combat was overly complicated and a pain to set up. I still think it's often a pain to set up but I prefer if to TotM now, at least for big/important combats, because you can point at a map or grid and say "that's where you are, that's where the bad guy is" without people having to correct their mental picture of everyone's position. Honestly, the main reason I haven't switched over to a VTT for live groups is because I don't know how to use any and not everyone in my group owns a tablet or small laptop that would make using those practical during an IRL game.
My group chafes at (required) grids, but having one around at least for relative position is fairly mandatory for us now. If someone had one of the old wargamer sandtables, we'd use that.

[Max_Killjoy]

This explains things. :smallbiggrin:
I keep revising my guesstimate regarding how many people here are old enough to have been on Usenet. I bet that means you remember 'Roleplay, not Rollplay?'


I do.

Usenet is also where I interacted with the old staff at White Wolf and saw their snobby attitude first hand.

[kyoryu]

I used to think grid combat was overly complicated and a pain to set up. I still think it's often a pain to set up but I prefer if to TotM now, at least for big/important combats, because you can point at a map or grid and say "that's where you are, that's where the bad guy is" without people having to correct their mental picture of everyone's position. Honestly, the main reason I haven't switched over to a VTT for live groups is because I don't know how to use any and not everyone in my group owns a tablet or small laptop that would make using those practical during an IRL game.

I think this is interesting, because I consider a very rough diagram to show general positioning indispensable for TotM. I can't imagine doing TotM without it, and I don't think it makes it suddenly map-based, because it's just a reference to keep people on the same page, rather than the actual "space" that's being played on.

[Luccan]

I think this is interesting, because I consider a very rough diagram to show general positioning indispensable for TotM. I can't imagine doing TotM without it, and I don't think it makes it suddenly map-based, because it's just a reference to keep people on the same page, rather than the actual "space" that's being played on.

I think I can recall a handful of times we used rough maps in my TotM games. So maybe that would help. It would certainly avoid what I recall often being the case, which was basically always fighting on a flat plane. And here's the thing, I'm still totally down to play that way if that's what a group prefers, because I'm always down to play more TTRPGs. It's just that as was pointed out earlier in the thread* there are games that are less TotM friendly and I happen to play mostly those types of games. At least I happen to think they are.

*Wish I'd finished reading before posting my initial response, please don't read it as an attempt to rehash anything from earlier.



My group chafes at (required) grids, but having one around at least for relative position is fairly mandatory for us now. If someone had one of the old wargamer sandtables, we'd use that.

Yeah, maybe it's just a visual aid is helpful, not grids specifically, but I do like a grid or hexmap for exactness when a game is being exact in its areas. For something with a system of vague ranges (like melee, near, far) it's not necessary.

[kyoryu]

I think I can recall a handful of times we used rough maps in my TotM games. So maybe that would help. It would certainly avoid what I recall often being the case, which was basically always fighting on a flat plane. And here's the thing, I'm still totally down to play that way if that's what a group prefers, because I'm always down to play more TTRPGs. It's just that as was pointed out earlier in the thread* there are games that are less TotM friendly and I happen to play mostly those types of games. At least I happen to think they are.

*Wish I'd finished reading before posting my initial response, please don't read it as an attempt to rehash anything from earlier.

I 100% agree that there are games that are not TotM friendly. Anything that relies heavily on specific positioning and ranges would be a nightmare to play TotM. I'd generally include any WotC D&D in this group, with an emphasis on 4e.

[137beth]

Disclaimer: I haven't read the whole thread, so I am just responding to the OP.


1)Anything that involves a significant amount of record-keeping. I'd rather play such a game on a computer and let the computer do the record-keeping. I don't have time for it anymore.

2)Any sort of connection between a character's species and whether they are a good guy or a bad guy. Admittedly, this is less specific to tabletop RPGs and more a general preference in fantasy and sci-fi. Most of my current favorite fantasy and sci-fi fiction doesn't have "evil species," and one that does (OOTS) use them to critique the existence of evil species in other fiction. However, I have a stronger objection to this sort of thing in stories where I am expected to take an active role in determining the plot.

[False God]

I 100% agree that there are games that are not TotM friendly. Anything that relies heavily on specific positioning and ranges would be a nightmare to play TotM. I'd generally include any WotC D&D in this group, with an emphasis on 4e.

At least 4E told you "You need a grid for this."

I'll add along these lines: I've no time for games that can't make up their mind if they want you to just imagine it or they want you to pull out the rulers and graph paper. PICK ONE. There's no wrong answer. Some games will serve better with a grid, 4E was explicitly designed for grid use. Some games will serve better without a grid, like TTRPGS that bill themselves as "storytelling" games.

