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Cluedrew
2023-02-11, 03:48 PM
Every once in a while someone on the forum says something about how they wish D&D was less popular and someone counters by saying some other system would simply have the oppressive presence of D&D instead. And usually a lot of other digital ink is spent in this discussion, but it got me thinking; if we got to and had to pick a system to be the iconic role-playing game, what would be the best choice?

Spoiler alert: Because we neither get to nor have to I am not actually picking a particular system, but I have a few thoughts about what it might look like. (Also for this thread I'm just talking about the system itself. Even in light of recent events I am not talking about the system's caretaker.)

The first thing is approachability. As the most iconic system it is also one going to be the one most often someone's first role-playing game they have tried. So it should be an easy system to learn and an easy system to GM. I suppose that is always true to some degree, but here even more so, so I would be willing to make some more trade offs for it. People who want to go deeper and more detailed can move onto other systems or use the homebrewed solutions that will pop-up, so I think it is the best trade-off for this situation.

Second is, I believe it should be setting and (to an extent) genre agnostic. Every system is going to have a particular tone, or whatever you want to call it. That cannot be avoided. But with that tone it should be able to cover fantasy, sci-fi, westerns and so on. This is perhaps the most subjective one, but I have seen too many attempts of people trying to push their favourite system past its limits and I think preparing for that is easier than getting people to switch systems. In this respect a tool box system (in the style of Fudge) is probably best. Now this does cut against approachability, especially for the GM, and might have to be a bit of a compromise, but there might be some way to resolve it. Like having some "preconfigured" settings for people to start with.

Now if that was the most subjective point this is probably the most abstract, but at the same time it is pretty straight forward: I think the iconic role-playing game should be almost entirely a role-playing game. The genre exists in a space between tactical war games/dungeon-crawlers and story-telling games. Having elements of both is probably inevitable, and learning into one or the other doesn't necessary make for a better or worse game. Yet, if this is the iconic role-playing game, I don't think it should lean too far into either side of that scale.

And that is all I have so far. Feel free to add your own, comment on the ones I wrote or on the topic itself.

NichG
2023-02-11, 04:53 PM
I'd agree with the approachability thing, and on top of that I'd say that it should: have multiple levels of possible play complexity, so you can basically 'add' to the game as people get more comfortable. In addition, it should be designed to have a subset of its structure which is very adaptable to other media (computer games, board games primarily, but also fiction) while also retaining and featuring things which take advantage of the freedom of a tabletop environment.

I would disagree on the thing being genre or setting agnostic, because in order for toolboxes to be useful you have to already have a good idea of what you want to build and what it would look like. I'd rather design it to be at least somewhat focused, but to really give strong inspiration from reading the rules, the setting books, etc, about how things could look or be as well as making the specific world it presents vibrant, real, filled with history, and conceptually varied with many different angles one could take within it. An iconic game needs to do the thing that D&D does in spawning a lot of 'generic fantasy' and 'fantasy heartbreaker' things, but within which you can immediately spot the D&D-isms. Vampire does the same thing for that matter - there are just certain points which if they show up in a generic urban fantasy/horror TV series it gives off this strong 'wait, is this actually a WoD adaptation?' feeling (and I've barely even played any WoD stuff, but I still get this vibe from e.g. Underworld). On the other hand, I can't make that kind of association with e.g. GURPS or FATE.

Cluedrew
2023-02-12, 10:35 AM
On Complexity: Not exactly sure what you mean by this. Do you mean something like there should be more complex rules for things you don't have to engage with? I mean its fine if that happens, but I don't see why that should be a design goal. And if it is pure add-ons, since the simpler version already works, isn't the more complex version just busy work? Unless the simpler version isn't working, and that is also bad.

On Media: I don't even know how to guess what this means. Could you please elaborate?

On Toolbox: This one I had to spend a bit more time on, and went back and forth on a few times. But this is what I seem to have settled on: Well if we are going that direction, I think we want less of a D&D / Fantasy Heartbreaker situation and more of an Apocalypse World / Powered by the Apocalypse world situation. Generally speaking, Fantasy Heartbreakers seem to be trying to fix what people didn't like about D&D, while the Powered by the Apocalypse systems reuse what people like about Apocalypse World. There are probably more than a few exceptions to that but still, I've never seen anyone go "You know what D&D's spell casting system would be great for?" [Anything including D&D's own settings.]" Now what exactly is getting reused I can't say. I mean the core resolution mechanic is high on that list, along with things like character advancement, but I don't really know what those look like.

Ameraaaaaa
2023-02-12, 12:50 PM
Honestly, it should be a pretty rules light rpg 1st and foremost. It should be 10 pages or less. This will prevent the "it's sooooo complicated" from taking place making rpgs more welcoming.

It should also be very freeform in the sense of having no set list of traits. This way the gm can insert their favourite setting into the game like for example harry potter, dragon ball z, naruto, star wars, star trek, marvel, dc, blade runner, ect ect.

So maybe something like risus or paper free rpg or lasers and feelings.

All 3 are simple and free.

Paper free rpg is a single page with a single sentence character sheet, a roll 3 keep the middle and check the results table with a 5e style advantage system, suggestions on how to implement optional rules and can be played with a gm. Though it's yes/no/and/but system might take a few minutes to get a hang on to for new players along with being pretty swingy.

Risus is a more standard rpg but is only 4 pages long that also has rules for teamwork, combat, and much more packed in those 4 pages. Pretty easy to homebrew as well.

Lasers and feelings is a 1 page star trek inspired system with a easy to understand system with a unique type of critical hit where instead of doing extra damage you get to ask the gm a question. Also comes with a free adventure generator and is insanely easy to homebrew.

NichG
2023-02-12, 01:45 PM
On Complexity: Not exactly sure what you mean by this. Do you mean something like there should be more complex rules for things you don't have to engage with? I mean its fine if that happens, but I don't see why that should be a design goal. And if it is pure add-ons, since the simpler version already works, isn't the more complex version just busy work? Unless the simpler version isn't working, and that is also bad.

For example if I'm playing 7th Sea (it's not a perfect or even intentional example of this idea, and the system doesn't explicitly tell you you can organize things this way, but this is what it would look like and I didn't want to use D&D):

- The simplest working version of the game would be: choose where I'm from, buy core stats, pick a profession (and get free skill dots from that), top up my skills, and go.
- Next level of complexity would be to include advantages - stuff like 'cannot get drunk', backgrounds - things which the GM weaves into the game and you get XP for resolving or XP if the GM forgets to use it frequently enough, and arcana - things you can spend a drama die on to do, but the GM gets to spend a drama die on the flip side of it to make happen to you. At that level I will also be bringing in sorceries (bloodline advantage, relatively simple treatment in the core book) and martial schools (get a handful of extra skills that let you approach combat differently, like enabling counter-attacks and the like). Unlike D&D, being a magic-user in 7th Sea is more that you have one or two extra tricks that add on to what you can do rather than having things like 'caster classes'. If you're an El Fuego practitioner, you're immune to fire and can move fire that is naturally in your environment, and maybe treat fire as solid so you can climb it or use it to cushion your fall, and at the maximum of (at that point very expensive) investment you can make a phoenix and fly on it for a bit.
- Next level of complexity would be to include secret society memberships and nation-specific or society-specific splatbook material, and associated metaplot connections. Also brings in things like Syrneth artifacts, etc. You can play the game without this stuff just fine, but its like going from DM's homebrew prime material world to going interplanar in D&D.
- Want to get even more into things? Bring in the rules for owning your own ship as a party...

So if you just want to do a oneshot where you're re-enacting a scene from the three musketeers, you can do that. If you want a campaign where you're a group of people with dark and troubled pasts who help eachother out when those things catch up with them, then its good to go to at least the next layer. Want to get embroiled in efforts to protect the thin shroud that seals reality away from technologically advanced eldritch horrors, or participate in a peasant rebellion, or get the scientific revolution started, or prevent fantasy Isaac Newton from conquering the world from the shadows (or help him)? Bring in the secret societies stuff. Etc.

If you've got a bunch of new players, you can introduce them to the hobby and the game at the simplest level (or use that for one-shots in general). Then as people get comfortable, you say 'aha, there's another layer to the game, lets bring that in'. This could be access to some kind of specialized subsystems or minigames (lets break out the nation building stuff and see the game from a totally different angle!) or optional rules for doing things like playing as monsters or different supernatural types, etc.

The reasoning here is, you'd want the game to have enough depth that people can play it for 20 years and still feel like they're discovering things about it, but you don't want to front-load that depth so that new players would have to understand it even a bit just to begin play.



On Media: I don't even know how to guess what this means. Could you please elaborate?


I probably can't involve using D&D as an example now, but basically everything under the sun cribbed from D&D rules to make things that were 'not a tabletop game'. Old computer games like Wizardry, Rogue and Nethack grabbed stats, AC/to-hit, etc, cribbed lots of monsters (but only loosely their mechanics) and maybe stole a few spell ideas but largely renamed them. Not to mention the actual official TSR computer games, which were more faithful D&D adaptations but of course stopped short of anything that would require a GM to adjudicate it like open-ended questions via augury and the like, or anything that would actually modify the world in a serious way like creating buildings or demiplanes or summoning/raising armies. So there were sections of D&D that made it very appealing to adapt to that other medium - something that was desirable to do because it was iconic. And that in turn drew more attention and awareness of 'what does it mean to be D&D-like' which fed back and enabled it to actually become iconic, even when those things were barely D&D.

Similarly, adaptation to fiction creates another funnel to enhance and establish a broader set of ideas around the RPG. I didn't play tabletop games for the first time until years after I had already read Forgotten Realms and Dark Sun and Dragonlance stuff. For universal systems that don't actually say anything about a world, a setting, that don't specifically have integrations for those things, you can't get a feedback loop going between the game and other media. Could you see reading a novel and being able to say 'aha, that was based on GURPS?' the way you could read a book and say 'aha, that was based on D&D' or 'aha, that was based on Shadowrun' or 'aha, that was based on Vampire'?



On Toolbox: This one I had to spend a bit more time on, and went back and forth on a few times. But this is what I seem to have settled on: Well if we are going that direction, I think we want less of a D&D / Fantasy Heartbreaker situation and more of an Apocalypse World / Powered by the Apocalypse world situation. Generally speaking, Fantasy Heartbreakers seem to be trying to fix what people didn't like about D&D, while the Powered by the Apocalypse systems reuse what people like about Apocalypse World. There are probably more than a few exceptions to that but still, I've never seen anyone go "You know what D&D's spell casting system would be great for?" [Anything including D&D's own settings.]" Now what exactly is getting reused I can't say. I mean the core resolution mechanic is high on that list, along with things like character advancement, but I don't really know what those look like.

So imagine something like... build a complete game engine from a very abstract level behind closed doors, but what you release first is actually only a fully fleshed out specialization of that engine to a specific setting, with lots of explicit mechanical hooks to things that are important in that setting, etc. Then if people want to adapt it to other things, you can reveal those underlying structures and designs and the process of how you went from the general engine to the specific world. For something that is to be iconic, I'd do it in that order rather than e.g. 'here's the most general version of the system, here's a setting-specific book to do the adaptation'.

Grod_The_Giant
2023-02-12, 02:24 PM
It should also be very freeform in the sense of having no set list of traits. This way the gm can insert their favourite setting into the game like for example harry potter, dragon ball z, naruto, star wars, star trek, marvel, dc, blade runner, ect ect.
I'd actually push back on the "no set list of traits" thing-- I've seen a lot of people run into brick walls when handed a really blank slate, and homebrewing stuff can be really intimidating at first (to say nothing of argument-inducing). You want people to be able to make a character with a minimum of option paralysis.

PhoenixPhyre
2023-02-12, 02:28 PM
I'd actually push back on the "no set list of traits" thing-- I've seen a lot of people run into brick walls when handed a really blank slate, and homebrewing stuff can be really intimidating at first (to say nothing of argument-inducing). You want people to be able to make a character with a minimum of option paralysis.

I agree with this. My experience is that there's a sweet spot for new players on the crunch scale. Too much crunch is a hard barrier (or requires massive hand-holding and effectively making characters for them). Too little crunch (by which I mostly mean defined, pre-built, thematically-meaningful options) and it's also a barrier. Most people don't go into it thinking "oh, I want to play <very specific character>." They go into it kinda in "browse, then figure it out" mode. Browse through the list of pre-defined options, pick one that looks cool, then play with it. So often a class/level system is way more welcoming than a build-a-bear one for new players. Not always--if the system requires a high level of system mastery to not suck, that's a barrier as well.

SimonMoon6
2023-02-12, 03:51 PM
Here's my suggestion: Mayfair's DC Heroes RPG which was rebooted without the DC stuff as Blood of Heroes.

Is it approachable? I think so. It's very straightforward. Every action that involves rolling dice uses the same table. You always roll two (exploding) d10. And that's it (apart from spending points to improve your chances of success). Powers, skills, and other advantages are also kept simple and comprehensible while also being comprehensive. You don't have to fiddle with things the way you do in D&D, though you can customize as much as you like.

Is it genre agnostic? Someone might say, "Boo, it's just a superhero game!" But the thing about superhero games is that they are well-structured to handle every genre because superhero games are typically built to represent superhero comics and every possible genre appears in superhero comics, so the game has to be able to handle them (unlike, say, GURPS which tries to handle every genre but instead chooses to handle "low power ordinary humans" extensively and thus does a very poor job with superheroes).

And I have a lot of experience using DC Heroes in multi-genre games. In fact, I turned to it because I needed a game that could do everything easily and well (and quickly! Champions fails badly here).

Regarding what I meant about quickly: Imagine the PCs find the villain before you expected them to. Do you have to end the session? Not in DC Heroes. It takes about five seconds to scribble down the villain's exact stats without worrying that you didn't optimize him enough.

And powers work quickly. No spending half an hour trying to decide how to spend 1000 points of Multi-Power (like in Champions). If you have a power that lets you do many things (Sorcery, Omni-Power, etc) you just choose what you want to do and split a small integer integer number (like 12 or maybe 20) among the different things. No more math than that. If you want to change into an animal, you take the animal's stats and add a small number of points to those stats. That's it.

So, it wins in the realm of what I want for low complexity while still having some actual numbers to judge things with. If you can describe a character in words, you have enough information to write down their stats instantly. And combat is simple.

Telok
2023-02-12, 05:59 PM
FATAL /jk

The only thing I can really add is the game can't have a "one true way" setup. If it breaks, causes angst, spawns decades of homebrew fixes, and generally stuff in the game goes all screwy when you don't use it in the "correct" or "one true way", then it's a **** game for beginners. Unless the game can't, mechanically, be made to play the wrong way, such that it's blatantly against the rules and even first time readers can't misunderstand that you play a specific way.

Pauly
2023-02-12, 09:03 PM
I am going to assume a green fields approach and start from the assumption that RPGs as we know them do not exist.

1) It has to have a genre. People will need a hook to get interested in this new thing.

2) It has to be a genre where there is no dominant IP/Duopoly IP. If I choose “wizarding school” as my genre there is a giant IP that will eat my lunch if it chooses to compete, or I end up being subservient to the IP. If I choose space opera then I can have Star Wars or Star Trek but not both. If I choose “neither” then the IP giants will eat my lunch if they decide to compete. Mutants and Masterminds can be the current big boy in the superhero genre RPG only because Marvel and DC aren’t interested in fighting for the space.
Medieval Europe + Magic has no dominant IP, and even if you want to argue LoTR, that’s really only 2 books (LoTR itself is 1 book split into 3 parts due to post WW2 paper shortages) and there’s a huge amount of variety in the genre Wheel of Time, GoT, Witcher, Grey Mouser, Conan plus the old legends such as King Arthur and Robin Hood.
This will also allow us to create our own IP and room for our own novels, webcomics, Streaming series etc.

3) Procedurally created characters. I’m going to be agnostic on the class based/skill based divide. My experience is that gamers have the greatest fondness for characters they rolled up over characters that they built. We can get into points buy etc. in 2nd edition, but for 1st ed. I want to maximize the nostalgia factor. Not totally random either, let the players roll on this table or that table, or choose this profession with these skills or that profession with those skills.

4) Limited options on the class/background/race. We don’t want to overwhelm the players with too many choices and we need the choices to be clear archetypes of the genre. D&D 5th ed. can include choices like “warlock”, “warforged”, “artificer” and “tiefling” because they have a long established player base. Again we can add more complex stuff into later editions.

5) Roll the dice, read the number resolution system. No exploding dice, no dice pools, no roll [x] dice and choose.
Limited chains of dice. Roll to hit -> roll to wound is OK, but roll to hit -> roll to parry/dodge -> roll for location ->roll for damage -> roll for armor reduction kind of chains are not OK.
It would be best if all dice checks run off the same system, but it isn’t a hard requirement.

6) Binary success/fail result on skill checks. Requiring a PbtA style interpretation of what a success or fail means is something GMs and players can develop the skills to do later, but for 1st ed. we want clear simple outcomes.

Edit to add

7) Character progression. Again I’m agnostic as to how it iccurs and how far you progress, but players should feel that their characters are being rewarded for experience.

8) Probably the most important. A regular official publication that expands the game. FAQs, errata, game designer notes, new IP stories and settings, and new official items and abilities. Help build the community of players, reward them for engaging with your brand, get your players to pay to be beta testers, create buzz for upcoming expansions.

Ameraaaaaa
2023-02-12, 11:04 PM
I'd actually push back on the "no set list of traits" thing-- I've seen a lot of people run into brick walls when handed a really blank slate, and homebrewing stuff can be really intimidating at first (to say nothing of argument-inducing). You want people to be able to make a character with a minimum of option paralysis.


I agree with this. My experience is that there's a sweet spot for new players on the crunch scale. Too much crunch is a hard barrier (or requires massive hand-holding and effectively making characters for them). Too little crunch (by which I mostly mean defined, pre-built, thematically-meaningful options) and it's also a barrier. Most people don't go into it thinking "oh, I want to play <very specific character>." They go into it kinda in "browse, then figure it out" mode. Browse through the list of pre-defined options, pick one that looks cool, then play with it. So often a class/level system is way more welcoming than a build-a-bear one for new players. Not always--if the system requires a high level of system mastery to not suck, that's a barrier as well.

Fair point on the no set list of traits thing. Luckily risus has a bunch of example cliches (basically skills mixed with profession) iirc along with the ability the ability to make your own.

And lasers and feelings does actually have a set list of traits unlike the other 2. Tho lasers and feelings has no advancement system. So long running campaigns are tricky in that sense.

CarpeGuitarrem
2023-02-12, 11:23 PM
For me it has less to do with the actual structure of the game and more to do with the way the game exists from an ownership perspective. Chess isn't owned by anyone, but several companies produce chess pieces and many publishers print chess puzzles and chess guides. There's even some miscellaneous chess variants.

Chess is "official" but only in the sense that there's a commonly used rules set. (For an example of a less centralized situation, look at trick taking games and how many variants they have.) However, chess isn't controlled by a specific company, and the only real centralized authority for chess is one that regulates competitive play.

Imagine a world where "D&D" is a public domain game, where people have a general idea of how to play but there's no one authoritative rule book. The standard rules are short and commonplace enough that they're not necessarily hard to remember. In essence, it's not even too far off from the current state of affairs, only with WotC out of the picture.

You have other games that are more exclusively published, but this lingua franca of RPGs is owned by nobody. To me, that's my ideal iconic RPG.

ahyangyi
2023-02-13, 02:13 AM
For me it has less to do with the actual structure of the game and more to do with the way the game exists from an ownership perspective. Chess isn't owned by anyone, but several companies produce chess pieces and many publishers print chess puzzles and chess guides. There's even some miscellaneous chess variants.

Chess is "official" but only in the sense that there's a commonly used rules set. (For an example of a less centralized situation, look at trick taking games and how many variants they have.) However, chess isn't controlled by a specific company, and the only real centralized authority for chess is one that regulates competitive play.

Imagine a world where "D&D" is a public domain game, where people have a general idea of how to play but there's no one authoritative rule book. The standard rules are short and commonplace enough that they're not necessarily hard to remember. In essence, it's not even too far off from the current state of affairs, only with WotC out of the picture.

You have other games that are more exclusively published, but this lingua franca of RPGs is owned by nobody. To me, that's my ideal iconic RPG.

That's what OGL was supposed to do. D&D 3e SRD might be one authoritative rule book, but you can also play Pathfinder. Pathfinder Core Rulebook might be authoritative, until you run into the guy who insists PF+SoP is the real game. And they are all valid.

Ignimortis
2023-02-13, 09:40 AM
I don't believe in a singular "ideal" RPG as described here. What people look for in TTRPGs is different for every person. One person's "welcoming" level of complexity might be unpleasantly simple for another, and vice versa.

Viz., my entry into TTRPGs began with trying to make a system for a small circle of roleplayers I was rolling with, who used a simple d100 roll as well as the GM's understanding of situations and characters to resolve rolls. I did not like it, and desired more crunch, more explicit options, more deterministic resolution, etc. So I wrote something that was, for all intents and purposes, not all that much lighter than D&D 5e (which released later that same year).

Same with the "ideal" being genre agnostic - by the time you get to truly genre agnostic, you end up with something that is usually so rules-light that it's basically a resolution engine rather than an actual game. Otherwise the rules will get in the way and unless the GM is already skilled at dealing with TTRPG gameplay conventions, will inform the genre at least to some extent. See: GURPS being actually pretty bad at handling high-power characters, even if you strip it down to the basics.

So if I were to make a guess about a "perfect for entry" TTRPG, I'd go for something similar to either Vampire or D&D 5e (even if they didn't exist). Urban fantasy (of the "secret world behind the curtain" variety, not the "magic is out in the open since forever" one) and regular heroic fantasy are about the easiest genres to get to grips with regarding the settings around you, your limitations, expected behaviour and such. Rules for either could be cleaned up, but not exactly simplified all that much - I find that both of those games are in that curious spot where they're easy to get into, but mechanically-minded players also have something to do within the confines of the rules.

CarpeGuitarrem
2023-02-13, 10:38 AM
That's what OGL was supposed to do. D&D 3e SRD might be one authoritative rule book, but you can also play Pathfinder. Pathfinder Core Rulebook might be authoritative, until you run into the guy who insists PF+SoP is the real game. And they are all valid.
Yeah, I think the main wrinkle there is that WotC retains ownership and control over the one that's considered official, because they have the D&D brand. It basically stops any movement to make the lingua franca anything but this one game owned by this one company.

Cluedrew
2023-02-13, 06:27 PM
OK, replies are coming in faster than I can form a complete reply so I am going to just try and hit some high points.

To NichG and Ameraaaaaa and Grod_The_Giant and ... oh boy so many people have touch on this topic: Wow, I kind of thought that preconfigured module would be important but I never was expecting people to latch onto the idea of iconic lore. Sure, add it to the list and discuss further.

To Telok: Well, FATAL is a pretty good iconic terrible system, I'll give it that much. The rest is fine and basically comes down to flexibility and rules clarity which is... good and important. But I have nothing interesting to add there.

To CarpeGuitarrem and ahyangyi: Probably correct, but from the second paragraph of the original post: "(Also for this thread I'm just talking about the system itself. Even in light of recent events I am not talking about the system's caretaker.)" There is already a huge thread covering that, we don't need to cover it here as well.

To Ignimortis: Honestly I would prefer it if there wasn't a single overwhelming system at all, that's what the "had to" is all about. So this hypothetical does have some constraints I would rather not deal with. But I thought it might be an interesting topic.

Speaking of which, I do like the "urban fantasy" idea, where being thrown into an unfamiliar world is part of the setting/story. Seems like a good feature of a gateway system. And experienced players can skip over it if they want to.

Easy e
2023-02-14, 05:43 PM
It is interesting to note how current D&D doesn't really have any of the things you want an "Iconic RPG" to have. I am not sure what that means, but perhaps people who play and talk about TT RPGs online, have no idea what makes an iconic RPG? We are too close to it.

We need folks who have no idea what a TT RPGs is, tell us what they would need to get together and play a game of make-believe around a table together.

My initial instinct, is they would want something like Cards Against Humanity/Apples-to-Apples where you get dealt a hand of options to perform as a character. Then, the GM plays challenge cards, and then the players around the table play their actions on the challenge while narrating. Different character types would give you access to "unique" decks of action cards. Kind of like 5-minute dungeon combined with Apples-to-Apples with a layer of story-telling added in?

Not even sure if this is still a TT RPG, but that seems way more "mainstream" than what we have now.

gbaji
2023-02-14, 08:12 PM
I think the big problem with this conceptually is that the very game concepts/mechanics/whatever that game players desire today only exist as concepts because of earlier ideas that were formed via "iconic" play in the first place. It's easy to say, 50+ years later that "I'd really prefer to not have set spells/skills/abilities in the core rules", but it's pretty unlikely that the gaming industry would have gotten to the point where you'd have that view/preference if not for a whole slew of games that did just that. Now, you want free form customization, but if that had been introduced on day one? Probably would never have gotten off the ground.

Why did D&D become the winner in the "iconic game" contest, instead of say Bunnies and Burrows, or Tunnels and Trolls, or Chivalry and Sorcery (or Chainmail, which actually predated it and meets many of your criteria)? I'd argue strongly that it's precisely because it had very specific detailed lists of abilities tied to classes (so both easy to pick up and play in that respect), but also lists of spells with a large amount of variation and power range, and also a handful of existing settings to play in. And they were smart and marketed game modules (and a cartoon!) to tie people into it. But all of that was very specific details on setting/genre, and were more or less the opposite of what you're asking for in the OP.

If you're asking what sort of game people prefer to play today after decades of game design development processes, and a lot of player RPG experience, that's a very different question. But if you ask "what iconic game could have appeared that wasn't D&D back in the mid to late 70s"? Um... Probably something that looked a whole heck of a lot exactly like D&D. You needed well defined classes for folks to pick, without too much flexibility. You needed lots of tables and charts for folks to play around with, scaling from "easy" to "complex" (D&D was both horrible for this, but also kinda brilliant looking back at it). You needed embedded progression. You needed well defined stock settings to play in. Otherwise, you'd have a bunch of people looking at general rules and going "Ok. What do I do with this? Is this like a pet rock or something?".

And frankly, especially if we're considering alternatives for "back then", you have to completely toss out a whole gamut of game design and play styles that really only exist today because of the internet. The ability to find and/or publish a bewildering set of rules, tweaks, customizations, modifications, and then iterations of those things in response, etc (not to mention online play groups) just didn't exist until the last 20 years or so. "Back then", you needed something that a small number of people, sitting around a table on a Saturday afternoon, could pull out and play pretty easily and without a whole lot of pre-knowledge about RPG theory. Where maybe one person reads the rules, and the rest just play along (and hopefully have a lot of fun).

Of course. The flip side is that "back then", since there was no internet, we tended to have a lot more Saturdays to hang out with friends around a table and just play games.

D&D "won" because it took existing very broad rules and play guidelines and "filled them in" with the details. And it did it first.

icefractal
2023-02-15, 02:58 AM
I'm going to take a somewhat different stance on the lightness issue - while highly crunchy isn't good for newbie players, being rules-light isn't the main factor that makes it easy to get into. That factor is, IMO:
The system should still work with a majority of the players coming in cold and flat.