[Lucas Yew]

Personally, all dice other than the standard d6 (crazy, right?), because of the local availability. It's laughably easy to acquire any number of d6's, but other D&D dice types, especially the d10 and d100, are nearly impossible unless you delve through dubious online malls, and I'm extremely untrusting of those evil places...

----


For me I have the opposite experience to many here - I used to enjoy rules-light systems with simple mechanics, but I really don't anymore. (good stuff)


I used to think realism was super important, but it's not. It was verisimilitude the whole time that I wanted, internal consistency. I don't mind that horses are too slow or too fast, as long as the game makes sense for how fast horses are. I don't mind if fire is an element, just as long as the game sticks to antique physics the whole way through.

Quoted for support. I highly value symmetric + crunchy rules too, even when a contrary rule might have better production values and/or ease of play...
(maybe even worship if they're legally free at the very least like the 3.X SRD)

[noob]

Personally, all dice other than the standard d6 (crazy, right?), because of the local availability. It's laughably easy to acquire any number of d6's, but other D&D dice types, especially the d10 and d100, are nearly impossible unless you delve through dubious online malls, and I'm extremely untrusting of those evil places...

That is a legitimate concern that probably goes well with the issue of parts that can be lost such as cards: having cards specific for your rpg is an issue because you can hardly replace them unlike regular poker cards.

[Hytheter]

Personally, all dice other than the standard d6 (crazy, right?), because of the local availability. It's laughably easy to acquire any number of d6's, but other D&D dice types, especially the d10 and d100, are nearly impossible

You don't have any gaming stores near you? I've never had any troubles buying dice before, personally, but maybe it's harder in the covid climate.

[Cluedrew]

To Hytheter: Now I do, but neither the town I grew up in nor the (smallish) city we would go to for shopping trips - and that would usually be a day trip - had gaming stores. You could however get boxes of "dice", aimed at people who didn't realise there was more than one kind, in town. Because of this all the systems I design have been d6 based unless they particularly make use of differing die sizes and those I still shy away from.

[OldTrees1]

To Hytheter: Now I do, but neither the town I grew up in nor the (smallish) city we would go to for shopping trips - and that would usually be a day trip - had gaming stores. You could however get boxes of "dice", aimed at people who didn't realise there was more than one kind, in town. Because of this all the systems I design have been d6 based unless they particularly make use of differing die sizes and those I still shy away from.

If someone is in a similar situation, is there good advice on how to convert a XdY into a Zd6? Are there better conversions than these?
1d20 -> 3d6
1d4 -> 1d6-1
1d8 - > 1d6+1
1d12 -> 2d6
1d10 -> 1d6+2 or 2d6-1
1d100 -> 1d(6^3) with the chart converted to base 6 because 216 ~= 200 ???

[JNAProductions]

If someone is in a similar situation, is there good advice on how to convert a XdY into a Zd6? Are there better conversions than these?
1d20 -> 3d6
1d4 -> 1d6-1
1d8 - > 1d6+1
1d12 -> 2d6
1d10 -> 1d6+2 or 2d6-1
1d100 -> 1d(6^3) with the chart converted to base 6 because 216 ~= 200 ???

Using multiple dice gives you a bell curve-not an inherently bad thing, but it DEFINITELY changes the math.

[OldTrees1]

Using multiple dice gives you a bell curve-not an inherently bad thing, but it DEFINITELY changes the math.

True.

In cases like weapon damage (Greataxe 1d12 -> 2d6) the bell curve would definately change the math. It might also change some mechanical interactions. However generally it could work.

In cases like random month of the year going from 1d12 to 2d6 would not make any sense. Suddenly January and December disappear and July becomes very common.

[Max_Killjoy]

Dice are fairly easy to get, I think.

Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, superstore chains, local gaming stores, etc.

Not sure if Drive Thru RPG sells dice.

[Telwar]

To Hytheter: Now I do, but neither the town I grew up in nor the (smallish) city we would go to for shopping trips - and that would usually be a day trip - had gaming stores. You could however get boxes of "dice", aimed at people who didn't realise there was more than one kind, in town. Because of this all the systems I design have been d6 based unless they particularly make use of differing die sizes and those I still shy away from.

We didn't have a dedicated gaming store, but the hobby train store in The Town With The Mall An Hour Away did have a small rpg section. I feel like they had dice, too. The bookstores also had small gaming sections. But this is in the '90s and before Barnes and Noble and Borders and Amazon became things.

Though that's also why the beginners boxes always have dice.

[Jay R]

Where in the world are you buying games that won't also sell the dice you need to play them?

Amazon and other reputable companies sell dice online.