By cold, I mean coming in with no preparation. They didn't learn the rules. They didn't read the setting beyond a basic description. They didn't come prepared with a concept for their character, or a creative agenda, or any ideas on where they'd like the plot to go. They're ready to play, but they've done zero prep work.

By flat, I mean they're not highly energetic, their creative juices aren't flowing, they more want to passively consume (or at least be given clear prompts) than to actively improv a story, and while they may be happy casually roleplaying, they're not really driving character development forward. Maybe because they're tired from work, maybe because they're feeling too awkward in a new social circle to put themselves forward, maybe they had a bad week - point is, everyone has times they're flat.

Now IDK that it's possible to have a good game when everybody is cold and flat, but the game shouldn't break down when some of the group are, and ideally having the GM + one player actively contributing and everyone else just along for the ride should at least result in a moderately enjoyable time.

Also note that this is coming in cold and flat. If the game can on-board people during play, or get the creative juices flowing, then great, all the better. But at the start of the session at least, the "you must be this engaged to ride" bar needs to be pretty low.

How this relates to rules-lightness? It's a whole different axis, and some rules-light games are "hard mode" on this axis. PbtA, for example, works fine with cold players but gets boring fast if too many people are flat. Fate has the same issue, plus you don't really want to be completely cold either, because then the "choose your aspects" part of chargen becomes daunting (although TBF, you can use pregens).

Ameraaaaaa
2023-02-15, 03:09 AM
I'm going to take a somewhat different stance on the lightness issue - while highly crunchy isn't good for newbie players, being rules-light isn't the main factor that makes it easy to get into. That factor is, IMO:
The system should still work with a majority of the players coming in cold and flat.

By cold, I mean coming in with no preparation. They didn't learn the rules. They didn't read the setting beyond a basic description. They didn't come prepared with a concept for their character, or a creative agenda, or any ideas on where they'd like the plot to go. They're ready to play, but they've done zero prep work.

By flat, I mean they're not highly energetic, their creative juices aren't flowing, they more want to passively consume (or at least be given clear prompts) than to actively improv a story, and while they may be happy casually roleplaying, they're not really driving character development forward. Maybe because they're tired from work, maybe because they're feeling too awkward in a new social circle to put themselves forward, maybe they had a bad week - point is, everyone has times they're flat.

Now IDK that it's possible to have a good game when everybody is cold and flat, but the game shouldn't break down when some of the group are, and ideally having the GM + one player actively contributing and everyone else just along for the ride should at least result in a moderately enjoyable time.

How this relates to rules-lightness? It's a whole different axis, and some rules-light games are "hard mode" on this axis. PbtA, for example, works fine with cold players but gets boring fast if too many people are flat. Fate has the same issue, plus you don't really want to be completely cold either, because then the "choose your aspects" part of chargen becomes daunting.

The 3 games i suggested favor differently here.

All 3 can handle flat players. But rank differently with cold players.

Lasers and feelings handle players the best of the 3 because character creation is literally just picking a role (from a list) a style (from a list) a name and a number from 2 to 5.

Risus has a list of example clichés iirc (haven't read it in a while) and it's pretty easy to make a cliche by just thinking of a job or character type.

Paper free rpg probably struggles since there's only 1 example character. But it's still pretty easy since you just pick a name a role a speciality and a flaw.

Quertus
2023-02-15, 03:10 AM
Boy oh boy, I’m not sure if I’m even capable of having a dog in this fight.

Is it better for the “iconic” RPG to just use a bunch of 6-sided dice, or a whole array of polyhedrons? To use a die, or pools of dice? Just dice, or dice and cards (and chits and…)? To require math at all?

To have a clear power level, or to work at a wide range? For a character to advance at all? To do one genre really well, or fit into many/all?

For character creation to be random? Point buy? Done as a group? Done after you start playing (as a series of flashbacks perhaps)?

Almost any such question, games could be made multiple ways. But what is better for the health of the hobby, for someone to start with, and get bad habits from?

So, let me put on my big boy pants, and try to deliver an answer. An answer derived by looking at what it should not look like.

It should not be monotone, like fate or dread or gurps. If it’s strongly suited to a singular feel, of gritty or terror or following particular story beats in a predictable fashion, it sets people up for failure by misaligning their expectations wrt what a RPG is. Therefore, the lead RPG should support the widest range of feels possible.

It should not involve the system, GM, or other players roleplaying your character. Not even armchair quarterbacking. So no declaring others’ actions (even in backstory), no Alignment, no “earn a beanie for following a GM’s misinterpretation of your personality”. Instead, the player should be primary for their character’s actions and personality, and the game should encourage other players (including the GM) to ask when the version of the character that lives in their head would have acted differently, in order to improve upon their clearly inferior model of the character.

But most of all, it should come with an evil overlord approved 5 year old advisor style AI, that will advise and then (if you ignore the advice) publicly taunt you for all eternity if you attempt something so contrary to the source material as “dodging Magic Missiles” or, well, the entirety of the D&D movie. Which… is a backwards way of saying, it should have a canon, words that have meaning, like Wizard or Magic Missile, and not just be a build-a-bear where each game brings their own fluff and substance. There should be a central core of clearly defined ideas, a shared experience, a high bar for entry where we laugh at idiots like IMDb used to (sadly, I can no longer find this on IMDb) for the creators of The Core, with their incorrectly regarded as goofs: people complain about the physics in The Core, but some absolutely nothing in the movie is remotely similar to the physics of the real world, we can only assume that this movie is taking place in an alternate reality with completely different physics.

To sum up that last (rather large) paragraph, the flagship RPG needs to be recognizable.

And, in that vein, “the real world” isn’t a good place for this RPG to live. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that it needs to be aspirational. But what that means may vary from person to person; Fantasy or Super Heroes or Space / Future tech may not hit that chord with everyone.

And, related to that, it should be good for video game adaptations. Which means advancement, and that a single character can see extensive play time (preferably without save scumming, so as not to give people who start with video games the wrong idea). (Those who first see it in TV / movies / books should also not get the wrong idea… but I’m uncertain where to go with that.)

A bit of a tricky one, but… it should focus more on fun than Balance.

And, my own personal bias, I believe it needs to be Magical.

Ignimortis
2023-02-15, 03:21 AM
I'm going to take a somewhat different stance on the lightness issue - while highly crunchy isn't good for newbie players, being rules-light isn't the main factor that makes it easy to get into. That factor is, IMO:
The system should still work with a majority of the players coming in cold and flat.

By cold, I mean coming in with no preparation. They didn't learn the rules. They didn't read the setting beyond a basic description. They didn't come prepared with a concept for their character, or a creative agenda, or any ideas on where they'd like the plot to go. They're ready to play, but they've done zero prep work.

By flat, I mean they're not highly energetic, their creative juices aren't flowing, they more want to passively consume (or at least be given clear prompts) than to actively improv a story, and while they may be happy casually roleplaying, they're not really driving character development forward. Maybe because they're tired from work, maybe because they're feeling too awkward in a new social circle to put themselves forward, maybe they had a bad week - point is, everyone has times they're flat.

Now IDK that it's possible to have a good game when everybody is cold and flat, but the game shouldn't break down when some of the group are, and ideally having the GM + one player actively contributing and everyone else just along for the ride should at least result in a moderately enjoyable time.

Also note that this is coming in cold and flat. If the game can on-board people during play, or get the creative juices flowing, then great, all the better. But at the start of the session at least, the "you must be this engaged to ride" bar needs to be pretty low.

How this relates to rules-lightness? It's a whole different axis, and some rules-light games are "hard mode" on this axis. PbtA, for example, works fine with cold players but gets boring fast if too many people are flat. Fate has the same issue, plus you don't really want to be completely cold either, because then the "choose your aspects" part of chargen becomes daunting (although TBF, you can use pregens).

This is a particularly interesting take on the matter. I don't think a game would work when everyone is cold and flat, and a GM being flat usually means nobody's gonna have a great time, either, unless it's a very specific game where fun can be had by solely interacting with pre-prepared mechanics - so a flat GM can just act as a rules engine with some minimal interference. But those are rare, too.

But the game being welcoming and inspiring to people coming in "cold" is very important indeed. I find that a good book can take a "cold" and "flat" player and get them interested, as well as making them think "wouldn't it be cool to make an X?" - which gets rid of both states.

NichG
2023-02-15, 04:13 AM
The discussion on ideal genre is kind of interesting...

I wonder if rather than the version of urban fantasy with the supernatural being hidden, something like supernatural apocalypse urban fantasy would work well - maybe even better. You have a normal, recognizable world that every player coming in knows what it looks like and knows how to think about. Then you say as the premise of the game something like 'three years ago, the supernatural was revealed to be real as a major faction of unseelie fae ripped the boundaries of the world asunder, creating Wild Zones in various places all across the Earth which are gradually encroaching. Other supernatural factions have revealed themselves, governments have gathered military and scientific forces to do something about the zones, people have discovered latent talents which grow with exposure to the zones and seek their magic for their own personal addictions, fulfillment, and profit, etc.'

So that way you don't have the whole awkward 'you have cool powers but you have to hide your awesome/political mess with forces seeking to clamp down on anything that upsets the status quo' thing that masquerades do, but you still have the recognizability. Plus you have a sort of easy overarching drive to the setting: "The Wild Zones threaten society as it stands, push them back and protect your city", with the ability to do more subtle variants like actually parleying with the supernatural, exploring the wild zones and encountering basically anything from familiar myths and legends, etc.

For cold players, you basically just play a normal person (yourself even!) in social settings which have gotten a slight supernatural tinge to them - there's a new co-worker at your job and they're a self-confessed vampire, a baku has been visiting your dreams, etc. Just enough to get the idea of 'this is kinda neat'. Maybe even helps with 'flat' since you could just ask the player to bring in details from their own life. That level of play would be almost zero system stuff required, since you wouldn't be doing much combat for example, just enough to get the idea of 'how would you build yourself as a character in this game?'.

As things heat up, you could have all sorts of things like trying to learn magic, getting yourself turned into a supernatural type, diving into a Wild Zone for magic and loot, etc. Combats, etc, the usual TTRPG stuff, as well as bringing in additional subsystems and splat-like things in a modular way as people are comfortable with them.

KorvinStarmast
2023-02-15, 09:21 AM
1) It has to have a genre. People will need a hook to get interested in this new thing. That's a good starting point.

3) Procedurally created characters...Not totally random either, let the players roll on this table or that table, or choose this profession with these skills or that profession with those skills. For a beginner, yes.

4) Limited options on the class/background/race.
Basic Rules 5e D&D provided this nicely.

5) Roll the dice, read the number resolution system. No exploding dice, no dice pools, no roll [x] dice and choose. Agree. Kiss principle. (Which sadly leaves Tunnels and Trolls out)

Binary success/fail result on skill checks. Requiring a PbtA style interpretation of what a success or fail means is something GMs and players can develop the skills to do later, but for 1st ed. we want clear simple outcomes. Agree. That's kind of like advanced TTRPG play. This is also why Blades in the Dark is probably not a good beginner game, even though we are enjoying it.

7) Character progression. Yes.

Probably the most important. A regular official publication that expands the game. Agree.

Why did D&D become the winner in the "iconic game" contest, instead of say Bunnies and Burrows, or Tunnels and Trolls, or Chivalry and Sorcery (or Chainmail, which actually predated it and meets many of your criteria)? Chainmail isn't a role playing game. It is a table top miniatures battle game.

You needed well defined classes for folks to pick, without too much flexibility. You needed lots of tables and charts for folks to play around with, scaling from "easy" to "complex" (D&D was both horrible for this, but also kinda brilliant looking back at it). Yes. The complexity was dialable.


"Back then", you needed something that a small number of people, sitting around a table on a Saturday afternoon, could pull out and play pretty easily and without a whole lot of pre-knowledge about RPG theory. Still true.

D&D "won" because it took existing very broad rules and play guidelines and "filled them in" with the details. And it did it first. True enough. But it also won by getting the game into toy stores with the B/X boxed games. It expanded the target audience from SF&F geeks and wargamers to kids around 12 years old. (Peterson's "Elusive Shift" does a great job of describing how that played out).

gbaji
2023-02-15, 02:46 PM
Chainmail isn't a role playing game. It is a table top miniatures battle game.

Yeah. I was being a bit snarky. But trying (and maybe failing) to point out that D&D itself took earlier miniatures rules and "filled them in" with a lot of the very things that the OP suggests should *not* be in an "iconic" RPG. Tightly defined character classes. Alignment to provide motivation. Specific settings and objectives (kill monsters, gain gold and exp, increase levels). The shift from "this is a fighter, this is an archer, this is a wizard", to "this is Bradigoff, my mighty viking warrior, with a pole axe, X number of HPs, and abilities to lift gates and bend bars, so I can help us dive into this dungeon and defeat its defenders" (with each other player filling out their own character as well) was what made D&D... welll D&D.

Rules that go back to the more generic "fill it in yourself" concept work today because we have 50 years of gamers understanding how RPG games work, and knowing how to play them. Back then? It was a completely new concept. I just realized that a lot of what the OP (and some responders) were suggesting was the equivalent of creating a "skeleton" set of rules (much like Chainmail), just to resolve actions but not much else, and then realizing that we didn't actually have an RPG until someone came along and filled that stuff in. We could even go further and suggest that game systems like PbtA are very much the modern equivalent of Chainmail (set of rules resolution, but each iteration "fills in" the details to be played).

Hence why I brought it up. It's not a perfect analogy, but...



True enough. But it also won by getting the game into toy stores with the B/X boxed games. It expanded the target audience from SF&F geeks and wargamers to kids around 12 years old. (Peterson's "Elusive Shift" does a great job of describing how that played out).

Well. Wouldn't that likely also be necessary for our hypothetical alternative iconic game as well? Otherwise, we are basically restricting this to a small set of hobbyists.

Quertus
2023-02-15, 03:09 PM
To flip this line of thought on its head, how much hatred should the flagship generate, to be optimal for the hobby?

Now, this means two different things. Perhaps the more obvious is the free press the “satanic panic” brought D&D. Haters are just free publicity for the hobby.

But the second is, how many “bad” things should the flagship have, to encourage people to look at other games, and find the one for them? Needing lots of dice or having lots of books or requiring a battle map to play means people who don’t want or can’t manage such things will look elsewhere for a game more suited to them.

Personally, I think that the flagship should have several flaws, to drive people into the rest of the hobby. Probably one of the best flaw for the flagship to have is massive amounts of lore, lore books, etc - great for those who love such things, but likely to drive off those who do not want to invest the time or money into such a difficult to approach system / setting.

Cluedrew
2023-02-15, 10:24 PM
For example if I'm playing 7th Sea (it's not a perfect or even intentional example of this idea, and the system doesn't explicitly tell you you can organize things this way, but this is what it would look like and I didn't want to use D&D):
[...]
The reasoning here is, you'd want the game to have enough depth that people can play it for 20 years and still feel like they're discovering things about it, but you don't want to front-load that depth so that new players would have to understand it even a bit just to begin play.You know, despite this being a fine answer I felt oddly apathetic to it and on rereading I caught the second part and that made me think.

You know, I use system as a term for role-playing games because "game" alone never really felt right. It is somewhere between its own game and a tool for making your own games. And from that perspective I don't really want to spend 20 years learning my tools. Now you may ask what about the difference between learning the tools and learning new techniques that involve the tools, the latter is something masters continue to do after all. And yeah, I'm not really sure where to draw the line.

Point is, some elegant system that lets you ignore certain rules while you are getting started sounds good. I'm not sure I'd want to stretch it out that far though.


Here's my suggestion: Mayfair's DC Heroes RPG which was rebooted without the DC stuff as Blood of Heroes.I don't know enough to comment in detail, but that is a strong pitch for the system. I will also agree "Superhero" is pretty much one of the most kitchen-sink type of settings there ever have been.


I'm going to take a somewhat different stance on the lightness issue - while highly crunchy isn't good for newbie players, being rules-light isn't the main factor that makes it easy to get into. That factor is, IMO:
The system should still work with a majority of the players coming in cold and flat.Would these roughly be:
Unskilled at mechanics.
Unskilled creatively (or just uninspired).


The discussion on ideal genre is kind of interesting...Also a very strong pitch. Both in terms of setting and I like the idea that you could mix character creation into the early parts of the campaign. Which is actually something I sort of do anyways, at least on the fiction/character side. Also it seems to be a nice way to get people to ease into the system. You could even lay it out semi-formally, people start just talking, name and describe their characters and after a bit we lock down stats. Then they come into contact with some supernatural force, abilities awaken and you finish character creation.

KorvinStarmast
2023-02-15, 10:48 PM
was what made D&D... welll D&D. Nope. The genre mixture of SF&F, and swords and sorcery, and the pulps, is what did that as did, per the ruling the judge made, the unique synthesis that DA came up with which ended up being the Blackmoor campaign.

creating a "skeleton" set of rules (much like Chainmail),
Nope. The Skeleton set of rules was the Original Three Little Brown books.
Not Chainmail.
Basic, B/X, and AD&D 1e were way more polished than the original.

TBH, if it weren't for the "no exploding dice" criterion and the "no counting successes" in the OP, I'd have suggested Tunnels and Trolls as a more iconic RPG.
One of the features of that game which I liked a lot was that it only used d6, and the 2d6 'saving roll' that also acted as the Skill check which also allowed you to earn XP as a result of a failed skill check or a successful one, was really neat.

The other neat thing was that each time you had a chance to advance you had interesting choices in what part of your character you'd boost. And the law of diminishing returns cropped up again and again.

NichG
2023-02-15, 10:54 PM
You know, despite this being a fine answer I felt oddly apathetic to it and on rereading I caught the second part and that made me think.

You know, I use system as a term for role-playing games because "game" alone never really felt right. It is somewhere between its own game and a tool for making your own games. And from that perspective I don't really want to spend 20 years learning my tools. Now you may ask what about the difference between learning the tools and learning new techniques that involve the tools, the latter is something masters continue to do after all. And yeah, I'm not really sure where to draw the line.

Point is, some elegant system that lets you ignore certain rules while you are getting started sounds good. I'm not sure I'd want to stretch it out that far though.


I mean, I basically jumped to the end point of that for my first time playing 7th Sea. But I had played other TTRPGs and RPGs in general. Its more there so you can use it if you need it.

Another example, I ran a one-shot of Paranoia for a bunch of scientists of whom one had played Paranoia before, one had played TTRPGs before, and everyone else had no experience. Paranoia billed itself as a rules-lite game but its actually kind of crunchy, so I ripped out most of the rules and said: "Write down numbers for these 6 things that add up to 42, I'll PM each of you with a special thing about your character, randomly generated, which I won't talk about any mechanics for.' And basically the entire session had maybe a few rolls but that's it, it was all just people bouncing stuff off of each-other.

On the other hand you could do stuff with weapon damage levels and armor and specializations and buying gear and hidden mutant power scores that decrement over time and the social armor system against treason accusations and stuff I didn't even remember was in there, if you wanted to do it and if you were doing a longer campaign. The system doesn't really suffer from having a lot of stuff ripped out of it, but you can still have that stuff and its not just pointless.

ahyangyi
2023-02-16, 04:53 AM
To flip this line of thought on its head, how much hatred should the flagship generate, to be optimal for the hobby?

Now, this means two different things. Perhaps the more obvious is the free press the “satanic panic” brought D&D. Haters are just free publicity for the hobby.

But the second is, how many “bad” things should the flagship have, to encourage people to look at other games, and find the one for them? Needing lots of dice or having lots of books or requiring a battle map to play means people who don’t want or can’t manage such things will look elsewhere for a game more suited to them.

Personally, I think that the flagship should have several flaws, to drive people into the rest of the hobby. Probably one of the best flaw for the flagship to have is massive amounts of lore, lore books, etc - great for those who love such things, but likely to drive off those who do not want to invest the time or money into such a difficult to approach system / setting.

If I have to choose a flaw, then I'd wish the iconic game is open source and hence has no central authority (but can have a core development community). And that might also mean more erratas -- one thing with Splatbooks is that they are super flavorful but tend not to receive fixes at all.

Cluedrew
2023-02-16, 08:59 AM
TBH, if it weren't for the "no exploding dice" criterion and the "no counting successes" in the OP, I'd have suggested Tunnels and Trolls as a more iconic RPG.Err... OP=Original Post in this thread at the top of this page? Because I didn't rule out either of those. Exploding dice might be a more complex rolling method, but not by a lot, and counting can be simpler than addition.

Time is short. I hope to be back later with more replies.

gbaji
2023-02-16, 05:38 PM
Nope. The Skeleton set of rules was the Original Three Little Brown books.
Not Chainmail.

The original D&D rules (the three book box published in 1974) assumed you had a copy of chainmail and used it for movement and combat. it was very much written as a "take an existing set of rules me and my friends already know and use, and fill in things like classes, levels, monsters, treasure, magic items, traps, and a bunch of other stuff for basically doing dungeon adventuring with individual characters". It did contain some basic "rules" for combat resolution (for those who didn't have Chainmail), but was a stripped down version and presented as an option. It was literally assumed that only hobbyists who already played miniature war games would be interested in playing (a varient on the genre if you will) and was very heavily targetted at that group.

Over the next couple years (and a lot of magazine published stuff), they realized that a lot of people were playing D&D who didn't have experience in miniature wargaming, so supplements were added to make this easier (and to add a lot of additional content as well, of course).


Basic, B/X, and AD&D 1e were way more polished than the original.

Yup. This was the next progression. Putting it all in one format, cleaning up the extraneous stuff, and otherwise presenting a single "finished product" for mass consumption. And yes, by this point, it bore little resemblance to Chainmail anymore (even in core rule resolution mechanics). But that was a progression over time.

I guess where I was originally going with this was that if you strip out the "detail" stuff, you're left only with basically movement/distance, time, and resolution rules. The details (classes, skills, levels, items, magic, etc) can be viewed as "stuff added onto the core rules" (and again, certainly was in the case of D&D in the beginning). I suppose we could speculate about designing an "iconic" RPG without first doing those things and then adding on to them, but that's not how it actually happened historically, and I'm not sure it could have happened in a very much different manner.

And yeah. It's not a perfect analogy historically, because the actual "RPG" element is somewhat its own thing. You could certainly roleplay, without also doing some variation of minature gaming (and that was the case actually). But it's somewhat the combining of the peanut butter and chocolate that made D&D "iconic". People wanted hard rules to resolve things they wanted to roleplay, and other people wanted to roleplay the things they already had hard resolution rules for. So...


TBH, if it weren't for the "no exploding dice" criterion and the "no counting successes" in the OP, I'd have suggested Tunnels and Trolls as a more iconic RPG.
One of the features of that game which I liked a lot was that it only used d6, and the 2d6 'saving roll' that also acted as the Skill check which also allowed you to earn XP as a result of a failed skill check or a successful one, was really neat.

I think I played T&T like, twice, waaaaaay back in the day. I remember it being a lot of fun, if maybe feeling a bit limited (that could very well have been because I was playing short sessions at tourneys though).

Pauly
2023-02-17, 01:18 AM
The discussion on ideal genre is kind of interesting...

I wonder if rather than the version of urban fantasy with the supernatural being hidden, something like supernatural apocalypse urban fantasy would work well - maybe even better. You have a normal, recognizable world that every player coming in knows what it looks like and knows how to think about. Then you say as the premise of the game something like 'three years ago, the supernatural was revealed to be real as a major faction of unseelie fae ripped the boundaries of the world asunder, creating Wild Zones in various places all across the Earth which are gradually encroaching. Other supernatural factions have revealed themselves, governments have gathered military and scientific forces to do something about the zones, people have discovered latent talents which grow with exposure to the zones and seek their magic for their own personal addictions, fulfillment, and profit, etc.'
.

I think Urban Fantasy could work.
There is a lot of content that supports the genre.
In movies you go back to at least the 1940s with Cat People and So I married a Witch. Moving on to the 70s and 80s with films like Damien, The Wicker Man, The Exorcist and An American Werewolf in London,
Then in TV you had 4 major sitcoms Bewitched, I dream of Jeannie, The Munsters and The Addams Family that leaned into the genre in the 1960s alone. Now you have I don’t know how many urban fantasy series for teens on Disney+ alone.
Literature has been overflowing with examples since Varney the Vampire,

The overall genre splits into Horror, Comedy, Slice of Life or Romance. Which gives players a huge range of options on the tone they want to set for their campaign. You also have the option of the PCs being supernatural trying to pass as normal or normals trying to defeat the supernatural.

You may want to argue VtM has set the genre standard, but it’s really only cornered the Anne Rice sexy vampire section of the genre.

NichG
2023-02-17, 01:30 AM
I think Urban Fantasy could work.
There is a lot of content that supports the genre.
In movies you go back to at least the 1940s with Cat People and So I married a Witch. Moving on to the 70s and 80s with films like Damien, The Wicker Man, The Exorcist and An American Werewolf in London,
Then in TV you had 4 major sitcoms Bewitched, I dream of Jeannie, The Munsters and The Addams Family that leaned into the genre in the 1960s alone. Now you have I don’t know how many urban fantasy series for teens on Disney+ alone.
Literature has been overflowing with examples since Varney the Vampire,

The overall genre splits into Horror, Comedy, Slice of Life or Romance. Which gives players a huge range of options on the tone they want to set for their campaign. You also have the option of the PCs being supernatural trying to pass as normal or normals trying to defeat the supernatural.

You may want to argue VtM has set the genre standard, but it’s really only cornered the Anne Rice sexy vampire section of the genre.

I also (personally) think with VtM the masquerade bit is very scope limiting. It creates something where there almost certainly has to be an out-of-scale consequence for actions or accidents which might not only be innocent, but also along which lie the most interesting interactions for players to explore. Like, if you're trying for a slightly serious/comedic blend (saving the world and joking about it as you go, the beer and pretzels equivalent), then 'someone saw you transform, now a secret society will have them mind-wiped/killed/have you killed/whatnot...' suddenly wrenches the game away from doing cool stuff with cool abilities.

Pauly
2023-02-17, 04:00 AM
I also (personally) think with VtM the masquerade bit is very scope limiting. It creates something where there almost certainly has to be an out-of-scale consequence for actions or accidents which might not only be innocent, but also along which lie the most interesting interactions for players to explore. Like, if you're trying for a slightly serious/comedic blend (saving the world and joking about it as you go, the beer and pretzels equivalent), then 'someone saw you transform, now a secret society will have them mind-wiped/killed/have you killed/whatnot...' suddenly wrenches the game away from doing cool stuff with cool abilities.

The other problem with VtM is the other half of the title - people want to play things other than just vampires.
I remember when VtM came out I gave it a hard no because I just didn’t want to be a vampire. Personally I’d rather play a vampire hunter, but people want to play werewolves, witches, and so on too.

Maybe you could split the PC categories into 2 groups - normies (i.e. people with no powers but cool gear) and supernaturals and have it that your campaign is either a normie campaign with no supernatural PCs or a supernatural campaign with no normie PCs.

But coming back to point the system would have to cope with beer and pretzels campaigns as well as more serious brooding campaigns. I think that if you cast the genre wide enough you should be able to do that. Secret societies and supernatural powers is a good starting point.

NichG
2023-02-17, 04:11 AM
The other problem with VtM is the other half of the title - people want to play things other than just vampires.
I remember when VtM came out I gave it a hard no because I just didn’t want to be a vampire. Personally I’d rather play a vampire hunter, but people want to play werewolves, witches, and so on too.

Maybe you could split the PC categories into 2 groups - normies (i.e. people with no powers but cool gear) and supernaturals and have it that your campaign is either a normie campaign with no supernatural PCs or a supernatural campaign with no normie PCs.

But coming back to point the system would have to cope with beer and pretzels campaigns as well as more serious brooding campaigns. I think that if you cast the genre wide enough you should be able to do that. Secret societies and supernatural powers is a good starting point.

As far as the state of society, I think I'd aim for something along the lines of True Blood. Supernaturals came out and revealed themselves recently due to modernization making coexistence more feasible. People generally know a little bit about the major supernatural types but there's still a lot of mystique, ancient structures and powers and so on still coming to light, etc. Becoming supernatural should be a thing you can do in-character I think, like 'I'm going to get so and so to turn me', 'I'm going to get so and so to teach me magic', and should probably be a mutually exclusive, irreversible decision once done, and the 'introductory supernatural' level of powers should essentially be more like neat perks than character-defining, but growing in time to be character defining if e.g. you invested into it over the course of a campaign or started at a tier of play where you could be pre-invested in it.

Maybe that's a useful insight - perhaps an iconic game shouldn't have such sharply defined 'levels' as D&D has? On the other hand, that gives players something to aim for in their meta-progress: "Hey, I've never played past Lv9, I want to find out what that's like", "Hey, I've never done a 1-to-20 campaign, lets do it!". But that could easily be replaced by e.g. "We've never done a witch-centric campaign" or "We've never played wish-granting genies" or "We never did a 'destroy the world of mundanity' fae campaign before"

KorvinStarmast
2023-02-17, 08:55 AM
Err... OP=Original Post in this thread at the top of this page? Because I didn't rule out either of those. Exploding dice might be a more complex rolling method, but not by a lot, and counting can be simpler than addition. Sorry, I guess it was one of the early replies to you. Looks like I mixed things up in my head.

The original D&D rules (the three book box published in 1974) assumed you had a copy of chainmail and used it for movement and combat. Hardly. The game books suggested you already have Outdoor Survival, which we didn't have in our first group, and yet we began playing without a hiccup; nor did we have Chainmail at first and that impeded our play not at all. (FWIW: None of us could afford armies of miniatures at that point in time, we were high school kids, but we could play the heck out of Blitzkrieg or D-Day by Avalon Hill). The alternate combat system was already in Men And Magic. That's your "to hit AC table" that used a d20, but until our local hobby shop got d20's we used a bowl of poker chips and had to blind draw chips ...
That's what we started with. And it worked. Greyhawk coming out just expanded our options, as did Blackmoor.
It wasn't until after we'd started that any of our group got ahold of Chainmail and Outdoor Survival (by Avalon Hill) - not all of the DMs used that for world generation. Most did their own thing, a few did use Outdoor Survival.

I guess where I was originally going with this was that if you strip out the "detail" stuff, you're left only with basically movement/distance, time, and resolution rules. The details (classes, skills, levels, items, magic, etc) can be viewed as "stuff added onto the core rules" (and again, certainly was in the case of D&D in the beginning). Not quite true either. The role of Fighting Man, Magic User, and Cleric was spelled out in Men and Magic. The term Class came later. And the term "role playing game" grew from the hobby (the first evidence I see of it is in the products list in the back of my old Greyhawk Supplement).
That "Thief" didn't make it into the original book I suspect had to do with the time crunch of time and money to get the first batch of (1000) rules printed and published.
I am led to believe that something like a thief role was being played already in both of the primary nodes. (Twin Cities and Chicago area).

I suppose we could speculate about designing an "iconic" RPG without first doing those things and then adding on to them, but that's not how it actually happened historically, and I'm not sure it could have happened in a very much different manner. Given what DA and his crew were doing in the Twin Cities, and how everyone who played D&D also played wargames (board and / or miniature) and Diplomacy, and given what the crew who put together the Secrets of Blackmoor have shared, you've got part of the story. Peterson's "Elusive Shift" shows how quickly "style" and "preference" communities evolved in various major cities, all taking that skeleton of a game and running with it. (The nodes he cites are LA area, Boston area, New York City area (Heritage Figs was HQ'd there IIRC), Dallas area (Heritage Figs was HQ'd there IIRC), Twin Cities area, Chicago area).

I think I played T&T like, twice, waaaaaay back in the day. I remember it being a lot of fun, if maybe feeling a bit limited (that could very well have been because I was playing short sessions at tourneys though). Yes. T&T - in original version - was for me a once during a drunken weekend 'let's play something different' - it wasn't until a few years ago that I got to play a more polished version (5th ed, deluxe).

I just noticed that the OP was looking for something setting agnostic, which T&T isn't (at least not anymore). I also reject the premise: I think that an RPG needs a setting or a genre to anchor its feel.

The more common "let's play something that isn't D&D" games for us were Empire of the Petal Throne (me GM), Chivalry and Sorcery, Gamma World, Metamorphosis Alpha, Boot Hill, and Traveller - but the latter only on rare occasions. Had the damnedest time keeping Traveller groups together.

I am not sure how Traveller fits into the OPs desires, but at least it uses 2d6 for the most part, but it's genre is for sure directed at SF/Space Opera type stuff.

gbaji
2023-02-17, 08:33 PM
The alternate combat system was already in Men And Magic. That's your "to hit AC table" that used a d20, but until our local hobby shop got d20's we used a bowl of poker chips and had to blind draw chips ...
That's what we started with. And it worked. Greyhawk coming out just expanded our options, as did Blackmoor.
It wasn't until after we'd started that any of our group got ahold of Chainmail and Outdoor Survival (by Avalon Hill) - not all of the DMs used that for world generation. Most did their own thing, a few did use Outdoor Survival.

Yeah. I'm aware of the early progression of the game. The guy I started playing with did have Chainmail and did have Outdoor survival, so we used that stuff when I started out as a young kid (well, very briefly, often just as a reference as more stuff came out over time). Played a lot of the old AH games back in the day too. Once the AD&D rules books came out though, the older stuff more or less stayed on the shelf.

I guess I'm looking at "core rules" differently.


Not quite true either. The role of Fighting Man, Magic User, and Cleric was spelled out in Men and Magic. The term Class came later. And the term "role playing game" grew from the hobby (the first evidence I see of it is in the products list in the back of my old Greyhawk Supplement).

And this is why. I don't see classes, races, spells, etc as "core rules". To me, core rules means "how do we measure time, movement, distance?", and "how do we resolve attempts to do things?, and "how do we resolve combat/damage/whatever?". You can do all of that without ever writing a single class or spell or item into a game. You first create the "meta rules". Just in combat: What is damage? How is it defined? Wound levels? HPs? How is it done? Rolled? Static? How many dice are used and for what?

Once you define those things (the "skeleton" I'm speaking about) *then* you do things like say "this class gets X hps per level. Can wear this type of armor. Levels are gained by exp points, which are earned by <this method> (or, hey, whether we're even using class and levels). And you fill in tables of weapons, with damage done, and tables of armor which have some values to them that have meaning within the core rules already created. And then you might add spells to this, that again have effects and costs that also have meaning within the core rules already created. Those core rules are the foundation everything else rests on IMO. And yes, we can point to the roles in the first books, but even that kinda supports my point. Those were analogs for "units" in a wargame and were included as the basic "unit types" you could play. Again, very much from a wargame pov. Chainmail already contained a section for "Fantasy combat", and it's really obvious that they just built on that in D&D. Not sure how much actual roleplaying was going on initially, though.

You start with those core rules though. Or, at least, in the case of D&D, that's how it happened (started from miniature wargaming and then added elements to it to simulate fantasy combat, then went further in the 1:1 scale to create an actual RPG with existing combat resolution rules). Again, we could speculate that one could do it the other way around, and start out thinking in terms of "I want to roleplay various types of characters", and then move to "defining those characters via levels, and classes, and items, and spells, and whatnot" and then build a system of dice roll mechanics to manage all of that. And I'm sure that some game design methodology today may very well work via that process. Today. But that's after 50 years of folks knowing what these things look like as a whole.

I'm not sure if an "iconic" game starting the genre could ever have moved in that direction to start the whole thing off though. That would be like speculating an alternative to Ford building the assembly line system for cars by first considering the infotainment system we want to have installed.

Again though. To me, the "skeleton" or "core rules" is all about measurements and resolution methods. The rest of the stuff is all details, which can be setting/genre variable IMO. Now yes, at some point along the journey to becoming an actual RPG, that other stuff has to be introduced, but it does tend to have to rest on having those core mechanics in place first. Unless we're considering Toon as an "iconic RPG"?


The more common "let's play something that isn't D&D" games for us were Empire of the Petal Throne (me GM), Chivalry and Sorcery, Gamma World, Metamorphosis Alpha, Boot Hill, and Traveller - but the latter only on rare occasions. Had the damnedest time keeping Traveller groups together.

Yeah. I think I've heard of exactly one Traveller game that actually ran for any decent amount of time.

Bohandas
2023-02-17, 09:13 PM
The first thing is approachability. As the most iconic system it is also one going to be the one most often someone's first role-playing game they have tried. So it should be an easy system to learn and an easy system to GM. I suppose that is always true to some degree, but here even more so, so I would be willing to make some more trade offs for it. People who want to go deeper and more detailed can move onto other systems or use the homebrewed solutions that will pop-up, so I think it is the best trade-off for this situation.

Second is, I believe it should be setting and (to an extent) genre agnostic. Every system is going to have a particular tone, or whatever you want to call it. That cannot be avoided. But with that tone it should be able to cover fantasy, sci-fi, westerns and so on.

From this what springs immediately to mind is Toon. It's simple and it already has official fantasy, western and sci-fi settings (as well as a superhero setting, an early 20th century gangsters setting, and a horror setting)

Pauly
2023-02-17, 11:32 PM
As far as the state of society, I think I'd aim for something along the lines of True Blood. Supernaturals came out and revealed themselves recently due to modernization making coexistence more feasible. People generally know a little bit about the major supernatural types but there's still a lot of mystique, ancient structures and powers and so on still coming to light, etc. Becoming supernatural should be a thing you can do in-character I think, like 'I'm going to get so and so to turn me', 'I'm going to get so and so to teach me magic', and should probably be a mutually exclusive, irreversible decision once done, and the 'introductory supernatural' level of powers should essentially be more like neat perks than character-defining, but growing in time to be character defining if e.g. you invested into it over the course of a campaign or started at a tier of play where you could be pre-invested in it.

Maybe that's a useful insight - perhaps an iconic game shouldn't have such sharply defined 'levels' as D&D has? On the other hand, that gives players something to aim for in their meta-progress: "Hey, I've never played past Lv9, I want to find out what that's like", "Hey, I've never done a 1-to-20 campaign, lets do it!". But that could easily be replaced by e.g. "We've never done a witch-centric campaign" or "We've never played wish-granting genies" or "We never did a 'destroy the world of mundanity' fae campaign before"

You could have the default modern world as described, then ‘historical’ expansions which feature more secret society feels.

For progression I was thinking that the supernaturals gain a power when they level up. For vampires you have a laundry list of powers such as turning into a bat, hypnotic gaze, control over wolves, sparkling in sunlight, super strength, wall crawling, super speed. So you’d start with a few basic powers and as you leveled up you could choose which power you added to your character. Witches get more and better spells so their progression would feel completely different. Werewolves would be similar to vampires. You could do some form of summoner of demons who gets to summon bigger and badder demons as they level up. Each class gets to feel unique in the way they level up.

So maybe not hard D&D type set progression, but leveling up will still feel significant. I think the leveling up is required for the iconic game because it creates a baseline for boasting about your character. Other players will know what a ‘Level 12 Vampire’ is when you talk about him/her. But when you try to describe your Traveller or Call of Cthulhu character to someone else there isn’t the same handy shortform.

NichG
2023-02-17, 11:50 PM
You could have the default modern world as described, then ‘historical’ expansions which feature more secret society feels.

For progression I was thinking that the supernaturals gain a power when they level up. For vampires you have a laundry list of powers such as turning into a bat, hypnotic gaze, control over wolves, sparkling in sunlight, super strength, wall crawling, super speed. So you’d start with a few basic powers and as you leveled up you could choose which power you added to your character. Witches get more and better spells so their progression would feel completely different. Werewolves would be similar to vampires. You could do some form of summoner of demons who gets to summon bigger and badder demons as they level up. Each class gets to feel unique in the way they level up.

So maybe not hard D&D type set progression, but leveling up will still feel significant. I think the leveling up is required for the iconic game because it creates a baseline for boasting about your character. Other players will know what a ‘Level 12 Vampire’ is when you talk about him/her. But when you try to describe your Traveller or Call of Cthulhu character to someone else there isn’t the same handy shortform.

Admittedly this is my own bias, but I'd love to get rid of levels and 'pick something and progress in it' as a sacred cow. As well as the sort of on-rails advancement that tends to make parallel advancement destabilize the game (like e.g. finding spells, loot, getting your attributes increased by a Wish, etc in D&D tends to be troublesome compared to 'just use WBL, advancement only via the character build system' approaches). But I see the point about bragging.

If we're talking about Vampire, diablerie and generation sort of acted like this sort of thing without being the only (or even expected) form of progression. So I think I'd like to see something along those lines, where there's a relatively static 'tier' which isn't impossible to advance, but where there are a few parallel modes of advancement that can take place over the course of a campaign which - importantly - don't tend to take characters out of range of relevance with one-another. So e.g. going up a 'tier' means that threats and concerns of lower tiers actually do become totally irrelevant to you, and its hard to have a mixed-tier party. But a normie, a vampire, a werewolf, a magus, etc all of the same tier could have different point pools or whatnot and still adventure together. That also makes tier-up events into convenient plot points - you're tier 1 characters facing a tier 2 BBEG who is trying to sacrifice a town of 5000 to hit tier 3 and seriously move outside of your ability to influence, etc. But I don't know how much this really matters for iconicity, versus just being personal preference here...

Pauly
2023-02-18, 01:38 AM
Admittedly this is my own bias, but I'd love to get rid of levels and 'pick something and progress in it' as a sacred cow. As well as the sort of on-rails advancement that tends to make parallel advancement destabilize the game (like e.g. finding spells, loot, getting your attributes increased by a Wish, etc in D&D tends to be troublesome compared to 'just use WBL, advancement only via the character build system' approaches). But I see the point about bragging.

If we're talking about Vampire, diablerie and generation sort of acted like this sort of thing without being the only (or even expected) form of progression. So I think I'd like to see something along those lines, where there's a relatively static 'tier' which isn't impossible to advance, but where there are a few parallel modes of advancement that can take place over the course of a campaign which - importantly - don't tend to take characters out of range of relevance with one-another. So e.g. going up a 'tier' means that threats and concerns of lower tiers actually do become totally irrelevant to you, and its hard to have a mixed-tier party. But a normie, a vampire, a werewolf, a magus, etc all of the same tier could have different point pools or whatnot and still adventure together. That also makes tier-up events into convenient plot points - you're tier 1 characters facing a tier 2 BBEG who is trying to sacrifice a town of 5000 to hit tier 3 and seriously move outside of your ability to influence, etc. But I don't know how much this really matters for iconicity, versus just being personal preference here...

Put me down as an old school Traveller player, so I find classes and levels more than frustrating. What I was thinking of was making classes/levels more ‘build a bear’ than ‘progress to a goal’. You could have 4 very different “level 12” vampires who all fit classic vampire tropes . One could be a mind control hypnosis themed vampire, another a sneaky flying and infiltrating sort, the third a fast moving, dodging, hard hitting close combat ’glass cannon’ and the fourth maxed out on resistances and regeneration making him almost impossible to kill. The thing is they all start from the same point. Part of the difficulty is achieving ‘many paths are viable’ over ‘the one true path’ to power.

Telok
2023-02-18, 03:37 AM
Yeah. I think I've heard of exactly one Traveller game that actually ran for any decent amount of time.
I ran one for about a year. D&D-isms finally sank it. In space, size really does matter.


Other players will know what a ‘Level 12 Vampire’ is when you talk about him/her. But when you try to describe your Traveller or Call of Cthulhu character to someone else there isn’t the same handy shortform.
Actually "level 12 Vampire" doesn't (personally) tell me anything because it's a very different thing in every D&D edition with only surface details staying semi-constant or recognizable, sort of like 12th level fighters are so insanely different each time that it tells me nothing useful other than "might wear armor, more hp than most wizards, and probably isn't casting too many spells".

For Traveller "five term navy doctor baronet" is pretty darn informative, likewise for CoC "1924 lucky ex-soldier college history professor" is a very useful batch of information, but you need to know the systems just like a D&D player needs to in order to make sense of that vamp thing. I can describe Traveller or CoC characters succinctly to people who have played those games, it just won't make any sense to a D&D player who thinks of mechanics first. Here, "60 year old impoverished baronet who is a well educated but clumsy doctor that served twenty years in the Navy and saw some weird stuff". That probably tells a D&D player very little, but a person who plays Traveller or CoC (the definition of "navy" is all that really changes between the games for that character) has a lot of critical info about them that's probably more consistent no matter which edition of the game is being played.

KorvinStarmast
2023-02-18, 10:20 AM
Yeah. I'm aware of the early progression of the game. The guy I started playing with did have Chainmail and did have Outdoor survival, so we used that stuff when I started out as a young kid (well, very briefly, often just as a reference as more stuff came out over time). Played a lot of the old AH games back in the day too. Once the AD&D rules books came out though, the older stuff more or less stayed on the shelf. Cool. And yeah, once AD&D stuff came out we mostly used that, though one DM stuck with the previous material..


I guess I'm looking at "core rules" differently. Yeah, I think we are.

Yeah. I think I've heard of exactly one Traveller game that actually ran for any decent amount of time. Apparently, the Mongoose Traveller games have had more success...but I've not played them.

I ran one for about a year. D&D-isms finally sank it. In space, size really does matter. There's always a bigger fish. :smallsmile:


For Traveller "five term navy doctor baronet" is pretty darn informative, likewise for CoC "1924 lucky ex-soldier college history professor" is a very useful batch of information, but you need to know the systems just like a D&D player needs to in order to make sense of that vamp thing. Yes. Good examples.

Cluedrew
2023-02-18, 11:12 AM
Maybe you could split the PC categories into 2 groups - normies (i.e. people with no powers but cool gear) and supernaturals and have it that your campaign is either a normie campaign with no supernatural PCs or a supernatural campaign with no normie PCs.Isn't that two systems though? I know the Storyteller system in particular has a long history of trying to put different kinds of PCs together, but I've heard mixed things about its success.

I would actually rather go with the pre-awakened angle where "normies" are starting characters and you become a supernatural being of some kind as the last stage of character creation, but you actually can play part of the campaign as an introduction before that happens. (Not my idea, I really like NichG's setting pitch and borrowed from that.) Under this model I guess secret agents with cool gear is a supernatural being; mechanically speaking. Although if you wanted to have a character option that feels more like a normal person, I would go for something about someone channelling the heroes of old so they don't really have to know what is going on but can be really good at things and have flashes of insight.


Maybe that's a useful insight - perhaps an iconic game shouldn't have such sharply defined 'levels' as D&D has?Oh yeah. Well you can have a level up, but the system of unlocks at particular levels is a terrible design pattern in a role-playing game. Basically, it means you have twenty (or N) packages of content and only one way for a character to explore them. Also it leads to the game's mode of play changing out from under you which can lead to problems.

If you want distinct level-ups, I would do a system of pools of possible upgrades, every however many points you get to pick another from the pool. This makes your skill set wider but rarely gives you strict upgrades. Which pool you start with can pretty much be your "class". Story events, or getting most of the upgrades in a pool, can give you access to a pool of stronger abilities if you do want to tier up. Unlocking another another pool on the same tier can be used to multiclass as well, if you want your secret agent to have just get a bit energetic on the full moon.


From this what springs immediately to mind is Toon. It's simple and it already has official fantasy, western and sci-fi settings (as well as a superhero setting, an early 20th century gangsters setting, and a horror setting)I've heard about it but never played it. My main concern would be making sure that it can handle some more serious games which... I think it could do even if that is not the plan. Especially if we are actually talking about a system that merely inspired by Toon and not Toon itself.

Pauly
2023-02-18, 03:01 PM
Actually "level 12 Vampire" doesn't (personally) tell me anything because it's a very different thing in every D&D edition with only surface details staying semi-constant or recognizable, sort of like 12th level fighters are so insanely different each time that it tells me nothing useful other than "might wear armor, more hp than most wizards, and probably isn't casting too many spells".

For Traveller "five term navy doctor baronet" is pretty darn informative, likewise for CoC "1924 lucky ex-soldier college history professor" is a very useful batch of information, but you need to know the systems just like a D&D player needs to in order to make sense of that vamp thing. I can describe Traveller or CoC characters succinctly to people who have played those games, it just won't make any sense to a D&D player who thinks of mechanics first. Here, "60 year old impoverished baronet who is a well educated but clumsy doctor that served twenty years in the Navy and saw some weird stuff". That probably tells a D&D player very little, but a person who plays Traveller or CoC (the definition of "navy" is all that really changes between the games for that character) has a lot of critical info about them that's probably more consistent no matter which edition of the game is being played.

That is a mature, responsible well thought and reasonable out take on the issue.

What I was talking about is more the
“My level 12 fighter can do 80 points of damage a turn”
“”Well my level 10 Druid can do 90 points a turn”
“So what my Level 8 Rogue is undetectable, so your characters will never hit him”
Kind of boasting that we did when we were spotty teenagers.

I think having those discussion is important to create an iconic game because it gives a sense of pride in your ability to build a character and compare them to other characters in other campaigns at an even baseline. Traveller, for all that I love about it, never generated that kind of discussion in the groups I was around as a young pup,

NichG
2023-02-18, 03:10 PM
That is a mature, responsible well thought and reasonable out take on the issue.

What I was talking about is more the
“My level 12 fighter can do 80 points of damage a turn”
“”Well my level 10 Druid can do 90 points a turn”
“So what my Level 8 Rogue is undetectable, so your characters will never hit him”
Kind of boasting that we did when we were spotty teenagers.

I think having those discussion is important to create an iconic game because it gives a sense of pride in your ability to build a character and compare them to other characters in other campaigns at an even baseline. Traveller, for all that I love about it, never generated that kind of discussion in the groups I was around as a young pup,

I feel like I heard this kind of bragging about characters in the vampire LARP at the gaming club I was in during grad school though...

ahyangyi
2023-02-18, 03:11 PM
I ran one for about a year. D&D-isms finally sank it. In space, size really does matter.


Actually "level 12 Vampire" doesn't (personally) tell me anything because it's a very different thing in every D&D edition with only surface details staying semi-constant or recognizable, sort of like 12th level fighters are so insanely different each time that it tells me nothing useful other than "might wear armor, more hp than most wizards, and probably isn't casting too many spells".

For Traveller "five term navy doctor baronet" is pretty darn informative, likewise for CoC "1924 lucky ex-soldier college history professor" is a very useful batch of information, but you need to know the systems just like a D&D player needs to in order to make sense of that vamp thing. I can describe Traveller or CoC characters succinctly to people who have played those games, it just won't make any sense to a D&D player who thinks of mechanics first. Here, "60 year old impoverished baronet who is a well educated but clumsy doctor that served twenty years in the Navy and saw some weird stuff". That probably tells a D&D player very little, but a person who plays Traveller or CoC (the definition of "navy" is all that really changes between the games for that character) has a lot of critical info about them that's probably more consistent no matter which edition of the game is being played.

That's true, but... perhaps "level 12 fighter" is just a poor representation, even for D&D characters. Usually you'd at least expect the fighting style, e.g., "Whirlwind attack halberd fighter" or "Crane style sword-and-board fighter".

Telok
2023-02-18, 03:17 PM
What I was talking about is more the
“My level 12 fighter can ....
Kind of boasting that we did when we were spotty teenagers.

I think having those discussion is important to create an iconic game because it gives a sense of pride in your ability to build a character and compare them to other characters in other campaigns at an even baseline.

So promoting the **** measuring contests of tweens is required for "iconic"? The character building minigame and the ability to 'win' it is important? Having "my character can beat up you character" as metric of discussions is good for a game?

Pauly
2023-02-18, 03:33 PM
So promoting the **** measuring contests of tweens is required for "iconic"? The character building minigame and the ability to 'win' it is important? Having "my character can beat up you character" as metric of discussions is good for a game?

Absolutely. (*)

Those tweens from 40 years ago are now the mature core group that have expanded the hobby. The current tweens, as a group, are the ones that spend the most money on the hobby and keep the game alive today. The members of the current tweens that stick with the hobby will be the driving creative force for expanding the hobby in 10 tp 20 years time.

I don’t have to like that aspect of the game, but to be ‘iconic’ the game has to appeal to tweens and tweens like **** measuring competitions. What I want is for that part of the game to be designed well enough that is does not overwhelm actual role playing

(*) disclaimer - applies for games with zero to hero player progression

Pauly
2023-02-18, 03:41 PM
I feel like I heard this kind of bragging about characters in the vampire LARP at the gaming club I was in during grad school though...

That’s a hard call though. Who is more mature and socially aware - your average 14 year old boy or your average STEM Ph.D student?

ahyangyi
2023-02-18, 03:46 PM
then... what quality of Traveller caused it to completely not generate the **** measuring contest?

Pauly
2023-02-18, 04:00 PM
then... what quality of Traveller caused it to completely not generate the **** measuring contest?

In order of importance.

1) Lack of levels.
2) Life Path character creation.
3) You chose how much XP (terms served) you character had at starting. The more XP the greater chance of something bad happening on your life path (permanent injury, debt, death, abilities degrading due to age)
4) Character progression was from good to better, not zero to hero.
5) Gear being more important than character feats compared to D&D

NichG
2023-02-18, 04:09 PM
That’s a hard call though. Who is more mature and socially aware - your average 14 year old boy or your average STEM Ph.D student?

Most of the other people in the gaming club were undergrads, too, aside from the occasional townie... So like, 18-22 year old STEM undergrads vs highschooler.

Cluedrew
2023-02-18, 04:16 PM
I think having those discussion is important to create an iconic game because it gives a sense of pride in your ability to build a character and compare them to other characters in other campaigns at an even baseline. Traveller, for all that I love about it, never generated that kind of discussion in the groups I was around as a young pup,Well you are going to have to argue down the third point I made in the opening post. To briefly summarize: The iconic role-playing game should be primarily a role-playing game and contain only minor elements of war-games and story-telling games. This is war-game stuff, optimization and a focus on numerical balance, especially around combat. I know the D&D players might be shocked but I don't think the iconic system should be watered down so much with a different genre.

Even if people argue that down or break out into a "the iconic tactical role-playing game (war-game/role-playing game hybrid)" sub-topic, I still think that levels and (D&D-style) classes are not required. Just the numbers game itself. Honestly I would prefer it is the brief exchanges about games were short stories from play. The role-playing part of the game.