You can also use "=randbetween(1, 6)" in Excel, or roll20.net.

A quick Google search for "online dice roller had 10 million hits.

Or click here for the one from Wizards of the Coast:
WotC Dice Rolling page (https://www.wizards.com/dnd/dice/dice.htm).

[oxybe]

I love that of all things from ancient vestiges of the old WotC site to still exist and work... is their dice roller.

[Imbalance]

Where in the world are you buying games that won't also sell the dice you need to play them?

Apparently in Lucas Yew's case, South Korea.

[Quertus]

True.

In cases like weapon damage (Greataxe 1d12 -> 2d6) the bell curve would definately change the math. It might also change some mechanical interactions. However generally it could work.

In cases like random month of the year going from 1d12 to 2d6 would not make any sense. Suddenly January and December disappear and July becomes very common.

Can't… hold back…

December didn't disappear. You didn't kill Christmas.

[noob]

Can't… hold back…

December didn't disappear. You didn't kill Christmas.

But December is now the second least likely month(the least likely being January)

[Batcathat]

As someone who can't stand the heat, I don't think I like this new calender. Way too much July.

[Imbalance]

Nah, what you do is get rid of the mods put in place by those upstarts, Julius and Augustus, take 'er back to a 10-month jobby, either reroll snake eyes or boxcars is choice - not both. Fix ya right up.

[MoiMagnus]

Nah, what you do is get rid of the mods put in place by those upstarts, Julius and Augustus, take 'er back to a 10-month jobby, either reroll snake eyes or boxcars is choice - not both. Fix ya right up.

Nerd remark: While it is true that the Roman calendar used to have 10 month and was later expanded into a 12 months calendar, contrary to some popular belief, this has nothing to do with June and August, who simply replaced the already existing names "Quintilis" and "Sextilis".

The shift from 10 month to 12 months was way earlier, and the added months were January and February (the year used to be March -> December). Those months were initially added "at the end" of the calendar, as 11th and 12th month, but were later shifted to the "beginning" of the year for some unclear reasons (probably around 150BC, though that's still debated).

[Cluedrew]

Where in the world are you buying games that won't also sell the dice you need to play them?The one where I can provide a download link for my system. Until 3D printers are a household item I can't do the same with a d20.


but were later shifted to the "beginning" of the year for some unclear reasons (probably around 150BC, though that's still debated).I heard it was because the handover in leadership (which was on the new year) could happen in the winter instead of right before the army would go to war.

[Hytheter]

but were later shifted to the "beginning" of the year for some unclear reasons

Obviously because someone thought it would be funny if September through December were all named incorrectly. :smallbiggrin:

Jokes aside, I appreciate the additional details.

[AsuraKyoko]

From my reading, FATE is way more conducive to my style than PbtA. May just be tone--FATE came across as "here's how we do it, and here's why" while PbtA came across as "here's how you have to do it if you want to not be a bad person". And FATE leaves it way more open for the GM and the players to collaborate (or not), while PbtA seems to demand that they do, and do so in particular ways (especially the "rules for GMs" section).

And if I seriously played one of those games, I might revise my opinions. But a quick read through the rules (and lots of experience with very vocal, very pushy fans online) makes me unwilling to try (in the case of PbtA specifically). Lots of the fans come across as "One True Way" believers (whether they really are or not), often pushing themselves into non-PbtA discussions and insisting that you have to read and follow the ideas in PbtA systems or you're not running interesting games/you're being a bad DM. Instead of accepting that PbtA has its niche and so does D&D. Or Exalted. Or whatever.

This has been exactly my experience, too. My group was looking for a post-apocalyptic game to run a campaign in, and I had heard good thing about Apocalypse World, so we gave it a try...

Or rather, we tried to give it a try. The book was so smug and condescending about its style of play that we couldn't even bring ourselves to actually play it. We eventually went with some other system (though I don't remember which, might have been GURPS?), and have since avoided every PbtA game like the plague. I still have this visceral reaction whenever I encounter a game that refers to "playbooks", and it's been an effort to not let it taint my appreciation of other games.

[Max_Killjoy]

This has been exactly my experience, too. My group was looking for a post-apocalyptic game to run a campaign in, and I had heard good thing about Apocalypse World, so we gave it a try...

Or rather, we tried to give it a try. The book was so smug and condescending about its style of play that we couldn't even bring ourselves to actually play it. We eventually went with some other system (though I don't remember which, might have been GURPS?), and have since avoided every PbtA game like the plague. I still have this visceral reaction whenever I encounter a game that refers to "playbooks", and it's been an effort to not let it taint my appreciation of other games.

Welcome to the legacy of The Forge.