There is some subjectivity to this; I don't feel role-playing games and war-games (or dungeon-crawlers) go together that well and I am sick of people acting like some scene editing of unstated detail disqualifies a system while there is a massive combat system with relatively minor chances for character expression, an out of character perspective on everything and people just accept that unquestioningly. Just getting that off my chest. Back to the main topic, in the end I would argue of being inclusive of hybrids in terms of the genre as a whole. But for the iconic system I think it should be pretty focused on the genre itself.

Do people know Slay the Spire? Its a pretty good game by most accounts. But if I wanted to pick an iconic dungeon crawler, I would not pick Slay the Spire because it is so much of a deck-building game as well. I guess I would pick... Decent maybe? Pokemon Mystery Dungeon might even work better.

ahyangyi
2023-02-18, 04:33 PM
Well you are going to have to argue down the third point I made in the opening post. To briefly summarize: The iconic role-playing game should be primarily a role-playing game and contain only minor elements of war-games and story-telling games.

Well, different people's definition of "roleplaying" are definitely different. I doubt the "roleplaying" in MMORPGs and the "roleplaying" in LARP have anything in common.

A wargame where a player controls one unit instead of one army is a roleplaying game in some sense.

Vahnavoi
2023-02-18, 05:31 PM
Well, different people's definition of "roleplaying" are definitely different. I doubt the "roleplaying" in MMORPGs and the "roleplaying" in LARP have anything in common.

The general definition of a roleplaying game is a rule-based exercise where a player assumes viewpoint of a character in a staged situation to decide what to do, how, and why.

Both MMORPGs and LARPs can fit this. The major differences are in how the situation is staged (computer program versus physical props), which naturally changes how the player expresses character actions (giving inputs to the program versus physically acting).

Tabletop gamers just have their head too far in the weeds of popular tabletop games to notice the things that hold true across mediums and genres. The most ridiculous aspect of this is fixating on things which were pioneered by tabletop wargames and pretty much directly copied over to tabletop roleplaying games. Assigning numerical values to abstractly model character attributes? Rolling dice to resolve actions? Having a game master who takes freeform inputs from players and then returns next state of the game based on their own judgement? None unique to roleplaying games, all things D&D copied from earlier games.

Which is why I don't particularly care for the idea of a single, iconic roleplaying game. Not even the idea of a single, iconic tabletop roleplaying game. The space for tabletop games in general is large enough to have several extremely different iconic games, and narrowing the focus to roleplaying games doesn't limit that space nearly as much as people presume.

ahyangyi
2023-02-18, 05:37 PM
The general definition of a roleplaying game is a rule-based exercise where a player assumes viewpoint of a character in a staged situation to decide what to do, how, and why.

Both MMORPGs and LARPs can fit this. The major differences are in how the situation is staged (computer program versus physical props), which naturally changes how the player expresses character actions (giving inputs to the program versus physically acting).

Tabletop gamers just have their head too far in the weeds of popular tabletop games to notice the things that hold true across mediums and genres. The most ridiculous aspect of this is fixating on things which were pioneered by tabletop wargames and pretty much directly copied over to tabletop roleplaying games. Assigning numerical values to abstractly model character attributes? Rolling dice to resolve actions? Having a game master who takes freeform inputs from players and then returns next state of the game based on their own judgement? None unique to roleplaying games, all things D&D copied from earlier games.

Which is why I don't particularly care for the idea of a single, iconic roleplaying game. Not even the idea of a single, iconic tabletop roleplaying game. The space for tabletop games in general is large enough to have several extremely different iconic games, and narrowing the focus to roleplaying games doesn't limit that space nearly as much as people presume.

Yep, I had that feeling that roleplaying was a board idea when I mentioned MMORPG, but you articulated it much better. Great post and thanks!

Pauly
2023-02-18, 10:28 PM
Well you are going to have to argue down the third point I made in the opening post. To briefly summarize: The iconic role-playing game should be primarily a role-playing game and contain only minor elements of war-games and story-telling games. This is war-game stuff, optimization and a focus on numerical balance, especially around combat. I know the D&D players might be shocked but I don't think the iconic system should be watered down so much with a different genre.

[snip]



The point I was making about the appendage measurement aspect is that it
(1) is a thing and
(2) appeals to the most important segment of the audience.
I am completely agnostic as to what aspect of the game generates the rulers and appendages coming out. For some games or hobbies the art is where it happens, which is why there is crossover in between wargaming and model rail roading. For CCGs its the collecting aspect. It manifests itself in D&D in the character optimization.

To appeal to tweens there should be an element of ‘my [stuff] is better/cooler than yours”.

Cluedrew
2023-02-19, 08:18 AM
(2) appeals to the most important segment of the audience.Who is this and why?

Heads up, probably going to argue against and segment being that much more important than others, but I'm still curious as to what you have to say about it. Personally, I say the numbers game should be replaced with a story swap. Which is actually talk I've heard a lot more of personally over the years.

Ignimortis
2023-02-19, 01:47 PM
Well you are going to have to argue down the third point I made in the opening post. To briefly summarize: The iconic role-playing game should be primarily a role-playing game and contain only minor elements of war-games and story-telling games. This is war-game stuff, optimization and a focus on numerical balance, especially around combat. I know the D&D players might be shocked but I don't think the iconic system should be watered down so much with a different genre.

Even if people argue that down or break out into a "the iconic tactical role-playing game (war-game/role-playing game hybrid)" sub-topic, I still think that levels and (D&D-style) classes are not required. Just the numbers game itself. Honestly I would prefer it is the brief exchanges about games were short stories from play. The role-playing part of the game.

There is some subjectivity to this; I don't feel role-playing games and war-games (or dungeon-crawlers) go together that well and I am sick of people acting like some scene editing of unstated detail disqualifies a system while there is a massive combat system with relatively minor chances for character expression, an out of character perspective on everything and people just accept that unquestioningly. Just getting that off my chest. Back to the main topic, in the end I would argue of being inclusive of hybrids in terms of the genre as a whole. But for the iconic system I think it should be pretty focused on the genre itself.
It's not necessarily about combat, though. The ability to make a distinct build that excels at something is an amazing help in bringing character concepts to life - no character has ever been harmed by having a gimmick the other characters don't have. It's why I don't particularly like rules-light games - they often end up with engines where there's very little space for your character X to differ majorly from character Y, who does generally similar things. They might be different as characters, but mechanically they do the same thing.

KorvinStarmast
2023-02-19, 02:01 PM
So promoting the **** measuring contests of tweens is required for "iconic"? The character building minigame and the ability to 'win' it is important? Having "my character can beat up you character" as metric of discussions is good for a game? No, since the game began among adults, not tweens. The assertion you answered is, IMO, baseless. But it may be informed by the experience of who presented it.
In order of importance.
1) Lack of levels.
2) Life Path character creation.
3) You chose how much XP (terms served) you character had at starting. The more XP the greater chance of something bad happening on your life path (permanent injury, debt, death, abilities degrading due to age)
4) Character progression was from good to better, not zero to hero.
5) Gear being more important than character feats compared to D&D
Nice summary. :smallsmile:

Most of the other people in the gaming club were undergrads, too, aside from the occasional townie... So like, 18-22 year old STEM undergrads vs highschooler. In my first 6 years of the hobby, nobody I played with was under the age of 15, and the majority were older with a few being in their 30's and 40's. The critical mass was ages 19-25. But the tail end of that period saw a different form of the game begin to show up in toy stores in brightly colored boxes. :smallwink:

A wargame where a player controls one unit instead of one army is a roleplaying game in some sense. That was the paradigm breaking approach that the Twin Cities group adapted as the Blackmoor campaign morphed into a proto RPG.

The general definition of a roleplaying game is a rule-based exercise where a player assumes viewpoint of a character in a staged situation to decide what to do, how, and why.{snip} Which is why I don't particularly care for the idea of a single, iconic roleplaying game. Not even the idea of a single, iconic tabletop roleplaying game. The space for tabletop games in general is large enough to have several extremely different iconic games, and narrowing the focus to roleplaying games doesn't limit that space nearly as much as people presume. A far better answer to the Original post than mine, well played.

Pauly
2023-02-19, 03:00 PM
Who is this and why?

Heads up, probably going to argue against and segment being that much more important than others, but I'm still curious as to what you have to say about it. Personally, I say the numbers game should be replaced with a story swap. Which is actually talk I've heard a lot more of personally over the years.

To quote the earlier post I made.

Those tweens from 40 years ago are now the mature core group that have expanded the hobby. The current tweens, as a group, are the ones that spend the most money on the hobby and keep the game alive today. The members of the current tweens that stick with the hobby will be the driving creative force for expanding the hobby in 10 tp 20 years time.

There’s a reason hobbies die out

Cluedrew
2023-02-19, 10:19 PM
It's why I don't particularly like rules-light games - they often end up with engines where there's very little space for your character X to differ majorly from character Y, who does generally similar things. They might be different as characters, but mechanically they do the same thing.Which is actually something that makes the damage comparisons so weird to me. You are doing 12% more damage? Woot. Woot. To a lesser degree combat focused systems have this issue because they force everyone's things to be a variation on "win combat". It is only to a degree because if you zoom in then things become different again, but it is still comparatively narrow.


A far better answer to the Original post than mine, well played.I only hinted at in the original post but I don't actually think an iconic role-playing game is a good idea. At least not one with the oppressive dominance of D&D. It being the first example is fine, but being most of all role-playing games most people interact with is not great to not to say the least. Imagine if most people had only heard of was {quick web search to find best selling computer game of 2022} Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II. And people would often refuse to play other games or assume all games are like... well, enough about the troubles of a non-D&D role-player, I think the problems are varied and fairly clear.

This thread deals with the question that, if the statement "If D&D fell out of favour another system would simply take its place and have the same effect on the hobby." (which I don't agree with, but people have forwarded it) could we do better? In fact what do we think the best we could do is? Its a design question and I think that is fairly interesting.

(I suppose I could have replied directly to Vahnavoi, but this is the one that made me think that point hadn't gotten across at all.)

Pauly
2023-02-20, 01:32 AM
Isn't that two systems though? I know the Storyteller system in particular has a long history of trying to put different kinds of PCs together, but I've heard mixed things about its success.

I would actually rather go with the pre-awakened angle where "normies" are starting characters and you become a supernatural being of some kind as the last stage of character creation, but you actually can play part of the campaign as an introduction before that happens. (Not my idea, I really like NichG's setting pitch and borrowed from that.) Under this model I guess secret agents with cool gear is a supernatural being; mechanically speaking. Although if you wanted to have a character option that feels more like a normal person, I would go for something about someone channelling the heroes of old so they don't really have to know what is going on but can be really good at things and have flashes of insight.

Oh yeah. Well you can have a level up, but the system of unlocks at particular levels is a terrible design pattern in a role-playing game. Basically, it means you have twenty (or N) packages of content and only one way for a character to explore them. Also it leads to the game's mode of play changing out from under you which can lead to problems.

If you want distinct level-ups, I would do a system of pools of possible upgrades, every however many points you get to pick another from the pool. This makes your skill set wider but rarely gives you strict upgrades. Which pool you start with can pretty much be your "class". Story events, or getting most of the upgrades in a pool, can give you access to a pool of stronger abilities if you do want to tier up. Unlocking another another pool on the same tier can be used to multiclass as well, if you want your secret agent to have just get a bit energetic on the full moon.
f.

I was thinking of normies in a secret organization being at a different power level, kind of like how in Mutants and Masterminds you can run ‘street level’ heroes to ‘city level’ heroes and so on. Thinking about it some more it may not be the best fit because the only way for normies to get to an equal power level is gear, and then the supernaturals will ask “why can’t we get gear?”. Then all your doing is re-inventing Shadowrun.
Sadly a normie type “hunter” or “slayer” is going to have to wait an edition or two and allow the supernats to take center stage.

For an iconic game I don’t think you want multi-classing in at least the first edition or two. Assuming of course that classes or class equivalents are going to be a feature.

Agree totally about leveling up, and that it should be more free choice than set progression.

As for character generation I’m a big fan of roll for stats; choose a specialty; roll for skills/powers. I remember my favorite Traveller PC that I rolled up - I wanted to be a fighting type kept trying to enter the army, the police, the scout service but failed every entrance roll and had to roll on the default table (Belter for my origin) and was just getting angry because I kept getting zero combat skills. When the dust settled my character was a mechanic/computer tech who could repair or kludge anything and whose only social skill was the ability to drink an elephant under the table. By the end of the first session I had gone from this guy sucks to he’s the best character EVAA!

Vahnavoi
2023-02-20, 06:28 AM
Vahnavoi[/B], but this is the one that made me think that point hadn't gotten across at all.)

For what it's worth, I did get the point, which I originally didn't bother to participate in the thread at all.

It was only worth it in response to ahyangyi (sorry if I botched the name).

Quertus
2023-02-20, 05:51 PM
For the record, I’m looking at this as an optimization challenge: if we had a “society” RPG, where we built the whole set of events, ending up with what kind of RPG as the “flagship RPG” would be best for the health of the hobby?

In that vein, here’s my thoughts on some of the topics of the past few days:

Urban Fantasy

It’s a pretty good choice. On the plus side, it lends itself to a wide range of power levels and modding or expansions to cover adjacent genres easily (pre-modern, mundane, super heroes, future, variable levels of secrecy). On the down side, this base isn’t escapist enough for some - the idea of playing in something that is still mostly this world won’t let them play a diabolical criminal, or a fearless Paladin, or someone of another gender as easily.

For media… I think it would be another mixed bag, with more impact on movies, but less penetration into the video game market.

Modern + The Supernatural is Known to Exist

This is fine for the birth of RPGs; however, it gets a bit odd over time, especially in the Internet age.

If this follows a coherent timeline (ie, Supernatural beings have been publicly known since 1950), one has to ask how different our society and technology should be in 2020, after 70 years of Supernatural intervention. And it would be reasonable to expect that Supernatural abilities have been catalogued and posted to the Internet for some time now.

OTOH, if it’s always set Now + Supernatural beings just came out, you’re constantly rebooting like a comic book, and some of the themes and feeling just won’t carry over properly (X-men as one of the more obvious examples).

Start as Human, become Supernatural

Um… no? Or… maybe?

So, being bitten by a radioactive spider may be one way to gain super powers, but… saying everyone goes that route is kinda boring and samey compared to all the possible origin stories. Perhaps more importantly, it says something about your setting if Angels and Demons and Unicorns and Dragons were all once Human. Or, to say that another way, if a player decides they want to play a pixie or sentient toaster, the limiting factor shouldn’t be an inability to see how to make that start out as a human, or the setting breaking when a PC wasn’t formerly human.

If you look at WoD, yes, you could start as Human and have the goal to become a Vampire or Mage or Hunter I guess, and maybe a wraith (talk about some life goals there), but not a Werewolf (or other changing breed), fey, promethian, or mummy, and Demon is right out.

If you’re looking at a more postmodern setting, you’ve got Rifts, where oh so many PCs didn’t start as human, and Shadowrun, where AFAIK all PCs do, kinda, in that their ancestors were human at least.

Anyway, my vote is that having everyone start as human is too samey for the flagship to begin with, compounded by the fact that they’re all modern humans to boot, making it unqualified for the breadth of exploration of roleplaying the flagship RPG should provide, and placing unnecessary limitations on the world building and/or available PC choices.

Levels, Points, Pools, Powers, and Names
(Or how we talk about characters)

This is a big category, but the most important bit is how we talk about characters. And how we think about characters.

So, let me start here: there is power in names. Describing a character as a “five term navy doctor baronet” says a lot about a character, right? Sure. But here’s what it doesn’t say: is it balanced with a “lucky ex-soldier college history professor” or “freelance academia mage author guild master”? Are either suitable for the module Necrophilia on Bone Hill?

People are idiots. They want the simplest possible solution, and they want that solution to be right. People want the module to say “for 4-6 characters level 8-10”, and for that to just work. They want the module to say, “you’ll need at least one Con Artist, and having two Medical professionals will certainly make the module easier”, and for it to be easy to evaluate those requirements. They want “Tier 3 Magic will probably make this adventure easier than intended” or “if the party can Teleport, there is no adventure, as most of the content involves carrying the One Ring around on foot”, and for this simple checklist to let them have a good game.

If the flagship RPG requires people to think beyond what they care to do or are capable of, and this causes bad games, they’ll blame the system, not themselves. That’s just human nature.

I’ve seen a lot of games try to give such guidelines, and almost all fail, badly.

That said, it’s well known that I prefer games where one could run a level 1 and a level 20 character in the same party. Not because there’s little difference between them, but because many of the big questions the game asks don’t care about the difference between basic swords skills and <insert something snazzy here>, but between whether you choose to slay the evil princess or rescue the kidnapped Dragon; whether you choose to carry the ring to Mordor alone or go back to save your friend(s); how you choose to interpret “can be harmed by no man”.

(Also, note that very subtle thing I did, where I referenced one of the big ancestors of D&D. Having such ancestors in place… would require Urban Fantasy to be a big thing before the first RPG.)

So… that’s my preference, but… does it make for a good flagship RPG? Should the flagship RPG focus on ability (what you can do) or choices (what you choose to do)?

My answer, perhaps surprisingly, is neither. I think that roleplaying would have benefited from the flagship RPG focusing on a different question entirely: why do you choose to do this? But not mechanically, merely as a matter of spotlight. Yes, established characters have huge advantages in terms of levels and abilities and knowledge of the supernatural. But new characters are much more likely to have someone ask, “the version of your character who lives in my head would have done X. You had your character do Y. What do I not understand about your character, that would let the version who lives in my head choose as you did?”.

I think it would be best for the hobby if roleplaying were the Focus of the flagship RPG.

Levels, Points, Pools, Powers, and Names II
(Or this section was long, and this looked like a good break point)

Again, people are idiots. And rather than fix their own shortcomings, they’re far more likely to blame systems as “too complicated”. As such, it is almost certainly optimal if both the first RPG ever, and the one that influences video games, uses an idiot-proof leveling system, rather than a complex, lose at the character creation minigame point system. Sure, more advanced products can be more advanced, but I don’t think that the hobby would have gotten as much traction if character advancement were a complex minigame one could fail at.

Horizontal growth - choosing additional options from a large pool of abilities at each level-up - is arguably worse. That’s right, your 20th-level capstone is something you’ve passed up 18-19 times before. Whoopee! :smallannoyed::smallfrown: No, we want levels to mean something, for people to care that they’ve put dozens or hundreds of hours into this video game or RPG to get this cool new toy they were looking forward to.

Don’t get me wrong, with a good system behind such lateral growth, I could absolutely enjoy playing a Wizard who has mastered Fire, Mind, Metal, Plant, Angel Summoning, and Cookies, and who, on level up, of hundreds of options, chooses Chaos or Runes or Time or Turtles. That sounds like it could be loads of fun. But not as baby’s first RPG.

Leveled pools, where there are multiple pools whose availability is individually level-gated, OTOH, could be doable. Of course, squint a little, and one could argue that that’s exactly what D&D spells are, so… we’re not getting much better than what we’ve already got with this option, at the likely cost of stupidly unthematic characters or unfun and complex and illogical dependency trees. (Note: dependency trees can be fun and/or logical, just most designers fail and make simultaneously unfun and illogical ones.)

Wow, this is getting long. I’ll stop there for now.

NichG
2023-02-20, 06:58 PM
It’s a pretty good choice. On the plus side, it lends itself to a wide range of power levels and modding or expansions to cover adjacent genres easily (pre-modern, mundane, super heroes, future, variable levels of secrecy). On the down side, this base isn’t escapist enough for some - the idea of playing in something that is still mostly this world won’t let them play a diabolical criminal, or a fearless Paladin, or someone of another gender as easily.


I don't see why this is particularly difficult in Urban Fantasy... why couldn't you play a criminal or a hunter of the supernatural or a priest actually given divine favor through your faith? And certainly playing someone of another gender should be as easy as saying 'yeah, this character is this other gender' at least system-wise (and if you mean more exotic or alien choices there, no reason you can't have 'yeah, fae society actually works like the four-suite Homestuck troll relationship types' or 'yes, mummies have genders; no, its not their biological genders when they lived; you have to understand the apportment of the soul into five pieces and how the process of undeath forces one to explicitly and consciously integrate the elements of their soul that would have happened automatically in the living, and that leads to distinct social roles...'



This is fine for the birth of RPGs; however, it gets a bit odd over time, especially in the Internet age.

If this follows a coherent timeline (ie, Supernatural beings have been publicly known since 1950), one has to ask how different our society and technology should be in 2020, after 70 years of Supernatural intervention. And it would be reasonable to expect that Supernatural abilities have been catalogued and posted to the Internet for some time now.


I mean, nothing wrong with there being lots of publically available information about supernaturals. That's no reason that literally all information would be available, especially if powers are something that are created and refined rather than innate (or are unique to specific individuals, or courts/relationships, or things like that). So sure the internet knows that vampires are a thing, and that vampires are generally stronger, faster, and have better senses than humans. And vampire wikis have records of vampires who have come out possessing the ability to command insects or to fly. But that one vampire elder manipulating things behind the scenes who has the ability to mind-control the descendants of anyone whose blood he drinks is probably not going to be advertising that too publically, and developing that ability from its seed (some form of ghouling) was a process that took him five centuries and he's not sharing any shortcuts.

Or e.g. you've got a lot of public records on broad ideas like 'fae bind themselves to a particular role in a particular story, and gain the power to enforce story tropes in accordance with that story; not all fae can bind to all stories, its hard to experiment on because changing a binding is a really big deal, and also intent relative to the story of the storyteller seems to matter - you can't just invent a story to give a fae a power you want, it has to somehow resonate with the world and people's experiences to be a story people would naturally tell, whatever that means - read these 10 research papers where scientists are still arguing about it'. But the details of the story that the Mourning Queen has bound herself to and the full extent of what it lets her do? All people really know is people who go against the Mourning Queen tend to have the people they care for suffer or die.

Think like, Shadowrun + the Awakening was 50 years ago or whatever. Lots of stuff is known, there are even industries around things, but not everything is known and the big players keep the big secrets relatively close to their chest.



Start as Human, become Supernatural

Um… no? Or… maybe?

So, being bitten by a radioactive spider may be one way to gain super powers, but… saying everyone goes that route is kinda boring and samey compared to all the possible origin stories. Perhaps more importantly, it says something about your setting if Angels and Demons and Unicorns and Dragons were all once Human. Or, to say that another way, if a player decides they want to play a pixie or sentient toaster, the limiting factor shouldn’t be an inability to see how to make that start out as a human, or the setting breaking when a PC wasn’t formerly human.


You could do all sorts of mixes here. Vampires can make vampires, easy. Mummies? Made by a ritual performed by a necromancer. How do you become a necromancer? Well, that's an in-born aptitude and you have to experience an awakening event. You can't become an angel, but you can make a partnership with one and have it possess you and lend you its abilities in order to act through your body when it normally cannot be material in the world. Demons might be made 'from' humans the same way that someone who eats beef is made from cows, but 'you' aren't surviving that transition you're just helping one be born; but you could absolutely become a warlock contracted to a demon with being that beef patty being an inevitability in your future. No one becomes fae, but individual people can give rise to lesser fae - they're totally independent consciousnesses and existences that spontaneously manifest in the wake of actions of legendary import, things which becomes stories that get told and retold. And if you're so lucky or unlucky to give birth to a fae, well, it has your memories even if it's not bound by them.

And if we go into the black site research programs and things like that, there are always attempts to graft these powers onto people. Maybe you can't become a fae, but perhaps there's a way to steal one's power or get it to sell it to you, making you something more fae-adjacent than exactly fae, but with the ability to develop and extend those powers while also retaining some of the benefits of not being literally bound to a story. Maybe there are ways to cheat and hybridize and so on, which aren't exactly char-gen options but can come up in the course of a campaign either on the PCs' side or on the NPC side, or which present questionable choices.

Pauly
2023-02-21, 02:52 AM
@Querus.

Re: Modern plus supernatural.
The fix is the official fiction of the IP.
You could use a PF1 or L5R CCG approach of having tournament outcomes determining the world’s alternate history. In fact I’d steal that approach and ride it hard as a way of getting players engaged with the game’s IP.
I know in people’s campaigns the supernatural will quickly take over the world. But as long as the official IP fiction keeps reveals at a slow pace then there is no need to blow up the world with every hew edition. Lots of infighting between supernatural factions, secret government technology, supernaturals not willing to reveal everything. There are plenty if reasons a reasonable author to spin out.

Re Start as human then become supernatural.
The best aspect of this idea for me is that it gives a really good hook to get people interested in the game. The cover blurb just about writes itself. Yes it limits the potential starting characters, but at part of becoming iconic is not to overwhelm the players with choices. Once you’ve become iconic you can add in other weirder stuff.

Re levels powers and names (1).
I think this ties back to start as humans. If every character started as human, “why did your character choose to become supernatural” can be made into an integral part of character creation.
You also made a very good point about levels and how modules are advertised as suitable for [N] level [X to Y] characters. While I don’t think it’s necessary it is a very easy marketing tool one that can be applied to official tournament events.

Re Levels power and names (2)
The discussion on horizontal -v- lateral growth was fueled by vampires. Considering the variety of powers different vampires have in the source material vampires present a real challenge because there are a myriad of ways someone can imagine what their vampire character will be like. Apart from sucking blood there isn’t any real consensus on what powers a vampire must have.
Werewolves for example lend themselves much more to lateral growth as there is a more general consensus on what a werewolf’s powers are and how they should behave.

Taking the “start as human” as a starting point I think the core book should have at least 4 (D&D started as Fighter, Wizard, Cleric and then quickly added Rogue) and no more than 8 choices for supernaturals.
I would also posit “can pass as a normal human in normal human society” as a core conceit. I can get with vampires drinking their substitute blood and Starbucks, Werewolves having to attend mandatory anger management classes, witches being legally responsible both at civil and criminal level for any adverse effects of their magic being acceptable to society. However summoning demons made of pure evil by sacrificing babies or reanimating the corpse of your neighbor’s grandma to work as a field hand are never going to pass as acceptable.

Vampire, Werewolf and Witch are the big 3 that need to be in the core book. From there what else? I think that at least one of the additional core characters should be one obscure enough that you can make it your own with IP (eg D&D’s Tiefling which is a half demon)
Shapeshifter/doppelganger - makes a good sneaky character.
Beast Master/Animal Summoner - lots of variety available.
Magician/Wizard - a magic user with a different magic system to the witch. Not just a different spellbook, but a mechanically different magic system. A lot of D&D casters end up feeling very samey because they just use a different stat to cast the same spells.

Quertus
2023-02-21, 02:39 PM
I don't see why this is particularly difficult in Urban Fantasy... why couldn't you play a criminal or a hunter of the supernatural or a priest actually given divine favor through your faith? And certainly playing someone of another gender should be as easy as saying 'yeah, this character is this other gender' at least system-wise

The limiting factor isn’t the system, it’s how similar to the world in which the player isn’t these things that’s potentially the problem. My hobbiest interest in psychology doesn’t leave me in a position to simple state a root cause; I can only say that from talking to others, it seems that the more distance a scenario provides from an inhibition, the easier it is to shed that inhibition and explore other possibilities. “Urban Fantasy” doesn’t feel as removed from players’ real lives as “Sword and Sorcery”.


I mean, nothing wrong with there being lots of publically available information about supernaturals. That's no reason that literally all information would be available, especially if powers are something that are created and refined rather than innate (or are unique to specific individuals, or courts/relationships, or things like that). So sure the internet knows that vampires are a thing, and that vampires are generally stronger, faster, and have better senses than humans. And vampire wikis have records of vampires who have come out possessing the ability to command insects or to fly. But that one vampire elder manipulating things behind the scenes who has the ability to mind-control the descendants of anyone whose blood he drinks is probably not going to be advertising that too publically, and developing that ability from its seed (some form of ghouling) was a process that took him five centuries and he's not sharing any shortcuts.

Let’s take a step back. Imagine that we travel back in time, and abduct the first, oh, 1,000 D&D players. We lock them in 250 rooms of parties of four, let them make new characters, and start playing. Slightly different experience, but probably similar results.

Now let’s add in two things: we let them communicate to each other via a modern wiki, and we inform them that if they die in the game, they die in real life.

After the first party that survives a Troll makes it back to the wiki, everyone will know that Trolls regenerate, and probably that fire stops their regeneration.

After they lose about half their number, let’s replenish them, by grabbing players 1,001-1,500 from the timeline where we hadn’t grabbed the first thousand. Those players will have quite the database of information that the first group didn’t when they started.

It’ll be a very different experience in several ways, but most relevantly here, the fact that, as soon as anyone knows something, everyone will. That will change the tenor of the flagship RPGs, in a way where Information should be much more front-loaded, and Exploration/Discovery of the Unknown is less of a common thread, less of a factor.


So sure the internet knows that vampires are a thing, and that vampires are generally stronger, faster, and have better senses than humans. And vampire wikis have records of vampires who have come out possessing the ability to command insects or to fly. But that one vampire elder manipulating things behind the scenes who has the ability to mind-control the descendants of anyone whose blood he drinks is probably not going to be advertising that too publically, and developing that ability from its seed (some form of ghouling) was a process that took him five centuries and he's not sharing any shortcuts.

Now imagine the first time a PC survived meeting this ancient vampire (let’s call him “Orcus”). It took Orcus 500 years to develop this one trick that maybe the PCs figured out in 5 minutes. Well, now the cat’s out of the bag, and Orcus loses his mystique for every party around the whole world for the next 500 years, until he develops a new trick

-Or-

The party doesn’t figure out the trick Orcus used. Now imagine playing that party that doesn’t figure out that fire stops trolls from regenerating, doesn’t figure out that beholders negate magic, doesn’t figure out that Orcus has a clever bloodline trick. Realistic, sure, but can you see how the game is less for these players? How the onus is (happily) on the GM to provide scenarios that are the best experience for the players -> ones where the players have the tools to and are likely to understand the world -> the world will tend to become understood?

However, unless the PCs are some very special snowflakes, it’s ludicrous to expect that any given group of PCs will be the first to encounter and figure out more than a trick or two - very different from flagship D&D expectations, IME, just based on different assumptions on information distribution.


@Querus.

Re: Modern plus supernatural.
The fix is the official fiction of the IP.

Sure. But that makes two problems, both of which come from the fact that there isn’t to the best of my knowledge an IP like that.

First is, I’m lazy - I want to just pull from existing material to use as examples, like WoD or Shadowrun or Rifts. But none of them do this, so I don’t have a handy example.

The second is, is it just a coincidence that there’s not popular games like this already, or is there some reason why this is a bad idea?

It’s just two more points that require thought, where easy, thoughtless responses are invalid.


Re Start as human then become supernatural.
The best aspect of this idea for me is that it gives a really good hook to get people interested in the game. The cover blurb just about writes itself. Yes it limits the potential starting characters, but at part of becoming iconic is not to overwhelm the players with choices. Once you’ve become iconic you can add in other weirder stuff.

There are 3 possibilities here.

1) everything starts off as humans. If the PCs encounter a sentient toaster, or an alien, or a unicorn, or an Angel, they know that it was once a human.

2) the original PC races all happen to have started as human, but other beings - including other playable races - need not have started as human.

3) while other Supernatural beings may have any origin, all present and future PC races begin as human.

All 3 of these are problematic.


You also made a very good point about levels and how modules are advertised as suitable for [N] level [X to Y] characters. While I don’t think it’s necessary it is a very easy marketing tool one that can be applied to official tournament events.

Thanks. Given how much flak the CR system has gotten, I suspect it’s a thing people care about at the table, too. Pick a random game you’re in or have been in - would a “five term navy doctor baronet”, “lucky ex-soldier college history professor” or “freelance academia mage author guild master” be suitable to that game’s balance range?


Re Levels power and names (2)
The discussion on horizontal -v- lateral growth was fueled by vampires. Considering the variety of powers different vampires have in the source material vampires present a real challenge because there are a myriad of ways someone can imagine what their vampire character will be like. Apart from sucking blood there isn’t any real consensus on what powers a vampire must have.

And the IP could simply choose what those powers are, providing a linear leveling system for Vampires. Or it could give them “3e Sorcerer’s Spell access” to tiered powers as they level. Or provide points with which to buy powers. Or any number of other options.

My point was just that none of these options are better than - and many are worse than - what the RPG flagship led with. It’s not a point on which our hypothetical Urban Fantasy flagship RPG can earn points as being a better option.


You could use a PF1 or L5R CCG approach of having tournament outcomes determining the world’s alternate history. In fact I’d steal that approach and ride it hard as a way of getting players engaged with the game’s IP.
I know in people’s campaigns the supernatural will quickly take over the world. But as long as the official IP fiction keeps reveals at a slow pace then there is no need to blow up the world with every hew edition. Lots of infighting between supernatural factions, secret government technology, supernaturals not willing to reveal everything. There are plenty if reasons a reasonable author to spin out.

Taking the “start as human” as a starting point I think the core book should have at least 4 (D&D started as Fighter, Wizard, Cleric and then quickly added Rogue) and no more than 8 choices for supernaturals.
I would also posit “can pass as a normal human in normal human society” as a core conceit. I can get with vampires drinking their substitute blood and Starbucks, Werewolves having to attend mandatory anger management classes, witches being legally responsible both at civil and criminal level for any adverse effects of their magic being acceptable to society. However summoning demons made of pure evil by sacrificing babies or reanimating the corpse of your neighbor’s grandma to work as a field hand are never going to pass as acceptable.

Vampire, Werewolf and Witch are the big 3 that need to be in the core book. From there what else? I think that at least one of the additional core characters should be one obscure enough that you can make it your own with IP (eg D&D’s Tiefling which is a half demon)
Shapeshifter/doppelganger - makes a good sneaky character.
Beast Master/Animal Summoner - lots of variety available.
Magician/Wizard - a magic user with a different magic system to the witch. Not just a different spellbook, but a mechanically different magic system. A lot of D&D casters end up feeling very samey because they just use a different stat to cast the same spells.

NichG
2023-02-21, 03:04 PM
Let’s take a step back. Imagine that we travel back in time, and abduct the first, oh, 1,000 D&D players. We lock them in 250 rooms of parties of four, let them make new characters, and start playing. Slightly different experience, but probably similar results.

Now let’s add in two things: we let them communicate to each other via a modern wiki, and we inform them that if they die in the game, they die in real life.

After the first party that survives a Troll makes it back to the wiki, everyone will know that Trolls regenerate, and probably that fire stops their regeneration.

After they lose about half their number, let’s replenish them, by grabbing players 1,001-1,500 from the timeline where we hadn’t grabbed the first thousand. Those players will have quite the database of information that the first group didn’t when they started.

It’ll be a very different experience in several ways, but most relevantly here, the fact that, as soon as anyone knows something, everyone will. That will change the tenor of the flagship RPGs, in a way where Information should be much more front-loaded, and Exploration/Discovery of the Unknown is less of a common thread, less of a factor.


Its a very D&D mentality to think about the gimmicks behind generics as being important though. Everyone gets to know - really, they know it from scratch - that trolls are big and strong and have a good heal factor. But people don't meet 'a generic troll', they meet e.g. Bob the Troll who has also studied enough gramarye to apply gaesa of ill luck to those that try to get in his way, or Sally the Troll who specializes in mortal contract craft and is able to turn a pauper into a multi-millionaire over the course of a month and can gain power from it, or Fegulir the Cursed who has developed his regeneration in odd directions, allowing him to 'regenerate into someone else as a weapon' against anyone who has internalized any of his blood or other cells, going down the 'chest-burster prestige class' route.

Some of these people might be known, others might be yet unknown or semi-secret, but as long as we're talking about individuals, and as long as we're talking about a system where powers aren't static but can be developed and modified and customized, its not so hard to have it be that - when it matters - every party is dealing with new individuals. Everyone gets to discover something, but its at the scale of learning that your neighbor is secretly a spy or that the CEO of your company is using feng shui to steal the luck of his competitors and how do you feel about that? A few people get to break the big conspiracies, but then they're broken and the setting moves forward rather than being stuck in status quo - yes the president is a dragon, we all know that now; yes, there's a spell out there that lets the caster ritually steal someone's identity, social connections, and karmic relationships with just a blood sample so now we all have to adopt some new multi-factor security protocols.

Getting into a dynamic mode and learning to not feel cramped by that rather than e.g. getting yourself into the mindset of being annoyed when a player has read the Monster Manual because you were relying on them not realizing that red dragons are fire-themed or something seems like a benefit rather than a flaw.

Pauly
2023-02-21, 04:01 PM
@Quertus
By IP, I am referring to IP created by the game. Such as Greyhawk, Ravenloft or the Forgotten Realms.
Yes there is a lot of inspiration out there but to be iconic creating your own IP is essential. Generic games like GURPS end up being niche products.

KorvinStarmast
2023-02-21, 05:05 PM
I only hinted at in the original post but I don't actually think an iconic role-playing game is a good idea. Which I believe is my entering position, but this conversation has taken some interesting paths through the woods...

EDIT: @Pauly. Just noticed that. Yes, setting and genre matter. (Another shameless plug for Blades in the Dark, the setting is very well done).

Quertus
2023-02-21, 05:13 PM
@Quertus
By IP, I am referring to IP created by the game. Such as Greyhawk, Ravenloft or the Forgotten Realms.
Yes there is a lot of inspiration out there but to be iconic creating your own IP is essential. Generic games like GURPS end up being niche products.

Um... yeah, sure? Is there somewhere where it seems like wires have been crossed, and I'm out in left field?

I fully get that the game will create its own identity - D&D, WoD, WH40K, (I'm tired, I'll leave it at that) - they all do. And, yes, some break off into sub-bits, like D&D has Greyhawk & Ravenloft & FR & Placia.

Which... tangles up oddly when, say, my character in Bob's FR, where canonically Fey were once human, participates in your world tournament thing, ends up shaping the world and becoming a Known Entity in the world meta... and then the company finally publishes the Fey splat, where they don't work anything at all like they did in Bob's world.


Its a very D&D mentality to think about the gimmicks behind generics as being important though. Everyone gets to know - really, they know it from scratch - that trolls are big and strong and have a good heal factor. But people don't meet 'a generic troll', they meet e.g. Bob the Troll who has also studied enough gramarye to apply gaesa of ill luck to those that try to get in his way, or Sally the Troll who specializes in mortal contract craft and is able to turn a pauper into a multi-millionaire over the course of a month and can gain power from it, or Fegulir the Cursed who has developed his regeneration in odd directions, allowing him to 'regenerate into someone else as a weapon' against anyone who has internalized any of his blood or other cells, going down the 'chest-burster prestige class' route.

Some of these people might be known, others might be yet unknown or semi-secret, but as long as we're talking about individuals, and as long as we're talking about a system where powers aren't static but can be developed and modified and customized, its not so hard to have it be that - when it matters - every party is dealing with new individuals. Everyone gets to discover something, but its at the scale of learning that your neighbor is secretly a spy or that the CEO of your company is using feng shui to steal the luck of his competitors and how do you feel about that? A few people get to break the big conspiracies, but then they're broken and the setting moves forward rather than being stuck in status quo - yes the president is a dragon, we all know that now; yes, there's a spell out there that lets the caster ritually steal someone's identity, social connections, and karmic relationships with just a blood sample so now we all have to adopt some new multi-factor security protocols.

Getting into a dynamic mode and learning to not feel cramped by that rather than e.g. getting yourself into the mindset of being annoyed when a player has read the Monster Manual because you were relying on them not realizing that red dragons are fire-themed or something seems like a benefit rather than a flaw.

<long whistle>

Whew. Um... I mean, that's awesome and all, but I'm not sure if baby's first RPG, the flagship of the genre, would work well without much more iconic, cut-and-paste objects. Do you have any idea how hard it would be to code Bob the Troll and Sally Troll and Fegulir the Cursed, instead of just a simple "Troll" object? Especially back in the Atari days? How hard that makes it to look at a movie, and recognize whether or not the Troll on the screen actually belongs to the IP? How much more work that makes it for the GM, how the game isn't as open to casual gamers?

It's an awesome concept, but... I never would have gotten into it when I was 7 like I did D&D. So I'm thinking that this would be a negative trait for a flagship RPG.

NichG
2023-02-21, 05:31 PM
<long whistle>

Whew. Um... I mean, that's awesome and all, but I'm not sure if baby's first RPG, the flagship of the genre, would work well without much more iconic, cut-and-paste objects. Do you have any idea how hard it would be to code Bob the Troll and Sally Troll and Fegulir the Cursed, instead of just a simple "Troll" object? Especially back in the Atari days? How hard that makes it to look at a movie, and recognize whether or not the Troll on the screen actually belongs to the IP? How much more work that makes it for the GM, how the game isn't as open to casual gamers?

It's an awesome concept, but... I never would have gotten into it when I was 7 like I did D&D. So I'm thinking that this would be a negative trait for a flagship RPG.

Like a lot of things about a flagship, that's there but you don't have to lean into it, or you could even lean into it in very different ways. Like, this is sort of the point of urban fantasy as opposed to swords and sorcery. In S&S, you have a bunch of effectively 'non-person' adversaries to be slain where the ethics etc of it is pretty simple, so you need lots of generics so you can just plop down a monster of the week in a room. If you're going the urban fantasy direction, one aspect of that decision is that you're going to be dealing with 'characters' far more frequently than with 'monsters'.

So you do have to expect that the players and GM will be coming up with and interacting with people as people as one of the main aspects of play. Meaning that everyone is unique-ish, even if they're not necessarily unique on screen. The exploration and discovery aspects become less about 'here is some fauna we've never seen before and the dangerous or useful properties they have' and more about 'here's something about these people/subcultures/groups/etc that we didn't know about or didn't know existed'.

That's why urban fantasy can work even when no one actually uses their powers with any serious frequency, because a lot of the fantasy has to do with things like different social organizations, roles, power relationships, etc.

Of course you can also have stuff more like Supernatural where you're hunting the monster of the week - but note that that only lasted for a few seasons before you started to having unique recurring NPCs and more person-like interactions. So I would expect the monster-of-the-week gaming to be either be intro mode or beer & pretzels, eventually giving way to unique individuals. And anyhow, having something where the new players to the game are new hunters and have a grizzled mentor who shows them the website with 1001 beasties on it and their job is to put the clues together 'oh, its not a poltregeist, its a sun spirit' is not a bad way to bring players into the game. Think playing Geralt in Witcher 3 or something - he already knows what everything is, but you get to learn it via his process of investigation.

Duff
2023-02-21, 05:53 PM
Now if that was the most subjective point this is probably the most abstract, but at the same time it is pretty straight forward: I think the iconic role-playing game should be almost entirely a role-playing game. The genre exists in a space between tactical war games/dungeon-crawlers and story-telling games. Having elements of both is probably inevitable, and learning into one or the other doesn't necessary make for a better or worse game. Yet, if this is the iconic role-playing game, I don't think it should lean too far into either side of that scale.


I'm going to disagree here. Pure roleplaying has the disadvantage of decision paralysis.
Light crunch gives the player a small number of mechanical options. "You can pull out your sword and charge, you can pull out your bow and shoot or you can try something else" is better for people out of their comfort zone than "What do you want to do?"
It should be simple to see your options, simple to understand how they work but also limited in what it covers

Quertus
2023-02-21, 06:08 PM
It's not necessarily about combat, though. The ability to make a distinct build that excels at something is an amazing help in bringing character concepts to life - no character has ever been harmed by having a gimmick the other characters don't have. It's why I don't particularly like rules-light games - they often end up with engines where there's very little space for your character X to differ majorly from character Y, who does generally similar things. They might be different as characters, but mechanically they do the same thing.


Witch

Magician/Wizard - a magic user with a different magic system to the witch. Not just a different spellbook, but a mechanically different magic system. A lot of D&D casters end up feeling very samey because they just use a different stat to cast the same spells.

I do love that two people have posted about how important having different mechanics and different feels is to them.

I can't help but agree.


The ability to make a distinct build that excels at something is an amazing help in bringing character concepts to life - no character has ever been harmed by having a gimmick the other characters don't have.

"Build" and "gimmick" aren't exactly the same. Once upon a time, there was a... league... that allowed characters to enter with one chachka, one bit of substance-free style. Like a pipe. Or an abacus. Or a harp pin? It was a way to give your character a gimmick, but required no real build skill.

OTOH, there's lots of build skill involved in the code I write... but I wouldn't say that my code has a "gimmick".

I think that it's valuable to an RPG - perhaps especially a flagship RPG - to allow players to stretch their Build muscles if they so desire, and for characters to be able to have gimmicks. But I'm not sure I see those as inherently related. I guess one could try to argue that they're better when they are (or can be) related?


I only hinted at in the original post but I don't actually think an iconic role-playing game is a good idea. At least not one with the oppressive dominance of D&D. It being the first example is fine, but being most of all role-playing games most people interact with is not great to not to say the least. Imagine if most people had only heard of was {quick web search to find best selling computer game of 2022} Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II. And people would often refuse to play other games or assume all games are like... well, enough about the troubles of a non-D&D role-player, I think the problems are varied and fairly clear.

(evil anime glint) Oh, no, that's a perfect example. Two reasons.

1) I had a group of friends who'd get together periodically and run LAN parties (and, occasionally, RPGs or other activities). Getting people to play the big game(s)? Easy. Other games? "But nobody has that installed". Also learning curve issues. A much harder sell.

2) One of these great LAN games was (IIRC) Unreal Tournament. UT had some "standard" mods, like Runes and Relics, that did things like give the character who had them extra speed, or extra damage, or take less damage, or vampiric damage, or self destruct when killed. But there were lots of mods to UT. One of my friends hosted a game with some of their preferred mods. The way the game worked, it downloaded the foreign mods temporarily to play the game... but the game didn't wait on this download. Yeah, the match was over before anyone else finished downloading the missing mods... and then, when the next match started, the download process began again from scratch. Ugh.

Having a single format that everyone knows and uses is great. It means that the casual player only needs to learn 1 set of rules, purchase 1 deck, rig 1 set of weighted dice, come up with 1 character, learn 1 world history and set of lingo, install 1 app on their computer, whatever. It lowers the bar to entry for the casual gamer, and ensures that a group of friends who are into the hobby who get together have something they can do.

Unlike all the rules- and conceptual-downloading that would be necessary if a group of single-system casuals got together who had each played different games; say, Beer & Pretzels D&D, Mirror Shades Shadowrun, Plot-Driven The Dark Eye, and FATAL. They'd spend the whole session just trying to explain the game to fellow gamers without ever getting to play.


This thread deals with the question that, if the statement "If D&D fell out of favour another system would simply take its place and have the same effect on the hobby." (which I don't agree with, but people have forwarded it) could we do better? In fact what do we think the best we could do is? Its a design question and I think that is fairly interesting.

Ah, that's slightly different from the optimization perspective I was taking. I may try to recalibrate, or I may just stick with and be stuck with my momentum.

gbaji
2023-02-21, 09:33 PM
It's not necessarily about combat, though. The ability to make a distinct build that excels at something is an amazing help in bringing character concepts to life - no character has ever been harmed by having a gimmick the other characters don't have. It's why I don't particularly like rules-light games - they often end up with engines where there's very little space for your character X to differ majorly from character Y, who does generally similar things. They might be different as characters, but mechanically they do the same thing.

If we're focused on RP, that's not a problem. And frankly, I tend to prefer game systems that focus on individual characters as people, even if there are minor differences between them. But that's what I prefer to pay *today*. I'm reasonably certain that wouldn't match up with an "iconic" RPG though. As several people have stated (accurately IMO), there's a lot of value in easily described yet sufficiently distinct character types. Which is where classes and levels come in and why they tend to work well in that iconic role.


Its a very D&D mentality to think about the gimmicks behind generics as being important though. Everyone gets to know - really, they know it from scratch - that trolls are big and strong and have a good heal factor. But people don't meet 'a generic troll', they meet e.g. Bob the Troll who has also studied enough gramarye to apply gaesa of ill luck to those that try to get in his way, or Sally the Troll who specializes in mortal contract craft and is able to turn a pauper into a multi-millionaire over the course of a month and can gain power from it, or Fegulir the Cursed who has developed his regeneration in odd directions, allowing him to 'regenerate into someone else as a weapon' against anyone who has internalized any of his blood or other cells, going down the 'chest-burster prestige class' route.

Yup. Pretty much the same as above. It's easier/faster to get new players into a game where "a troll" is just "a troll", and they're all alike (well, most of the time). Having trolls just be a race of creatures, who could themselves then be anything they want, having whatever skills they happen to have, learn whatever spells they want, and wear different armor, carry different weapons, etc makes for a much much more in depth game, but also presents a steeper learning curve for new players.

So yeah. Same for the PCs as for the NPCs.


Getting into a dynamic mode and learning to not feel cramped by that rather than e.g. getting yourself into the mindset of being annoyed when a player has read the Monster Manual because you were relying on them not realizing that red dragons are fire-themed or something seems like a benefit rather than a flaw.

And that's where the negative of "simple but easy/quick to learn" comes in. Once the players learn what the different types of monsters can do, and what each class can do, there isn't a lot of variation left (other than I guess adding new expansions, with new classes and monsters, I suppose, which is precisely what D&D did. Yes. I'm looking at you 2nd edition...). But hey. That's when you "graduate" to something else.

Which again presents the "iconic" versus "mature?" (not sure if that's the best term) comparison. When the encounter is less about the race/class/levels of those involved, but the less easily described skills/abilities/items/spells, you get even greater variation in the game (and far less predictability). You see a group of orcs. Do you know right now about how tough they are? Or do you have no clue?

I prefer the latter, but that's *not* what's going to work in an "iconic" game IMO. Just the way things are.

Cluedrew
2023-02-21, 10:16 PM
Wow this is lively enough I couldn't even hope to reply to everything. Well I could but... you know time.

On Setting: I don't thing the other world is such a hard constraint. Especially since the official setting will probably just be a way the system can be used. I expect people will make there own. I have never played in a published setting of a role-playing game. Or though in that the awakening is happening because of the overlap with another world any you can just play in the other world if you want to.

On Levels: I was going to argue that "Fey-sworn agent" can be just as descriptive as "Level 12 Fighter" but actually I think it is more descriptive, or would be if the former came from a known system. Because "Level 12" doesn't actually tell me anything. I've never made it past level 4, what do I know what the game would look like that far above it. Which is part of the reason I think a linear progression is an incredible waste of content, even though I understand other people have had more luck than me in that regard.

Also what is the point of a "capstone"? Either you aren't done and the character should keep growing and changing or you are about to finish with the character and... why did you get the coolest thing right at the end? Give them some time to play with it.


I'm going to disagree here. Pure roleplaying has the disadvantage of decision paralysis. [...] Light crunch gives the player a small number of mechanical options.Um... is this against the pure role-playing game or the rules-light, because those are different things.

Pauly
2023-02-21, 10:38 PM
Like a lot of things about a flagship, that's there but you don't have to lean into it, or you could even lean into it in very different ways.
[snip]


That's why urban fantasy can work even when no one actually uses their powers with any serious frequency, because a lot of the fantasy has to do with things like different social organizations, roles, power relationships, etc.

Of course you can also have stuff more like Supernatural where you're hunting the monster of the week -
[snip]
.

Which touches on something about being iconic.
The game needs to be able to handle newbie/casual players wanting to play whack a monster because that’s all they want to do or all they have developed the skills to do so far.
The game also needs to be able to handle a more mature space for character driven drama, which is where more mature gamers tend to drift. D&D isn’t particularly good at character driven drama, buts lots of tables find ways to make it work.

Certainly some well developed rules about reputation, political influence, competing social constructs and so on would help. The new players will probably gloss over this aspect of the rules and not engage with it, as will beer and pretzels monster whackers. But having it sitting in the core rulebook will help players transition from simplistic campaigns to something they can enjoy as a 10 year veteran of the hobby



There are 3 possibilities here.

1) everything starts off as humans. If the PCs encounter a sentient toaster, or an alien, or a unicorn, or an Angel, they know that it was once a human.

2) the original PC races all happen to have started as human, but other beings - including other playable races - need not have started as human.

3) while other Supernatural beings may have any origin, all present and future PC races begin as human.

All 3 of these are problematic.


The way I see it the three possibilities for everyone PC starts as a normie human

1) It can happen to anyone.
Classic vampire/werewolf bite.

2) Anyone can do it if they pass through the gate.
Like becoming a wizard, bard or cleric in D&D. Provided you meet the gatekeeping standard you can become a supernatural type.

3) You were born special, but didn’t know it + triggering event.
The classic bloodline trope. You can dress it up with some fancy PSB about recessive genes and DNA or however you like. Then you add in a triggering event like getting a bucket of pig’s blood dropped on you at the prom and your latent powers get activated. There’s a lot of work going on in epigenetics that support this framework. From a fiction/world building point of view this is probably the most difficult to sell properly.

As superhero movies have shown everyone loves a good origin story. It’s a hook for new players to play out their character’s origin story in their first introduction to the game.

Ignimortis
2023-02-22, 08:44 AM
Which is actually something that makes the damage comparisons so weird to me. You are doing 12% more damage? Woot. Woot. To a lesser degree combat focused systems have this issue because they force everyone's things to be a variation on "win combat". It is only to a degree because if you zoom in then things become different again, but it is still comparatively narrow.
Number differences aren't exactly what I had in mind. But, say, there's a marked difference in how a combat character can achieve their ends (are they that much faster than the opposition? are they durable enough to outlast everyone? etc), or a hacker (sneaky? smash-and-grab? social engineering or hollywood hacker?), or a stealth expert (physical stealth? social infiltration? manipulating events from afar?), etc, etc.

D&D actually doesn't do much on that end, it's very bad at making characters with meaningful niches, even combat-wise. About the most difference you can get in D&D 5e is whether you have full casting, partial casting or no casting, but in any case you are a combat specialist with maybe something on the side (or nothing on the side).


I was thinking of normies in a secret organization being at a different power level, kind of like how in Mutants and Masterminds you can run ‘street level’ heroes to ‘city level’ heroes and so on. Thinking about it some more it may not be the best fit because the only way for normies to get to an equal power level is gear, and then the supernaturals will ask “why can’t we get gear?”. Then all your doing is re-inventing Shadowrun.
About dang time, Shadowrun is about 20 years past its' prime (people praise the setting, but it brought out the best stuff early on, and pretty much everything past 3e has been rehashing old concepts without advancing the setting well).

And yes, getting normies-superpowered-through-tech is a quite noble goal for the game, as well as inventing a good reason why this tech doesn't really work well for "natural" supers.



"Build" and "gimmick" aren't exactly the same. Once upon a time, there was a... league... that allowed characters to enter with one chachka, one bit of substance-free style. Like a pipe. Or an abacus. Or a harp pin? It was a way to give your character a gimmick, but required no real build skill.

OTOH, there's lots of build skill involved in the code I write... but I wouldn't say that my code has a "gimmick".

I think that it's valuable to an RPG - perhaps especially a flagship RPG - to allow players to stretch their Build muscles if they so desire, and for characters to be able to have gimmicks. But I'm not sure I see those as inherently related. I guess one could try to argue that they're better when they are (or can be) related?
What I meant is a mechanics-backed gimmick. Having hyperspecialized so much in a certain skill that you are, in-universe, are inhumanly amazing at it, is cool. My 5e Monk who has never had less than a 23 on Perception and eventually had a passive Perception of 32 had a gimmick. Was it amazingly useful or build-defining? Probably not, but it was memetic and it did give the character some spice. That sort of thing.


If we're focused on RP, that's not a problem. And frankly, I tend to prefer game systems that focus on individual characters as people, even if there are minor differences between them. But that's what I prefer to pay *today*. I'm reasonably certain that wouldn't match up with an "iconic" RPG though. As several people have stated (accurately IMO), there's a lot of value in easily described yet sufficiently distinct character types. Which is where classes and levels come in and why they tend to work well in that iconic role.

Classes can work decently enough, if they're written by someone with actual understanding of what a "class" is supposed to be like in the system. For instance, current D&D has almost no idea what their classes are about other than "general flavour", which means that you get a slew of classes like "Ranger" and "Wizard" instead of something that would actually mean something beyond vague general flavour. I have had a discussion on that recently, and believe that at the very point your class system defines a character by what weapon they use or what color their magic sparkles are, you have failed to design a class system.

To provide a basic example, if your system has a class which is primarily defined by using heavy armor and a shield, it's a bad class. If your system has a class that is tanky and can keep the enemies' attention on them, and also can do that while using heavy armor and a shield and that's a solid choice for them, but also can do it in different ways, now that's a good class. Classes are functions, not flavours. Flavour should generally be as free as possible. If there's no functional difference between a shadow mage and a fire mage other than "Shadowball" dealing a different type of damage, you don't need them, you need a Battlemage who can choose their elemental affinity at chargen.

Levels, however, are usually just bad. You don't need levels unless your game assumes a really steep power progression. If your power curve is relatively bounded, as it tends to be for, say, most urban fantasy systems, you don't need levels, they just muck things up. It is not hard for anyone to deal with spending XP on skills and such. I've known people who didn't want to bother with any version of D&D, and they figured out VtM's XP spending just fine.

KorvinStarmast
2023-02-22, 02:57 PM
I have never played in a published setting of a role-playing game. I got my first taste of that with Empire of the Petal Throne. Most of the games I have played are in the "DM/GM is world builder" with sometimes modules/prefab adventures added alongside regular play.
What is the point of a "capstone"? Either you aren't done and the character should keep growing and changing or you are about to finish with the character and... why did you get the coolest thing right at the end? Give them some time to play with it. :smallsmile: I concur.

gbaji
2023-02-22, 04:37 PM
On Levels: I was going to argue that "Fey-sworn agent" can be just as descriptive as "Level 12 Fighter" but actually I think it is more descriptive, or would be if the former came from a known system. Because "Level 12" doesn't actually tell me anything. I've never made it past level 4, what do I know what the game would look like that far above it. Which is part of the reason I think a linear progression is an incredible waste of content, even though I understand other people have had more luck than me in that regard.

I'm not sure I agree. Let me be clear, I'm not a fan of class and level based games, but the one value they do have is clarity as to what and how well someone does something. A "Fey-sworn agent" literally tells me nothing at all about that person's capabilities. Can they cast spells? Or focus on physical combat? Are they sneaky or not? Big and burly? Or weak and wimpy? Heck. Is "Fey" a reference to their race or a group they work for? No useful information is conveyed with that.

Level 12 fighter tells me that this person fights. Presumably is a physical fighter (especially if I also know that there are classes like rogue, cleric, and magic user in the game). This person can probably take and dish out damage in melee. And I know that he's far tougher than someone at level 4 (cause he's level 12, right?). I can guess that I should probably not mess with this person if I"m not near the same level. I don't have to know at all the details of what each level actually means. Only that higher level means more powerful.

That's absolutely more clear and simple. Doesn't mean that's "better", but if our criteria is how descriptive something is? Also, there's nothing to prevent that level 12 fighter from also being described as a "Fey-sworn agent". In this case, we're adding description in the form of "what this person does professionally". Could also say "sheriff's deputy", or "captain of the guard", or "royal executioner" and also get descriptive information. But a game system actually having level and class gives us something else as well.


Classes can work decently enough, if they're written by someone with actual understanding of what a "class" is supposed to be like in the system. For instance, current D&D has almost no idea what their classes are about other than "general flavour", which means that you get a slew of classes like "Ranger" and "Wizard" instead of something that would actually mean something beyond vague general flavour. I have had a discussion on that recently, and believe that at the very point your class system defines a character by what weapon they use or what color their magic sparkles are, you have failed to design a class system.

To provide a basic example, if your system has a class which is primarily defined by using heavy armor and a shield, it's a bad class. If your system has a class that is tanky and can keep the enemies' attention on them, and also can do that while using heavy armor and a shield and that's a solid choice for them, but also can do it in different ways, now that's a good class. Classes are functions, not flavours. Flavour should generally be as free as possible. If there's no functional difference between a shadow mage and a fire mage other than "Shadowball" dealing a different type of damage, you don't need them, you need a Battlemage who can choose their elemental affinity at chargen.

Which sounds like you are in favor of more general classes (like D&D originally had), like "Fighter, Cleric, Thief, Magic User, etc". Add in skills and feats say (which were added over time in various editions), and you have a lot of customization within those broader classes. That system "works" just fine. The problem I think comes in when the demands of commercialization push the game designers to keep creating more and more material, usually in the form of increasingly "silly" classes and sub classes, and whatnot, and basically lose sight of the original concept.

Which, yeah, is why I actually don't like classes. They don't hold up well over time. But if we're asking what is easier to use starting out, in order to form an "iconic game"? Yeah. I can see why they'd be useful for that.


Levels, however, are usually just bad. You don't need levels unless your game assumes a really steep power progression. If your power curve is relatively bounded, as it tends to be for, say, most urban fantasy systems, you don't need levels, they just muck things up. It is not hard for anyone to deal with spending XP on skills and such. I've known people who didn't want to bother with any version of D&D, and they figured out VtM's XP spending just fine.

Yup. Absolutely agree. What you do lose is the ability to easily determine relative difficulty/power. Some systems manage this by having a base point value, and keeping track of additional points added over time/experience. So you're replacing something like "level X character" witih "X point character" instead. And yeah, this allows for a much more granular experience gain path (and usually a lot more customization as well).

I actually have a lot of love for skill point game systems.

It is interesting though, that even though mechanically they are "better" (pretty much in every way), I do wonder about the psychological effect though. There is this odd thing that players have about liking to gain things in lumps. Get a new magic weapon or item that increases what they can do. Gain a level. Players love this stuff. I've found that players sometimes feel like small incremental improvements are less satisfying than occasionally "going up a level". Dunno. It shouldn't be. And maybe it's my imagination, but it sure does feel like players get more exicted about level based progression for some reason.

And I'm suddenly getting a hankering to go play Wizards for some reason...

NichG
2023-02-22, 06:01 PM
If I were designing this, I'd have something like a 'tier' system rather than a 'level' system. Fewer tiers than levels in D&D, with specific gates about on how and whether or not a given character can pass into the next tier, and with tiers acting as caps or prerequisites for certain abilities coming into play. However, independent of the tier system, there would be a diminishing returns invest-xp-directly system for characters developing new skills, learning, etc. One of the things I find very unappealing about 3.5ed D&D is that its harder for a Lv20 character to decide to dabble in pottery or learn a new language than it is for a Lv1 character, so there's this feeling of the character freezing out as they grow - literally becoming less able to learn new things - rather than a feeling that if you don't consistently commit to growing in a certain direction you might not master it.

As far as making NPCs/opposition easy to generate, I would envision something like having a 'profession' slot that basically every character gets, which determines a certain floor for the character's skills. You can pick up additional professions if you raise other scores to meet those floors, but you're guaranteed at character gen to get those floors for free in one domain of your choice. So the DM could say 'here are three generic mercenaries' and that means something pretty straightforward - they've got (at least) a 3 in Firearms and Unarmed Combat, 2 in Tactics and Dodge, and 1 in Stealth. Profession floors wouldn't increase with your Tier necessarily, but certain starting professions would not be available unless you started the campaign at a higher Tier. So there'd be a distinct 'special ops commando' profession that you'd have to start at Tier 2 to take, which might be 5/4/3 instead. And at Tier 3 it would be like 'mythic hero' with 7/5/5 instead. (Thinking e.g. caps at Tier 1 are 4 to an attribute or skill, 7 at Tier 2, and 10 at Tier 3. Furthermore you add 2*(Tier-1) to all defense thresholds and rolls, so a higher Tier character is just generically going to be more competent across the board.)

So the simplest character generation at Tier 0 would be something like 'here's 7 points, put them in your five attributes to a cap of 4 and minimum 1; pick a job, that gives you a set of skills, then add 7 points to any skills you like to a cap of 4, and you're done'. Then if you end up with a supernatural type they generically give you access to one new attribute starting at 1, five skills starting at zero (of which maybe one or two of those skills are shared with different supernatural types, and three are unique), and a single passive boon and single passive malus each which scale off of the new attribute for each Tier - like vampires getting a Sanguine attribute that both adds to their social rolls but also scales the damage over time they get when exposed to sunlight at Tier 1; then at Tier 2 Sanguine also scales their strength and speed, but sets a willpower threshold they must cross to do things like enter a domicile uninvited or remain within a holy place, etc.

So it'd be more a drop-in extra set of things than something as comprehensive as a character's class, though someone could go all-in on the vampire stuff. And as the Tier of the game increases, so does the potential complexity, but a Tier 1 game even if people are playing supernaturals would have those supernatural characteristics be more of a side-quirk than a big list of features to memorize.

Quertus
2023-02-22, 06:59 PM
Its a very D&D mentality to think about the gimmicks behind generics as being important though. Everyone gets to know - really, they know it from scratch - that trolls are big and strong and have a good heal factor.

Getting into a dynamic mode and learning to not feel cramped by that rather than e.g. getting yourself into the mindset of being annoyed when a player has read the Monster Manual because you were relying on them not realizing that red dragons are fire-themed or something seems like a benefit rather than a flaw.

Going back to this... I, personally, love getting to experience learning about Trolls for the first time in character. I love when I don't recognize my fellow PC is a Jedi, and I'm seeing the class/organization for what it really is, unhindered by my preconceptions. It's not, for me, about being annoyed at someone for reading the MM (other than how they're hurting their own or others' fun, if anyone enjoys Exploration), or about idiots structuring adventures that fall apart based on what players/characters know/think/etc, its about the structure of the game killing off that kind of fun until it's more or less extinct, and me saying that that's a bad thing.

Also, I'm kinda comparing, you know, replacing the flagship RPG, so looking at the benefits and pitfalls of the existing flagship RPG - having "a very D&D mentality" - is not only to be expected, but I'll take it as a compliment. :smallcool:


Like a lot of things about a flagship, that's there but you don't have to lean into it, or you could even lean into it in very different ways. Like, this is sort of the point of urban fantasy as opposed to swords and sorcery. In S&S, you have a bunch of effectively 'non-person' adversaries to be slain where the ethics etc of it is pretty simple, so you need lots of generics so you can just plop down a monster of the week in a room. If you're going the urban fantasy direction, one aspect of that decision is that you're going to be dealing with 'characters' far more frequently than with 'monsters'.

If true, that sounds disadvantageous for the flagship RPG from a video game perspective.


So you do have to expect that the players and GM will be coming up with and interacting with people as people as one of the main aspects of play. Meaning that everyone is unique-ish, even if they're not necessarily unique on screen. The exploration and discovery aspects become less about 'here is some fauna we've never seen before and the dangerous or useful properties they have' and more about 'here's something about these people/subcultures/groups/etc that we didn't know about or didn't know existed'.

Yeah, you're losing a lot of the player base there. Also, most hack GMs couldn't manage anything like that. If it had taken off, it would have spawned a very different hobby.


having something where the new players to the game are new hunters and have a grizzled mentor who shows them the website with 1001 beasties on it and their job is to put the clues together 'oh, its not a poltregeist, its a sun spirit' is not a bad way to bring players into the game. Think playing Geralt in Witcher 3 or something - he already knows what everything is, but you get to learn it via his process of investigation.

Huh. Very different approach than I'm familiar with. I'll have to ponder this.


If we're focused on RP, that's not a problem. And frankly, I tend to prefer game systems that focus on individual characters as people, even if there are minor differences between them. But that's what I prefer to pay *today*. I'm reasonably certain that wouldn't match up with an "iconic" RPG though. As several people have stated (accurately IMO), there's a lot of value in easily described yet sufficiently distinct character types. Which is where classes and levels come in and why they tend to work well in that iconic role.

Even the earliest video games generally involved 1 perspective character facing off against lots of lesser beings. And while the worlds have gotten much more detailed, that's still true in games like Skyrim, which is chock full of generic enemies. So unless we're discussing changing the mindset of the populous, I think both "readily supports 1-v-many" and "easily-coded / masses of duplicates" are good for the flagship RPG.

But, yes, during the roleplaying that video games can't have, yeah, not such a problem.


Yup. Pretty much the same as above. It's easier/faster to get new players into a game where "a troll" is just "a troll", and they're all alike (well, most of the time). Having trolls just be a race of creatures, who could themselves then be anything they want, having whatever skills they happen to have, learn whatever spells they want, and wear different armor, carry different weapons, etc makes for a much much more in depth game, but also presents a steeper learning curve for new players.

So yeah. Same for the PCs as for the NPCs.

Although I mostly agree with this, I want to extend it even further. Making the NPCs generic makes the game much more about how cool the PCs are, keeps the focus much more on the PCs. OTOH, making the NPCs so unique often makes the game about the NPCs.

Now, sure, there's movies and anime where the protagonist is so generic, they could be anyone, and it's easy for the viewer to step into their shoes, where the effort really is on making the world and the "NPCs", and the interactions the protagonist has with them, be the things designed to keep the audience's attention more so than the vanilla protagonist themselves. So I'm not saying that it's completely without merit. But, personally, I want the game (especially the flagship RPG) rigged to put the focus on the PCs, and to encourage them to actually, you know, have personalities and character and stuff. Just sayin'.


And that's where the negative of "simple but easy/quick to learn" comes in. Once the players learn what the different types of monsters can do, and what each class can do, there isn't a lot of variation left (other than I guess adding new expansions, with new classes and monsters, I suppose, which is precisely what D&D did. Yes. I'm looking at you 2nd edition...). But hey. That's when you "graduate" to something else.

Which again presents the "iconic" versus "mature?" (not sure if that's the best term) comparison. When the encounter is less about the race/class/levels of those involved, but the less easily described skills/abilities/items/spells, you get even greater variation in the game (and far less predictability). You see a group of orcs. Do you know right now about how tough they are? Or do you have no clue?

I prefer the latter, but that's *not* what's going to work in an "iconic" game IMO. Just the way things are.

There's also "custom content", which ties into my "when Bob makes Fey that cannot start as human, then the game publishes Fey that do start as human, or vice versa" conundrum.

Personally, I'm a fan of custom content, and of systems that encourage such. I saw so much more custom content in 2e D&D than in any edition since.


Wow this is lively enough I couldn't even hope to reply to everything. Well I could but... you know time.

On Setting: I don't thing the other world is such a hard constraint. Especially since the official setting will probably just be a way the system can be used. I expect people will make there own. I have never played in a published setting of a role-playing game. Or though in that the awakening is happening because of the overlap with another world any you can just play in the other world if you want to.

Are you saying that, if the flagship RPG had been Urban Fantasy genre, you would have used it to play in the Mars Colonies, or the Wild West, or (help me Google-wan Kenobi) Aincrad or Pandora or Forsenia or Amestris or Gotham City or Oz? That you would build your own cities if not your own world in which to play this modern fantasy system?

I'd... never really considered making a whole new world for Urban Fantasy. Huh. I've found some of my hidden biases / blinders today.


On Levels: I was going to argue that "Fey-sworn agent" can be just as descriptive as "Level 12 Fighter" but actually I think it is more descriptive, or would be if the former came from a known system. Because "Level 12" doesn't actually tell me anything. I've never made it past level 4, what do I know what the game would look like that far above it. Which is part of the reason I think a linear progression is an incredible waste of content, even though I understand other people have had more luck than me in that regard.

I mean, the old D&D levels had text, like "cut-purse" and "burglar", "apprentice" and "conjurer (of cheap tricks)" to go along with them...


Also what is the point of a "capstone"? Either you aren't done and the character should keep growing and changing or you are about to finish with the character and... why did you get the coolest thing right at the end? Give them some time to play with it.

Lol. It was mostly a reference to just how much flak the D&D class that worked with such a pool, a Tattooed Monk prestige class IIRC, got for that design choice. I hadn't realized it was bad design, until a Playgrounder pointed out that its capstone was something you'd passed up every single other level. It brought "diminishing returns" to a whole new level.

Advancement should be the opposite of "diminishing returns" - players should look forward to new levels having (generally) cooler toys.


I'm going to disagree here. Pure roleplaying has the disadvantage of decision paralysis.
Light crunch gives the player a small number of mechanical options. "You can pull out your sword and charge, you can pull out your bow and shoot or you can try something else" is better for people out of their comfort zone than "What do you want to do?"
It should be simple to see your options, simple to understand how they work but also limited in what it covers

Um... is this against the pure role-playing game or the rules-light, because those are different things.

There's definitely something to be said for both having mechanical buttons to press, and having options that aren't mechanical buttons.

Video games pretty well require that that the entire game be playable exclusively through mechanical buttons that can be coded into the game, with no GM intervention necessary. Even most rules-light games make for bad video games, IMO.


Which touches on something about being iconic.
The game needs to be able to handle newbie/casual players wanting to play whack a monster because that’s all they want to do or all they have developed the skills to do so far.
The game also needs to be able to handle a more mature space for character driven drama, which is where more mature gamers tend to drift. D&D isn’t particularly good at character driven drama, buts lots of tables find ways to make it work.

Certainly some well developed rules about reputation, political influence, competing social constructs and so on would help. The new players will probably gloss over this aspect of the rules and not engage with it, as will beer and pretzels monster whackers. But having it sitting in the core rulebook will help players transition from simplistic campaigns to something they can enjoy as a 10 year veteran of the hobby

As a "10-year veteran of the hobby", I still would have been 8 years away from having a fully-matured brain (stupid male biology). :smallamused:

Regardless, I agree that having certain simplified, unobtrusive social reward rules like that in the core rulebook, and planting the seeds of those concepts in newbies' heads, would be a good thing.


The way I see it the three possibilities for everyone PC starts as a normie human

1) It can happen to anyone.
Classic vampire/werewolf bite.

2) Anyone can do it if they pass through the gate.
Like becoming a wizard, bard or cleric in D&D. Provided you meet the gatekeeping standard you can become a supernatural type.

3) You were born special, but didn’t know it + triggering event.
The classic bloodline trope. You can dress it up with some fancy PSB about recessive genes and DNA or however you like. Then you add in a triggering event like getting a bucket of pig’s blood dropped on you at the prom and your latent powers get activated. There’s a lot of work going on in epigenetics that support this framework. From a fiction/world building point of view this is probably the most difficult to sell properly.

As superhero movies have shown everyone loves a good origin story. It’s a hook for new players to play out their character’s origin story in their first introduction to the game.

That still presents the problem that, if Fey were never human, they cannot be PCs without destroying the "start as a human and become your splat of choice". Best you can do is, you're the human who let the Fey you're now playing into the world or something... which just isn't quite the same as actually getting to play your character from the beginning, especially if there's IRL months of prequel story time.


And yes, getting normies-superpowered-through-tech is a quite noble goal for the game, as well as inventing a good reason why this tech doesn't really work well for "natural" supers.

I prefer if anyone can use a Grapple Gun, but you look like those dorks in Star Wars. However, some Agents, like Batman, Roger Smith, and Kim Possible, can do more with them, because "training" or something.


What I meant is a mechanics-backed gimmick. Having hyperspecialized so much in a certain skill that you are, in-universe, are inhumanly amazing at it, is cool. My 5e Monk who has never had less than a 23 on Perception and eventually had a passive Perception of 32 had a gimmick. Was it amazingly useful or build-defining? Probably not, but it was memetic and it did give the character some spice. That sort of thing.

Ah, as "an amazing help in bringing character concepts to life"... yes, I agree that it's nice when the mechanics help you breathe life into a character by providing support for such unique gimmicks.


Classes can work decently enough, if they're written by someone with actual understanding of what a "class" is supposed to be like in the system. For instance, current D&D has almost no idea what their classes are about other than "general flavour", which means that you get a slew of classes like "Ranger" and "Wizard" instead of something that would actually mean something beyond vague general flavour. I have had a discussion on that recently, and believe that at the very point your class system defines a character by what weapon they use or what color their magic sparkles are, you have failed to design a class system.

To provide a basic example, if your system has a class which is primarily defined by using heavy armor and a shield, it's a bad class. If your system has a class that is tanky and can keep the enemies' attention on them, and also can do that while using heavy armor and a shield and that's a solid choice for them, but also can do it in different ways, now that's a good class. Classes are functions, not flavours. Flavour should generally be as free as possible. If there's no functional difference between a shadow mage and a fire mage other than "Shadowball" dealing a different type of damage, you don't need them, you need a Battlemage who can choose their elemental affinity at chargen.

Hmmm... you seem to believe that class is often implemented as "gear", and should instead be implemented as "role", have I got that right?

Personally, I think it's fine for a Paladin to be a class, and for a character who is a Paladin to have a primary role of smiting the wicked (Striker), defending the weak (Tank / Support), or prestigious knight (Face). Or even some other role, if an unusual build or rare artifact or some such supports it (or they just like having a role unsuited to their statistics, like an Ogre Scout or something).


Levels, however, are usually just bad. You don't need levels unless your game assumes a really steep power progression. If your power curve is relatively bounded, as it tends to be for, say, most urban fantasy systems, you don't need levels, they just muck things up. It is not hard for anyone to deal with spending XP on skills and such. I've known people who didn't want to bother with any version of D&D, and they figured out VtM's XP spending just fine.

Have you played with 7-year-olds? Played video games with automatic advancement? Would Mario have been better if, whenever Mario acquired a power-up, he was taken to a screen with a complex build tree? Would Civilization have been better if all the units each tracked their own advancement choices separately? Would Brigandine have been better if the characters got build points, and Cai could equip Zemeckis's crossbow, or Umimaru's beam or unique mana cadence could be given to Talia? Why/why not?

Levels make the game much easier in many ways, which is good for casual gamers, video games, comparisons for groups / modules, making an informed guess at a glance whether Talia could take Zemeckis, and much more.

gbaji
2023-02-22, 07:13 PM
Yeah. We do something similar in our RuneQuest game (though I wouldn't suggest it would work well as an "iconic" game design, but if we're just talking about game concepts...). The base game rules itself is pure skill driven (and super granular, which is why it can be problematic and compex). While any character can theoretically have any skills at any levels, there is the concept of professions, which affect starting skills.

Where the tiers come in is in magic progression (which everyone has). There are three main branches of magic: Shamanic, Sorcerous, and Divine. Shaman's don't have much in the way of tiers. You're an apprentice, or you're a shaman (at which point you gain a fetch, which has some serious benefits though). I suppose we could track things like how powerful your fetch is, or how many spirits you have bound to you, etc. But yeah. Tough to clearly define power levels here. Divine tiers are easier, since the cults you join actually have them. Lay members (get some training and spirit spells, but nothing else), initiates (gain one use access to rune magic, which is quite powerful), priests (gain reusable rune magic). We actually added back in Rune Lords and High Priests, as kinda "uber powerful folks". We also allow different spell casting levels based on the "tier" you are at: anyone can cast 8 point spirit spells and 4 point rune spells if they have them, priests can cast 10/5 point, rune lords cast 12/6 point (and get special Divine Intervention odds), high priests cast 14/7 point spells (and get some enhanced power and DI chances as well).

Sorcery is where we made the most changes (cause the base rules just kinda suck). We made actual manipulation based on total skills used in casting the spell instead of the Int stat of the spell caster (which just doesn't work or scale). We fixed the manipulation skill (original sucked. Errata version was even worse). The game originally had the concept of tiers (kinda), with apprentices, adepts, and magus levels. We somewhat formalized those even more, and added in some additional benefits. I think there's some bonus manipulation at adept, and we gave magus' the ability to cast spells quicker (which is seriously necessary given how looooong it can take to cast sorcery in RQ).

The idea works, and can be tacked onto almost any game (or built in by design). It also gives players that "next level" thing to strive for, while also allowing (ideally anyway) for more gradual point based progression over time.

The only negative is that it can also "funnel" character progression. If you're trying to increase your tiers in some profession/description/whatever, and the requirements are some specific set of skill points spent in a list of things that are in that area, and there are additional benefits outside of mere skill progression to be gained by increasing your tier in <whatever>, you're going to tend towards focusing on those skills and only those skills that apply.

I suppose you could come up with some sort of tier system that wasn't tied to normal experience based progression though (off to the side somehow?). An interesting concept is to have advancement in some sort of achetype/virtue concept and base advancement on achievements during the game. Could also create an additional motivation in game for different characters to want to take certain actions or approaches in the game. Uh... Could also create additional conflict as well. I remember well the elan system in Stormbringer and the... uh.. "fun" things that could happen. Things like "I get rewards for lighting things on fire", or "burying things (or people)", or "flipping a coin when making any decision". Yeah. In hindsight, they really probably should not have let my agent of chaos join the group that one time.

So yeah, there are a few games that have used this kind of concept in different ways. I'm not sure if any of them really fill the same "feel" that level progression does though. Would be an interesting thing to try though.

NichG
2023-02-22, 07:19 PM
I suppose you could come up with some sort of tier system that wasn't tied to normal experience based progression though (off to the side somehow?). An interesting concept is to have advancement in some sort of achetype/virtue concept and base advancement on achievements during the game. Could also create an additional motivation in game for different characters to want to take certain actions or approaches in the game. Uh... Could also create additional conflict as well. I remember well the elan system in Stormbringer and the... uh.. "fun" things that could happen. Things like "I get rewards for lighting things on fire", or "burying things (or people)", or "flipping a coin when making any decision". Yeah. In hindsight, they really probably should not have let my agent of chaos join the group that one time.

So yeah, there are a few games that have used this kind of concept in different ways. I'm not sure if any of them really fill the same "feel" that level progression does though. Would be an interesting thing to try though.

Yeah, what I was going for was that tier advancement is 'at the speed of plot' only. You can't go up a tier by buying skills or attributes, period. In-character, there might be explicit recognition of tiers in some sense and ways to advance, but those ways would either be something tightly connected with external factors that would make them the subject of uptime play rather than how you spend your xp. Like, going up a tier might involve: gaining the recognition and sponsorship of a divine entity, surviving for 200 years as a vampire or consuming the soul of a vampire at least 200 years old, gaining explicit rank in the courts of the fae, etc - mostly either for villains or for groups that start at a higher tier. And of course there should be the free pass version of 'sometimes people just have the potential worthy of a higher tier, which gets unlocked by the act of making momentous decisions that impact the fate of something much larger than the person' to excuse the DM just saying 'you all go up a tier!' and keeping thing synchronized.

Would be a good sidebar: "Ways to keep the group together when advancing a tier"

Ignimortis
2023-02-23, 02:32 AM
Which sounds like you are in favor of more general classes (like D&D originally had), like "Fighter, Cleric, Thief, Magic User, etc". Add in skills and feats say (which were added over time in various editions), and you have a lot of customization within those broader classes. That system "works" just fine. The problem I think comes in when the demands of commercialization push the game designers to keep creating more and more material, usually in the form of increasingly "silly" classes and sub classes, and whatnot, and basically lose sight of the original concept.

Which, yeah, is why I actually don't like classes. They don't hold up well over time. But if we're asking what is easier to use starting out, in order to form an "iconic game"? Yeah. I can see why they'd be useful for that.
It's part of why I'm convinced that some sort of urban fantasy game would be best for newcomers. Instead of meddling with classes, you just build a human, then slap the supernatural template powers/bonuses onto them, and you're done. Even WoD games have managed that - there are guidelines for building human characters, who usually get a couple less attribute points than starting supers, but are pretty much equal in terms of skill points and such. All you need is a decent explanation of what the values actually mean - whether your policeman needs two dots in Firearms or can scrape by with one, whether 3 INT is enough to be smarter than the average, etc.



Yup. Absolutely agree. What you do lose is the ability to easily determine relative difficulty/power. Some systems manage this by having a base point value, and keeping track of additional points added over time/experience. So you're replacing something like "level X character" witih "X point character" instead. And yeah, this allows for a much more granular experience gain path (and usually a lot more customization as well).

I actually have a lot of love for skill point game systems.

It is interesting though, that even though mechanically they are "better" (pretty much in every way), I do wonder about the psychological effect though. There is this odd thing that players have about liking to gain things in lumps. Get a new magic weapon or item that increases what they can do. Gain a level. Players love this stuff. I've found that players sometimes feel like small incremental improvements are less satisfying than occasionally "going up a level". Dunno. It shouldn't be. And maybe it's my imagination, but it sure does feel like players get more exicted about level based progression for some reason.

And I'm suddenly getting a hankering to go play Wizards for some reason...
It's more about the effect of power-ups and their regularity. Suffice to say, I was far more excited to get some cool Discipline combo power for 15 EXP than I usually am to get a level in a D&D-like. In general, sure, gaining +1 to a skill is usually not as impactful as it is to gain a whole level, but that can be solved by giving XP in large packs instead of dripfeeding it between each session. Spending 40 XP in Vampire is pretty much equivalent to going up a level.



I prefer if anyone can use a Grapple Gun, but you look like those dorks in Star Wars. However, some Agents, like Batman, Roger Smith, and Kim Possible, can do more with them, because "training" or something.
Everyone can use a Grapple Gun. Not everyone can have it be implanted in their cool mechanical arm alongside a machine gun. Alternatively, if the "tech powers" angle needs to be more subtle - while everyone can use a Grapple Gun, Super Soldier Serums don't work on supernaturals.



Hmmm... you seem to believe that class is often implemented as "gear", and should instead be implemented as "role", have I got that right?

Personally, I think it's fine for a Paladin to be a class, and for a character who is a Paladin to have a primary role of smiting the wicked (Striker), defending the weak (Tank / Support), or prestigious knight (Face). Or even some other role, if an unusual build or rare artifact or some such supports it (or they just like having a role unsuited to their statistics, like an Ogre Scout or something).
I believe that classes are often implemented as "what I want to look like" instead of "what I want to do". This leads to things like Barbarians being a separate class, because the image of a half-naked musclebound warrior with a great whopping axe doesn't fit into "Fighter" somehow, even though they do pretty much the same things - get out there on the frontline and hit things hard, with very minor differences at the end of the day. Paladins are similar, but at least they fill the niche of being half-Cleric, half-Fighter.



Have you played with 7-year-olds? Played video games with automatic advancement? Would Mario have been better if, whenever Mario acquired a power-up, he was taken to a screen with a complex build tree? Would Civilization have been better if all the units each tracked their own advancement choices separately? Would Brigandine have been better if the characters got build points, and Cai could equip Zemeckis's crossbow, or Umimaru's beam or unique mana cadence could be given to Talia? Why/why not?

Levels make the game much easier in many ways, which is good for casual gamers, video games, comparisons for groups / modules, making an informed guess at a glance whether Talia could take Zemeckis, and much more.
I do have to note that Civilization does have all the units track their own advancement choices separately. At least CIV 4 does, and that's the last one I play regularly.

As for build points vs levels, it all depends on the game's complexity. Like I said, VtM in particular was simple enough that everyone I know to have played TTRPGs has grasped it pretty easily.

Pauly
2023-02-23, 02:56 AM
About dang time, Shadowrun is about 20 years past its' prime (people praise the setting, but it brought out the best stuff early on, and pretty much everything past 3e has been rehashing old concepts without advancing the setting well).

And yes, getting normies-superpowered-through-tech is a quite noble goal for the game, as well as inventing a good reason why this tech doesn't really work well for "natural" supers.

.




That still presents the problem that, if Fey were never human, they cannot be PCs without destroying the "start as a human and become your splat of choice". Best you can do is, you're the human who let the Fey you're now playing into the world or something... which just isn't quite the same as actually getting to play your character from the beginning, especially if there's IRL months of prequel story time.
re.

I’m putting these 2 together because they address the same thing from different angles. The issue being is it core rules material or expansion material?

I’m approaching this on the basis that the core rules have a simple easily explainable hook. In the example we’re working on I’m assuming “normal humans become supernatural” is the hook. There is sufficient inspiration out there for a complete game to be launched with this as the core rules.

The always magical Fey and geared up humans make obvious expansion material to me. I think for iconic status room to expand is a good thing. It gives the hard core player base things to look forward to, while at the same time allows the less devoted to enjoy the game as it comes out of the box.

As for geared up humans there are a few issues the fiction needs to clean up. Firstly I assume 6 million dollar man type cyborgs that level up by getting more body parts replaced or their existing implants upgraded. The issues I see are
1) Organizational support. The sheer cost and specialized R&D required implies backing from government, organized religion or tech billionaires. Which makes an organization supporting the geared up human PC mandatory. Similar that seen in the 1998 Ultraviolet series starring Idris Elba and Jack Davenport. (NB this series is a must for anyone interested in the genre). Shadowrun gets around organizational support/cost by saying future tech made is accessible and affordable to anyone, but that doesn’t gel with the ‘today’ setting proposed.
Do the other PCs in the party then have to belong to the same organization as the geared up human? If not why not?
2) Location. It forces geared up humans to be either in very large cities are some tech hub such as Tsukuba. The supernatural characters have no such restriction on location, and I can see that a lot of campaigns will be set in small towns.
3) why tech upgrades are denied to supernaturals.

For the Fey there are world building issues, but they are more easily resolved.

But having either of these in the core rulebook will make the game harder to explain to people who’ve never heard of an RPG before.

On Iconic there is a bit of a needle to thread. It needs to be a complete game out of the box, but it also needs to have room for people to be enthusiastic about expanding the game into.

CharlieDouglas
2023-02-23, 03:17 AM
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ahyangyi
2023-02-23, 04:50 AM
To be honest, I don't see much real difference between a class-based approach where multiclassing is well-supported, and a classless system. The argument of granularity sounds more like "I dislike a class-based system where a character only have 20 levels", instead of "I dislike a class-based system". That sounds to me like an argument about names instead of essence.

NichG
2023-02-23, 12:07 PM
To be honest, I don't see much real difference between a class-based approach where multiclassing is well-supported, and a classless system. The argument of granularity sounds more like "I dislike a class-based system where a character only have 20 levels", instead of "I dislike a class-based system". That sounds to me like an argument about names instead of essence.

Well one difference is that in class-based systems the next level tends to cost more (or at least, requires overcoming a greater challenge) regardless of what it is, but the gains are flat. Whereas the standard in classless systems is instead to make stuff cost the same regardless of where the character is in their progression, but particular skills/abilities/etc cost more as you continue to raise that particular thing. So the former encourages specialization for its own sake - buying something you don't need is not just a waste of a fixed quantity of build resources now, but it effectively costs you a percentage of all xp you will ever gain from now on. Whereas the latter can encourage rounding out a character (but in turn, the higher ranks of abilities and skills should have something to offer other than just higher bonuses on rolls, so that there's a decision to be made about whether to specialize or broaden).

gbaji
2023-02-23, 01:35 PM
I think that a lot of folks are conflating class and level (and to be fair, there's a lot of overlap though). It's possible to have levels without classes and/or classes without levels. Just most games do combine them together. Levels without classes, honestly, is just periodic "dumps" of points of some kind, and could honestly just be smoothed out if you wanted to. Classes without levels can exist and work well IMO. TFT did it, although they really just had two "classes" (wizards and melee characters), and it was just a difference in cost for spells vs skills. I'm sure someone could be clever and enterprising and create multiple different (but broad) classes that could work the same way (things you spend your exp points on cost different amounts, suggesting different "leanings" for the character).

I've also noticed a lot of discussion focusing a potential iconic game on modern time with tech and/or supernatural elements. I'm not sure why the need to focus on a single genre for an iconic game, but if you were going to, that's not the one I'd pick. There's a reason why sword and sorcery resonates so well, and is, well... iconic. Um. It also solves pretty much all of the "problems" folks have been talking about.

There's no need to wonder about where upgrades/advances come from. People just get better at what they do. They find magic armor and weapons and whatnot. They gain access to greater spells or whatever. It's a much easier genre to sell to a playing audience IMO. And frankly, it's a lot less "niche". I don't really enjoy modern setting games much at all (does nothing for me), and the moment someone even mentions the word "Fey", I pretty much just turn and walk the other direction (dunno why. Just really really don't like the nonesense associated with Fey in just about every single setting I've ever played or read). And I don't think I'm alone in that assessment.

I actually did like V:tM. For a while. Then it kinda got boring. I really liked the system, but honestly, the setting was just too constrained for my tastes. Shadowrun worked better IMO. Could be similarly constrained, but had a broader genre (sorta). And again, just not a fan of "current day" settings. If you're in a fantasy or future setting, you can justify all sorts of things in your game world. Modern day, you just can't. Well, you can, but it can really break the setting if you do certain things.

ahyangyi
2023-02-23, 02:10 PM
I actually did like V:tM. For a while. Then it kinda got boring. I really liked the system, but honestly, the setting was just too constrained for my tastes. Shadowrun worked better IMO. Could be similarly constrained, but had a broader genre (sorta). And again, just not a fan of "current day" settings. If you're in a fantasy or future setting, you can justify all sorts of things in your game world. Modern day, you just can't. Well, you can, but it can really break the setting if you do certain things.

Indeed. I read enough about history and politics to know how ignorant I am about history and politics. That's why I generally prefer settings that do not require me to use my historical or political knowledge.

The thing I love about high fantasy is that they are inherently nonsensical. The economic numbers just don't add up. Magic is prevalent but does not change the way of life like it should. And that's good because being nonsensical is the only way to stop endless argument about realism.

Pauly
2023-02-23, 03:59 PM
I've also noticed a lot of discussion focusing a potential iconic game on modern time with tech and/or supernatural elements. I'm not sure why the need to focus on a single genre for an iconic game, but if you were going to, that's not the one I'd pick. There's a reason why sword and sorcery resonates so well, and is, well... iconic. Um. It also solves pretty much all of the "problems" folks have been talking about.

There's no need to wonder about where upgrades/advances come from. People just get better at what they do. They find magic armor and weapons and whatnot. They gain access to greater spells or whatever. It's a much easier genre to sell to a playing audience IMO. And frankly, it's a lot less "niche". I don't really enjoy modern setting games much at all (does nothing for me), and the moment someone even mentions the word "Fey", I pretty much just turn and walk the other direction (dunno why. Just really really don't like the nonesense associated with Fey in just about every single setting I've ever played or read). And I don't think I'm alone in that assessment.

I actually did like V:tM. For a while. Then it kinda got boring. I really liked the system, but honestly, the setting was just too constrained for my tastes. Shadowrun worked better IMO. Could be similarly constrained, but had a broader genre (sorta). And again, just not a fan of "current day" settings. If you're in a fantasy or future setting, you can justify all sorts of things in your game world. Modern day, you just can't. Well, you can, but it can really break the setting if you do certain things.

The point of using urban fantasy is purely as an example to work through issues on what is the path to iconic. If we focussed on high fantasy the discussion would quickly turn into people whining about why can’t D&D be like this?

As for appeal. Urban fantasy has a bigger appeal than high fantasy. Urban fantasy novels get put in the general novel section in the book store where high fantasy gets shoved into the fantasy and sci-fi corner. Urban fantasy books can become cultural icons without the genre even being noted as unusual *cough sparkly vampires *cough*.
Major Hollywood movies get released without anyone gushing over the genre. Practical Magic, Death Becomes Her, Interview with the Vampire, Ghostbusters, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Teen Wolf, Splash, Highlander. And that list excludes all the horror, harry potters and twilights. High fantasy has had LoTR and then you’re scraping for movies no one has ever heard of outside of geekdom.
TV is the same. The Addams Family, Bewitched, Sabrina the Teen Witch, Charmed, I dream of Jeanie, Supernatural, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the Buffy spinoff Angel, Lucifer, True Blood, Early X-files (before they went full sci-fi) and the list goes on. High Fantasy has GoT, Hercules, Xena and then a bunch of stuff no one watches. Amazon burned a billion dollars on the LoTR prequel and no one cared (well apart from the Tolkein fans but they cared about what was happening to Tolkein’s legacy).

The question is on the Venn diagram of the people who like the genre and the people who would play an RPG is how much crossover is there? In the Venn diagram of people who like high fantasy and people who like RPGs there is a high degree of crossover. The thing is that the pool of urban fantasy is much larger so it doesn’t need anywhere as much of a percentage of crossover to be successful.

The issue isn’t ‘would I like to play this game?’. The issue is ‘are there sufficient people out there who would want to play this game?’
There are reasons why VtM is something I have not and will never play, but that doesn’t stop me from recognizing that it has a sufficiently large niche to generate a viable player base.

gbaji
2023-02-23, 05:02 PM
Right. I guess I'm trying to figure out what is meant by "iconic" then. I took that to mean "present an alternative game system that could have been as iconic as D&D in terms of introducing and creating the TTRPG and making it a thing". And I guess my counter point is that you start with something that appeals most to those who are already "close" enough to the kind of gaming we're working towards to get them into the new paradigm of RPG, but with the ability to expand that audience to folks who might not have made that initial plunge on day one. It's important to at least take note of the progression that did historically occur with D&D, in order to determine what would be needed for an alternative.

I've often followed an adage that you can make a novel/TV series/film out of a RPG, but you should really not try to do the reverse. General themes? Sure. Specifics? Generally doesn't work well. The same kind of applies to the concept of creating an iconic RPG out of modern setting fantasy/sci-fi stuff. Yes. There is a broader audience for novels/TV shows/films in that kind of setting. But is there really as broad an audience for roleplaying games? I obviously don't have hard numbers right on hand, but if I were to estimate, I'd assume that the ratio of "ancient history fantasy" settings versus "modern day fantasy/sci-fi" settings in actual play right now (or just about any time period that RPGs have been a thing) is probably at least 5:1 or higher. There's more in the latter set today than say 20-30 years ago, but classic fantasy settings are still king of the RPGs.

I also think that pretty much every modern setting game suffers from either being too broad (and thus has no draw), or too specific (and thus could not really become "iconic"). If there were no other RPGs out there, and you were trying to introduce the concept to a generation of players, looking for something "new and different", what would you give them? A Buffy themed game? Supernatural? Anne Rice style vampires? Mission impossible RPG? MacGyver? GI Joe? Each of those is an incredibly "narrow" theme and setting. Your Venn diagram shrinks remarkably because while collectively those settings have a huge popular audience, individually they don't really, and even less so when you look at the small percentage of interest *today* in games set specifically in those settings, let alone if this were introduced as the "first and iconic" RPG to kick start the entire industry. I suppose you could try to maybe create a very broad game in modern times, allowing for any of those different specific "things" to exist, but you're left with "generic adventuring in the modern age" as your starting point.

And that's not nearly as rich and interesting as even "generic adventuring in an ancient mystifcal fantasy age". In the latter, you can toss in stereotypical classic fantasy things, without needing any specific stuff at all. Dragons are iconic and wide spread. Trolls. Giants. Demons. Evil spirits. Dark shadows. Hordes of barbarians. Bandits in the hills. Raiders. Evil necromancers. You name it. You aren't required to narrow yourself down to a specific "thing" in the setting at all. And that's before we even get into issues of trademarking/copyright.

Dunno. It's just that I can take just about any game system, set it in a high fantasy setting, make up a map of kingdoms nearby, jot down some notes on things here and there, and then launch into a campaign with a group of players without any real problems. Trying to do the same in a modern day setting is incredibly difficult. The setting itself does not lend itself to threats which need to be handled by a small group of private citizens very easily. You have to put those other details into the game in order to even launch it off the ground. And the moment you do that, you've seriously narrowed the scope of play *and* the number of people who are likely to be interested in playing.

I think that once you launch the RPG industry with something very identifyable, playable, and "broad", and get lots of people interested in your "iconic" game, *then* people will naturally spin off into other genres and settings. Which is more or less exactly how things actually happened. I think the only setting that could possibly replace a "ancient age fantasy" one as an Iconic industry starter would be something sci-fi based (future sci-fi, not modern day). You have to start with something that is sufficiently different than the world we live in, that you have enough breadth to create worlds within that setting range to make for broad appeal. I mean, it's interesting to think about various modern setting games and whatnot. I just don't know if anything like that could have been the "iconic" game that D&D was.

Quertus
2023-02-23, 08:38 PM
I also think that pretty much every modern setting game suffers from either being too broad (and thus has no draw), or too specific (and thus could not really become "iconic"). If there were no other RPGs out there, and you were trying to introduce the concept to a generation of players, looking for something "new and different", what would you give them? A Buffy themed game? Supernatural? Anne Rice style vampires? Mission impossible RPG? MacGyver? GI Joe? Each of those is an incredibly "narrow" theme and setting.

None of those have even remotely large enough of an IP base to match D&D. I'd imagine that the iconic replacement flagship RPG would require much more than any of them deliver. It would be its own thing, with its own Vampires, Angels, Demons, Fey, Werewolves, Orcs, Oni, Leprechauns, Satyrs, Giants, Trolls, Titans, Dragons, Shapeshifters, Golems, Ghosts, Zombies, Phoenixes, Santa, Wishing Wells, Hags, Slimes... you'd need to build an IP that can handle a real breadth of iconic concepts, and give them their own spin.


I do have to note that Civilization does have all the units track their own advancement choices separately. At least CIV 4 does, and that's the last one I play regularly.

Huh. I wasn't aware any civ games actually offered a real set of choices for spending unit XP - I only remembered automatic leveling. Of course, I mostly played the early games.


As for build points vs levels, it all depends on the game's complexity. Like I said, VtM in particular was simple enough that everyone I know to have played TTRPGs has grasped it pretty easily.

Everyone except the designers, who couldn't decide between "new" and "current" or use them consistently, and who made a system where increasing your skill at times increased you chances of botching. :smallannoyed::smallamused:


I'm not sure I agree. Let me be clear, I'm not a fan of class and level based games, but the one value they do have is clarity as to what and how well someone does something. A "Fey-sworn agent" literally tells me nothing at all about that person's capabilities. Can they cast spells? Or focus on physical combat? Are they sneaky or not? Big and burly? Or weak and wimpy? Heck. Is "Fey" a reference to their race or a group they work for? No useful information is conveyed with that.

Level 12 fighter tells me that this person fights. Presumably is a physical fighter (especially if I also know that there are classes like rogue, cleric, and magic user in the game). This person can probably take and dish out damage in melee. And I know that he's far tougher than someone at level 4 (cause he's level 12, right?). I can guess that I should probably not mess with this person if I"m not near the same level. I don't have to know at all the details of what each level actually means. Only that higher level means more powerful.

That's absolutely more clear and simple.

Yup. There's very little that communicates more efficiently than class and level.

Now, sure, depending on the system, maybe 2 level 4 guys get crushed by a single level 12, or maybe it's a fair fight, or maybe they have the advantage. So there's a little information that you need to draw from the system itself. But, heck, I honestly wouldn't know where to place my bet on a fight between two 4th degree black belts and one 12th degree black belt IRL.


If I were designing this, I'd have something like a 'tier' system rather than a 'level' system.

Tier can communicate well, sure.


Fewer tiers than levels in D&D,

Probably not as video game friendly.


with specific gates about on how and whether or not a given character can pass into the next tier,

Eh, that sounds like "playing to a goal" rather than "playing a character". D&D already gets flack for its focus on "get treasure for XP" or "kill monsters for XP", I imagine this flagship would get flack for this "every character has the same focus" problem, too - only here, it's a build issue and a "series of fetch quests to collect the prerequisites", even if they're just trainers for skills.


and with tiers acting as caps or prerequisites for certain abilities coming into play.

Heck, Mutants and Masterminds just does this cap stuff with levels.


However, independent of the tier system, there would be a diminishing returns invest-xp-directly system for characters developing new skills, learning, etc. One of the things I find very unappealing about 3.5ed D&D is that its harder for a Lv20 character to decide to dabble in pottery or learn a new language than it is for a Lv1 character, so there's this feeling of the character freezing out as they grow - literally becoming less able to learn new things - rather than a feeling that if you don't consistently commit to growing in a certain direction you might not master it.

You've lost me. Here's where I am: In D&D, my Conehead Venerable Grey Elf Wizard 20 is looking at around a 42 Int, which means 18 skill points that level. If I really want them to learn pottery, they can be bloody great at pottery.

So, D&D characters can advance from "Zero to Demigod" of a skill in a single level, particularly at high level.

Given that, what are you trying to say?


So the simplest character generation at Tier 0 would be something like 'here's 7 points, put them in your five attributes to a cap of 4 and minimum 1; pick a job, that gives you a set of skills, then add 7 points to any skills you like to a cap of 4, and you're done'. Then if you end up with a supernatural type they generically give you access to one new attribute starting at 1, five skills starting at zero (of which maybe one or two of those skills are shared with different supernatural types, and three are unique), and a single passive boon and single passive malus each which scale off of the new attribute for each Tier - like vampires getting a Sanguine attribute that both adds to their social rolls but also scales the damage over time they get when exposed to sunlight at Tier 1; then at Tier 2 Sanguine also scales their strength and speed, but sets a willpower threshold they must cross to do things like enter a domicile uninvited or remain within a holy place, etc.

So it'd be more a drop-in extra set of things than something as comprehensive as a character's class, though someone could go all-in on the vampire stuff. And as the Tier of the game increases, so does the potential complexity, but a Tier 1 game even if people are playing supernaturals would have those supernatural characteristics be more of a side-quirk than a big list of features to memorize.

I'm hearing Mutants and Masterminds (and WoD d20) meets Wrath and Glory.

And... the progressing-with-tier malus is... not exactly hard for me to wrap my head around, but... hard for 7-year-old me to wrap my head around, and hard for me to wrap my head around as a feature of a flagship RPG.

I mean, it's a little weird to think of the epic tier extremes of, say, "you're not really a Vampire until you are insta-gibbed by even a sliver of reflected sunlight (note that this counts the moon)", but at least there's precedent for it in modern IPs. But "you're not really a Mage until you forget that the supernatural even exists when you're not in direct physical contact with your spellbook, and your spells all take weeks to cast"? "You're not really a Mummy until you're immobile, instantly immolate upon contact with open flame, and your incoherent groans can only be understood by the undead"? "You're not really a Fey until you can't even take the end of the world seriously, and fundamentally cease to exist if you suffer an unmitigated gain or loss"? "You're not really a Werewolf until you fall unconscious / go into a bererk rage whenever you're within 10' of clothes or other tools or worked materials"?

And I feel like "tier testing" would become a weird meta-layer to the game. Like, "I use Garlic to separate the wheat from the chaff", except it's the weak who can pass this obstacle. Which is kinda backwards from usual gatekeeping lines of thought. "Oh, you could bypass my wards? You must be weak" has said no protagonist ever.

Also, 7 into 5, min 1, can't hit cap 4. Perhaps you meant base 1?

All that aside... I think I'd rather use Wrath & Glory's more math-intensive but more rules-light character creation system... or Mutants and Masterminds' character creation system... or one more like WoD d20 (just ported to this style) than this particular system. Not "they're better", just... this one doesn't grab me, y'know?


Going back to this... I, personally, love getting to experience learning about Trolls for the first time in character. I love when I don't recognize my fellow PC is a Jedi, and I'm seeing the class/organization for what it really is, unhindered by my preconceptions.

Trivial little thing, I also love it when I do recognize the Jedi (as an example), but someone else in the party doesn't, and I get to see how they respond to the concept when presented as something fresh.

NichG
2023-02-23, 09:20 PM
Eh, that sounds like "playing to a goal" rather than "playing a character". D&D already gets flack for its focus on "get treasure for XP" or "kill monsters for XP", I imagine this flagship would get flack for this "every character has the same focus" problem, too - only here, it's a build issue and a "series of fetch quests to collect the prerequisites", even if they're just trainers for skills.


It's embodying power in the setting rather than making it just this inevitable thing, which makes stuff like villain motivations a lot easier in that you don't have the 'why is this guy killing people to become immortal when he could just wait a few levels - shouldn't take him more than a few weeks of adventuring' issue. Practically speaking, the GM for a given game would either say 'fixed tier - advancing isn't going to happen' or 'tier up after a major arc, don't bother trying to make it happen in character' or 'free for all, pursue power if you want it' as distinct modes of play. With the uttermost beginner mode being fixed tier, and the expectation that most things would be written for would be 'tier at end of arc' using things like a deity raising the party as a whole or other such things (off of a sidebar of 10 gimmicks DMs could use to ensure synchronized tiers).



You've lost me. Here's where I am: In D&D, my Conehead Venerable Grey Elf Wizard 20 is looking at around a 42 Int, which means 18 skill points that level. If I really want them to learn pottery, they can be bloody great at pottery.

So, D&D characters can advance from "Zero to Demigod" of a skill in a single level, particularly at high level.


However, your Lv20 elf can never learn another skill without losing one they had previously learned if they're in a campaign that doesn't permit advancement to epic level. And even if they are in such a campaign, in order to improve by even 1 point in any of those skills, they have to deal with world-ending scale threats (e.g. things within a few CR of 20). Rather than just going to the local community college and taking pottery classes for a few weeks.

And if we're talking about the Lv20 Strength Fighter... well.



I'm hearing Mutants and Masterminds (and WoD d20) meets Wrath and Glory.

And... the progressing-with-tier malus is... not exactly hard for me to wrap my head around, but... hard for 7-year-old me to wrap my head around, and hard for me to wrap my head around as a feature of a flagship RPG.

I mean, it's a little weird to think of the epic tier extremes of, say, "you're not really a Vampire until you are insta-gibbed by even a sliver of reflected sunlight (note that this counts the moon)", but at least there's precedent for it in modern IPs. But "you're not really a Mage until you forget that the supernatural even exists when you're not in direct physical contact with your spellbook, and your spells all take weeks to cast"? "You're not really a Mummy until you're immobile, instantly immolate upon contact with open flame, and your incoherent groans can only be understood by the undead"? "You're not really a Fey until you can't even take the end of the world seriously, and fundamentally cease to exist if you suffer an unmitigated gain or loss"? "You're not really a Werewolf until you fall unconscious / go into a bererk rage whenever you're within 10' of clothes or other tools or worked materials"?


For mages, it'd probably be something like being bound more tightly by a sort of regimented karma - not alignment exactly, but things like swearing an oath on your magic and then breaking that oath makes you a bit weaker for a week or two as a novitiate, but if you do that as an archmage then you've got stuff like automatically failing your save against a single effect created by the one who you broke your word to, or even just losing the ability to resist other magic at all for a year. The idea being that as an archmage you have built up a head of momentum where reality takes your word for how things are supposed to be, even when the evidence differs, and if you get caught in a direct lie all of that momentum snaps against you.

As far as mummies, sure, fire makes sense - you get more and more dessicated with the passage of time. But you could also do something like an increased connection with a particular sacred guardian duty - if the things you're protecting are stolen, you have an increased difficulty on anything that doesn't center on getting those objects back, and a reduced difficulty on any actions directed towards their recovery.

For fae, cold iron would be the obvious scaling downside - the more completely you abandon your mortal nature and become purely fae, the more negative-DR you get from cold iron and at high tiers you take damage and lose stats even on non-violent contact with the stuff. In character, this is because you're relying more and more of the stuff of story for your literal physical form as you grow in Tier. Or you could go with the whole 'can't break their word' thing with fae instead of mages. Options here...

For werewolves, same thing but for silver. Simple.



Also, 7 into 5, min 1, can't hit cap 4. Perhaps you meant base 1?


Yes, it'd be base 1 for attributes. So you could have 4,4,2,1,1 for example.

Also, the tier gating is super-convenient for explaining why godlike ancient demons don't just steamroll the world. Demon disadvantage being, the more powerful a demon you are, the more powerful the summoner/summoning needed to allow you to exist on Earth.

Cluedrew
2023-02-23, 10:17 PM
Number differences aren't exactly what I had in mind. But, say, there's a marked difference in how a combat character can achieve their ends [...] D&D actually doesn't do much on that end, it's very bad at making characters with meaningful niches,Agreed. It is a starting point but I think we should really go further as well. And especially should not relying on damage measuring contests.


I got my first taste of that with Empire of the Petal Throne. Most of the games I have played are in the "DM/GM is world builder" with sometimes modules/prefab adventures added alongside regular play.Yeah, all settings I have played in are:
The GM's homebrew settings.
A system where the group creates the setting.
The official setting of an unpublished system.
I don't think people will limit themselves to the official published settings.


A "Fey-sworn agent" literally tells me nothing at all about that person's capabilities. [...] Level 12 fighter tells me that this person fights. Presumably is a physical fighter (especially if I also know that there are classes like rogue, cleric, and magic user in the game). This person can probably take and dish out damage in melee. And I know that he's far tougher than someone at level 4 (cause he's level 12, right?). I can guess that I should probably not mess with this person if I"m not near the same level. I don't have to know at all the details of what each level actually means. Only that higher level means more powerful.In hindsight I did a terrible job with the example. So I'm going to try to reverse it, instead of trying to explain how fey-sworn agent could be descriptive I'm going to unpack the assumptions in the fighter example, what if I knew as much about D&D as you knew about Don't know if this will work but here we go.
Fighters fight; that follows.
Physical fights is technically a jump*, but not a big one. Especially with the rogue (solves stealth challenges), cleric (social and mystic) and magic user (mystic challenges focus) in the mix. So the fighter handles physical combats; got it.
Melee combat? Why not ranged combat as well, its not like there is an archer class to compete with. (Ranger? Isn't that an explorer for wilderness adventures?)
What if I want to focus on my offensive abilities when I level up and don't take and damage reduction skills when I level up?
I considered throwing out some things to point out that there is also nothing about using weapons in there either, so monk could be folded into that as well.

* We would have to be using something like the FAE approach system for there to be a good other way to cut it up.

Right. I guess I'm trying to figure out what is meant by "iconic" then. I took that to mean "present an alternative game system that could have been as iconic as D&D in terms of introducing and creating the TTRPG and making it a thing".That is not what I was going for. If you want to explore that question you can, but I was more interested in what sort of system would be best suited to being in D&D's position modernly. Roughly in terms of popularity, but the word "iconic" is because it would be the one most people, especially outside the hobby, would use as the example of the genre.

ahyangyi
2023-02-24, 07:14 AM
In hindsight I did a terrible job with the example. So I'm going to try to reverse it, instead of trying to explain how fey-sworn agent could be descriptive I'm going to unpack the assumptions in the fighter example, what if I knew as much about D&D as you knew about Don't know if this will work but here we go.
Fighters fight; that follows.
Physical fights is technically a jump*, but not a big one. Especially with the rogue (solves stealth challenges), cleric (social and mystic) and magic user (mystic challenges focus) in the mix. So the fighter handles physical combats; got it.
Melee combat? Why not ranged combat as well, its not like there is an archer class to compete with. (Ranger? Isn't that an explorer for wilderness adventures?)
What if I want to focus on my offensive abilities when I level up and don't take and damage reduction skills when I level up?
I considered throwing out some things to point out that there is also nothing about using weapons in there either, so monk could be folded into that as well.


There's nothing in D&D fighter that forces you into a melee combatant, and... what are the damage reduction skills you were talking about?

Cluedrew
2023-02-24, 08:47 AM
I was referencing a bunch of ways to avoid or reduce damage in other systems that have a fixed (or at least no standard increase) amounts of health for characters. Outside of systems that trace back directly to D&D, I've seen very few consistently growing health pools and more damage reduction abilities. Remember that part was in character as someone who knows nothing about D&D.

Vahnavoi
2023-02-24, 09:25 AM
In origination, D&D class names were not informative at all. They were very broad and included lot of different characters. Specific level titles existed to give a better idea of what characters were capable of.

They later became more informative due to memes and ideosyncracies of the game system pigeonholing those character archethypes, but only in specific context. F.ex. outside specific genre of fantasy roleplaying games, "fighter" still doesn't tell a damn thing beyond the very basic idea that someone has their identity wrapped around fighting.

Quertus
2023-02-24, 03:13 PM
There's nothing in D&D fighter that forces you into a melee combatant, and... what are the damage reduction skills you were talking about?

Language is funny. A “Fighter” could be someone who is likely to survive a deadly disease or risky operation, for example.

But taken in the “combatant” vein, it’s something of a logic puzzle. Personally, I wouldn’t call a mandate archer / gunner, who folds in melee combat faster than a 1st level Wizard a “fighter”. A Monk who fights with their fists? A 2e character with a golf bag of weapons to choose from (even if their primary weapon was a bow)? A modern soldier who is definitely better with guns than knives, but is plenty intimidating to a noncombat school even with only a knife? Sure, those are all Fighters in my book.

Ranged and melee? You’re a Fighter. Lack Ranged? You’re a Fighter. Lack melee? Eh, not so much.

At least, that’s the way I look at things. No idea how common that perspective is.


However, your Lv20 elf can never learn another skill without losing one they had previously learned if they're in a campaign that doesn't permit advancement to epic level. And even if they are in such a campaign, in order to improve by even 1 point in any of those skills, they have to deal with world-ending scale threats (e.g. things within a few CR of 20). Rather than just going to the local community college and taking pottery classes for a few weeks.

And if we're talking about the Lv20 Strength Fighter... well.

You can’t improve if you can’t improve is kinda tautologically true. The “can’t improve until you level” is a limit of the fidelity of the simulation for Gamist concerns, true. I just wasn’t sure if that was the problem you were concerned with.

That said, I’m still not clear on what *you* were saying, which was the point of me giving you my biases / PoV as a starting point. Was it just tying “going to a pottery course for a few weeks” to the pottery skill, independent of levels or XP? If so, most systems fall that test.

It’s an interesting argument, for the iconic flagship RPG to be more Simulationist, and less Gamist.


For mages, it'd probably be something like being bound more tightly by a sort of regimented karma - not alignment exactly, but things like swearing an oath on your magic and then breaking that oath makes you a bit weaker for a week or two as a novitiate, but if you do that as an archmage then you've got stuff like automatically failing your save against a single effect created by the one who you broke your word to, or even just losing the ability to resist other magic at all for a year. The idea being that as an archmage you have built up a head of momentum where reality takes your word for how things are supposed to be, even when the evidence differs, and if you get caught in a direct lie all of that momentum snaps against you.

As far as mummies, sure, fire makes sense - you get more and more dessicated with the passage of time. But you could also do something like an increased connection with a particular sacred guardian duty - if the things you're protecting are stolen, you have an increased difficulty on anything that doesn't center on getting those objects back, and a reduced difficulty on any actions directed towards their recovery.

For fae, cold iron would be the obvious scaling downside - the more completely you abandon your mortal nature and become purely fae, the more negative-DR you get from cold iron and at high tiers you take damage and lose stats even on non-violent contact with the stuff. In character, this is because you're relying more and more of the stuff of story for your literal physical form as you grow in Tier. Or you could go with the whole 'can't break their word' thing with fae instead of mages. Options here...

For werewolves, same thing but for silver. Simple.

Probably much better as a Gamist game than what I listed, sure. (Although I like Wizards more as “disconnected” (perhaps “penalty for acting without full information”) than “oath-based” - it seems rash to make promises you can’t keep, rather than a trait of the Wise.)

Still, my focus was on how it would feel if this were part of the iconic game, if most every video game Wizard went around making oaths (and thereby taking penalties), or every video game vampire got weaker to sunlight and a growing list of vulnerabilities as they got stronger (clear the garlic field quest now before you level and are unable to!), etc. There’s a lot that’s backwards from the current model of “gain power to gain access to new locations”. Instead of the rock you can’t pass until you level up, the map starts completely open, and slowly closes off as you level. That’s more the point I was making than the specific abilities, although those specifics obviously play into the feel of the IP.


Also, the tier gating is super-convenient for explaining why godlike ancient demons don't just steamroll the world. Demon disadvantage being, the more powerful a demon you are, the more powerful the summoner/summoning needed to allow you to exist on Earth.

That… I mean, ok, FR has a really weird “this is why nothing changes” explanation, and most IP just ignore the question entirely. But I’m not sure if baking “you can’t change anything, ever” into the DNA of the system l, particularly in a “you become more limited as you advance” style, is really good for escapist RPG space (and not a suggestion I’d expect from you in particular, btw).

Maybe it’s easier to look at this piece:



It's embodying power in the setting rather than making it just this inevitable thing, which makes stuff like villain motivations a lot easier in that you don't have the 'why is this guy killing people to become immortal when he could just wait a few levels - shouldn't take him more than a few weeks of adventuring' issue. Practically speaking, the GM for a given game would either say 'fixed tier - advancing isn't going to happen' or 'tier up after a major arc, don't bother trying to make it happen in character' or 'free for all, pursue power if you want it' as distinct modes of play. With the uttermost beginner mode being fixed tier, and the expectation that most things would be written for would be 'tier at end of arc' using things like a deity raising the party as a whole or other such things (off of a sidebar of 10 gimmicks DMs could use to ensure synchronized tiers).

Sure, that can definitely give credence to certain actions, but then we run into the 3e issue that Prestige Classes were supposed to be customized and created frequently by the GM, but instead we got shovelware worth of splats with GMs shying away from creating their own. It would be nice if the game were set up such that I could bathe in the blood of babies to keep / regain my youth even if there wasn’t an explicit splat published that said I could do so, for example.

Which… isn’t exactly limited to “increasing tier”, come to think of it.

So, instead, perhaps I could propose that the flagship RPG could instead have a “fiction first” attitude? Or a “RAW first, but fiction second, especially for areas that RAW doesn’t cover” attitude?

Pauly
2023-02-24, 03:57 PM
Thinking about the physical rulebook.

- Format is hardcover. This conveys quality, and helps with durability.
- Length. No more than 200 pages. Once rulebooks get up 300 pages they get daunting and at 400 pages the sheer length is a barrier to getting new people interested. 200 pages of rulebook is probably no more than 100 pages of text the rest being art and formatting to make it easy to read.
- If you need more than 200 pages then a boxed set with core rulebook, and 2 or 3 smaller soft cover books such as monster guide, character sheets, starter adventures, setting book for a sample small town, player’s handbook or GM’s guide. The core rulebook can still be sold as a stand alone item as long as at least one player in the group has a boxed set.
The boxed set may also include other handy things such as a GM’s screen, dry erase map, dice, branded pens.
- PDFs need markups and links so players can quickly find what they need.
- Web support for creating character sheets. If we are using procedurally created characters, then a character generator as well. The official online character generator should also have some kind of limit to stop players just re-rolling characters over and over until they find the one they like. Maybe a sample character generator for quickly rolling up a bunch if characters, but the one linked to the character sheet takes longer to complete.

- Complexity of language. Middle schoolers should be able understand it well enough that a group of normal 14 year olds can play the game based purely on the book with no adult coaching or needing to google anything.
- Complexity of rules. Something average 14 year olds or gifted 10 year olds can do without outside assistance.
- Tone PG 13 but with space for adults to add their NC17/R rated stuff if they want. Kind of like how the first 2 Indiana Jones films have a lot of darker material implied but not actually stated on screen., stuff that a lot of kids didn’t notice until they rewatched the films as adults.

NichG
2023-02-24, 04:07 PM
You can’t improve if you can’t improve is kinda tautologically true. The “can’t improve until you level” is a limit of the fidelity of the simulation for Gamist concerns, true. I just wasn’t sure if that was the problem you were concerned with.

That said, I’m still not clear on what *you* were saying, which was the point of me giving you my biases / PoV as a starting point. Was it just tying “going to a pottery course for a few weeks” to the pottery skill, independent of levels or XP? If so, most systems fall that test.

It’s an interesting argument, for the iconic flagship RPG to be more Simulationist, and less Gamist.


I don't think GNS is helpful here... I'd all this a sort of concern about the aesthetics of character and growth. There are certain affordances people expect to have when playing a character - things the character should be able to do because they themselves could do those things - and if you restrict those it feels bad unless you have a really good explanation for it. For me, I guess learning is such an integral thing to my daily experience and living that the idea of learning getting harder the more you've learned (from a gamist concern, sure) is a sort of highly unpleasant bizarro world. You could call that simulationist, but the important thing is the aesthetics and the feeling of being able to do things that I think would be reasonable (like spending a month immersed in a foreign culture to pick up enough of their language to get by, rather than hunting down a dracolich so I can get the XP to gain a fresh batch of skill points so I can just obtain the language through divine revelation). It's why when I run D&D I commonly hand out things like a free skill point here or there when characters seriously pursue a new direction in their downtime, or otherwise specifically train intensively to pick something up - at least for the first rank or two.

As far as simulationism though, there is something to be said for an iconic game at least pretending to represent an underlying reality, but specifically in the direction of 'the rules approximate the reality' rather than 'the rules are the reality'. So a particular take on simulationism I guess? The reasoning is that if you do want to adapt the game to other media, you want there to be some kind of underlying 'idea of that world' that can be re-interpreted. If the idea of the world is too literally connected to the mechanics like 'hitpoints are actually a thing and physical injuries are not' or 'when people move, they can't control how far they move - its 2 to 12 miles decided by 2d6' if we were doing something like Monopoly or Talisman - then reinterpreting that as a novel or movie or whatever ends up being really corny, or requires the author to do a lot more work (meaning less consistency between authors). I don't know if that's precisely 'simulationism' so much as maintaining the conceit that we're describing something more real than we have the ability to render it in practice during play, and carefully using fluff/etc to define the shape of that.



Probably much better as a Gamist game than what I listed, sure. (Although I like Wizards more as “disconnected” (perhaps “penalty for acting without full information”) than “oath-based” - it seems rash to make promises you can’t keep, rather than a trait of the Wise.)


I'd want to avoid 'you have to play this character this way' sorts of things in the penalties - leave the character's personality and mind to the player as much as possible. So maybe just something like, the more powerful a wizard, the more they draw attention from Lovecraftian horrors from outside of reality? Could even be something where there's standard spellwork to hide yourself, and so for the most part its completely fine to advance in power - you get better at dealing with things on the balance, as long as you learn the necessary spells before you tier up. But should anything ever manage to strip away your spellwork, you're much more vulnerable than a pure mundane would be against, say, any kind of memetic attacks or dangerous knowledge.



Still, my focus was on how it would feel if this were part of the iconic game, if most every video game Wizard went around making oaths (and thereby taking penalties), or every video game vampire got weaker to sunlight and a growing list of vulnerabilities as they got stronger (clear the garlic field quest now before you level and are unable to!), etc. There’s a lot that’s backwards from the current model of “gain power to gain access to new locations”. Instead of the rock you can’t pass until you level up, the map starts completely open, and slowly closes off as you level. That’s more the point I was making than the specific abilities, although those specifics obviously play into the feel of the IP.


For the oath thing, it'd be the opposite, no? Because breaking an oath is so much worse, you make oaths much more rarely but when you do you gain the benefit that people take them very seriously. Whichever supernatural ends up with the 'can't break oaths' weakness would be much more trusted to never lie.

Part of the disconnect here might be, I'm not thinking of 'advancing in Tier' to be a normal part of week to week play. Changing Tier should be like stepping into a very different game, like reaching name level in OD&D and now you spend your time ruling the lands from a stronghold rather than going delving. The changes in power and vulnerability should work to separate the tiers into really distinct layers of play that interact with one-another asymmetrically. If you hit Tier 3, your problems really shouldn't be about paying the rent or keeping your boss off your back, and the game should not pretend that those things are still going to be problems for you.

Tier 1 would be 'normal' living (even including that of e.g. soldiers or other skilled combatants) with supernatural-as-daily-life mods and sort of street-level problems. So like, 'I want to run an ice cream shop using ice magic' or 'my son is getting involved with a fang gang, what do I do?' kinds of things. With regards to power, supernatural abilities and the like would be little perks to daily life but not world-changing or broadly-acting stuff.

Tier 2 would be like, you're the CEO of a corporation, the commander of an army unit, the mayor of a town, the leadership of a secret society that secures, contains, and protects dangerous artifacts, etc. With regards to supernatural power, you could do some big workings at your scale - enchantments that make all of your employees forget the confidential stuff they worked on when they went home, creation of a whole hierarchy of thralls, construction of a floating fortress, creation of an entire magical industry, the ability to teleport anywhere, etc.

Tier 3 would be like, you're a minor deity with a domain that you have power over, you're a time traveller, you're the Guardian of the Threshold and all forces entering or leaving this reality must go past you, you're the progenitor of an entire new supernatural type and all of their powers turn on your decisions, a genie that can grant world-shaping wishes, etc.

Maybe could stretch that into 4 tiers instead, but going up a Tier should be really serious business, and it should be really obvious that the nature of the game will be different as a consequence. Maybe there would be a few ways to get some rare tier-crossing abilities so there's a bit more interoperability and so players could dip their toes into the new waters before leaping in (but with those tier-crossing things limited somehow rather than the at-will level that a proper member of the tier would have).

You'd still have more normal week to week advancement, but it would be things like picking up skills or learning new spells, not unlocking entire new levels of power.



That… I mean, ok, FR has a really weird “this is why nothing changes” explanation, and most IP just ignore the question entirely. But I’m not sure if baking “you can’t change anything, ever” into the DNA of the system l, particularly in a “you become more limited as you advance” style, is really good for escapist RPG space (and not a suggestion I’d expect from you in particular, btw).


It's not intended as a status quo 'nothing changes' explanation. Things can change - that demon lord could still end up being summoned and then burn the entire world. But there's an energy barrier so that things with lots of innate and overt power can exist in the setting without immediately turning everything to 'what does the strongest entity will?' So its less about preventing change, and more about making it so that the setting isn't born in free fall where the only reason things aren't changing immediately is because everyone is holding an idiot ball or choosing to limit themselves except the PCs.

It's like, maybe you own a battleship and you're dealing with people whose tech is limited to spears and shields. That's great, but if you want to bring the battleship to bear you have this extra hurdle of needing fuel and crew and ammunition that the spear-users don't have to care about. It doesn't mean the spear-wielders will win that confrontation, but it does mean that there are more logistical problems you need to deal with in order to bring that particular power to bear, as well as costs to maintaining it. Meaning that there's this extra space in time created for the result of that conquest to still be ambiguous - until the ship reaches the shores, there's a credible metastable equilibrium. And someone could credibly say delay the ship even if they could never beat the ship in a direct conflict, so it creates space for people of different tiers to actually stand a chance of preserving themselves - for a time at least - against the others.


So, instead, perhaps I could propose that the flagship RPG could instead have a “fiction first” attitude? Or a “RAW first, but fiction second, especially for areas that RAW doesn’t cover” attitude?

Fiction first certainly, over RAW. This gets away from iconicity and more to 'theory of what rules are for in design' stuff, but basically the rules should act as inspiration and promises or exchanges of decision power, rather than as restriction or requirement or depiction of 'how things are'.

ahyangyi
2023-02-25, 01:40 AM
Language is funny. A “Fighter” could be someone who is likely to survive a deadly disease or risky operation, for example.

But taken in the “combatant” vein, it’s something of a logic puzzle. Personally, I wouldn’t call a mandate archer / gunner, who folds in melee combat faster than a 1st level Wizard a “fighter”. A Monk who fights with their fists? A 2e character with a golf bag of weapons to choose from (even if their primary weapon was a bow)? A modern soldier who is definitely better with guns than knives, but is plenty intimidating to a noncombat school even with only a knife? Sure, those are all Fighters in my book.

Ranged and melee? You’re a Fighter. Lack Ranged? You’re a Fighter. Lack melee? Eh, not so much.

At least, that’s the way I look at things. No idea how common that perspective is.


Was talking about specialization/modus operandi, not proficiency. Also, the notion that one can be excellent at archery but utterly useless at melee is weird; you add your strength to the damage of composite bow attacks in real life too.

Cluedrew
2023-02-25, 02:42 PM
It's an interesting argument, for the iconic flagship RPG to be more Simulationist, and less Gamist.Depending on how you consider the GDS or GNS triangle, the bit about avoiding to much war game or story-telling game would lead into that. Still I think there is a lot of room before you get into the hybrid games. (I suppose I would advise against a role-playing game/simulator hybrid game as well, but I can't think of any simulator tabletop games to begin with so it seems redundant.)


Thinking about the physical rulebook.
[...]
- Length. No more than 200 pages. Once rulebooks get up 300 pages they get daunting and at 400 pages the sheer length is a barrier to getting new people interested. 200 pages of rulebook is probably no more than 100 pages of text the rest being art and formatting to make it easy to read.The physical book angle is one I hadn't considered. Most of your ideas are pretty good, and sadly in a way that did not spark anything on my end, but I think this one I have a comment.

Yeah 200 pages is definitely the upper limit. I grabbed a 400ish page book as a point of comparison even half that is a lot. Especially considering the page size on most rulebooks. In fact at that size, I think that is probably the core rules, a selection of play options, the GM advice and an introduction to the official setting. There can be other books that build out more of any part of that, but considering the requirement of "approachable" I think if the system needs 200 pages... or maybe I should be looking at this as 100 pages without the air. You know what, I think I'll just stick with that is the upper limit, lower would be nice.

Quertus
2023-02-25, 03:44 PM
Was talking about specialization/modus operandi, not proficiency. Also, the notion that one can be excellent at archery but utterly useless at melee is weird; you add your strength to the damage of composite bow attacks in real life too.

If all my training in firearms and martial arts had instead been applied to archery? In that case, I'd (hopefully) be an excellent archer, who folds in melee. Doesn't sound weird to me.


I don't think GNS is helpful here

GNS is always helpful. More seriously, using different words to describe someone else's concept is a form of error checking, a way to say, "did I understand what you were saying" without explicitly asking the question. Perhaps more subtly, as I'm generally a fan of increasing the Simulation aspect of a game, in this case, it's a way of giving my implicit approval of the proposed change.

But, again, this kind of confusion is what happens when I aim for brevity instead of my usual verbosity.


... I'd all this a sort of concern about the aesthetics of character and growth. There are certain affordances people expect to have when playing a character - things the character should be able to do because they themselves could do those things - and if you restrict those it feels bad unless you have a really good explanation for it.

"I can learn pottery from taking a pottery class; my character should be able to do so, too". Fiction first, Simulationist, yeah, sure, makes sense.

That said (as you know, as you mentioned doing such), "gain X skill points when you level" does not preclude "gain skill points when you have a 'learning experience', such as taking a class", even if the latter is not explicitly stated / left to "Rule 0".

Also note that the existing flagship RPG has this level of fidelity to the Simulation in 2e. In Skills & Powers, you not only earn skill points on level-up, you explicitly can also earn them through training arcs, like your pottery class. So, winrar for the flagship, and for its best edition.


For me, I guess learning is such an integral thing to my daily experience and living that the idea of learning getting harder the more you've learned (from a gamist concern, sure) is a sort of highly unpleasant bizarro world.

You keep saying this. I still have no idea what you mean. Why are you under the impression that learning gets harder? You generally get the same (or more) skill points each level in D&D, so learning stays the same or gets easier. Learning gets harder in WoD and most skill-based systems as you advance the skill, sure... but why do you feel that is unrealistic?


You could call that simulationist, but the important thing is the aesthetics and the feeling of being able to do things that I think would be reasonable (like spending a month immersed in a foreign culture to pick up enough of their language to get by, rather than hunting down a dracolich so I can get the XP to gain a fresh batch of skill points so I can just obtain the language through divine revelation).

Yup, I absolutely call that Simulationist. If we couldn't do that IRL, it wouldn't be part of the game / we wouldn't care if it were part of the game, so it's a Simulationist concern.


It's why when I run D&D I commonly hand out things like a free skill point here or there when characters seriously pursue a new direction in their downtime, or otherwise specifically train intensively to pick something up - at least for the first rank or two.

Yup, knew you said this. You make your reality feel more real by making it better simulate the world we know. Just like 2e did.


I'd want to avoid 'you have to play this character this way' sorts of things in the penalties - leave the character's personality and mind to the player as much as possible. So maybe just something like, the more powerful a wizard, the more they draw attention from Lovecraftian horrors from outside of reality? Could even be something where there's standard spellwork to hide yourself, and so for the most part its completely fine to advance in power - you get better at dealing with things on the balance, as long as you learn the necessary spells before you tier up. But should anything ever manage to strip away your spellwork, you're much more vulnerable than a pure mundane would be against, say, any kind of memetic attacks or dangerous knowledge.

I like this even better.


For the oath thing, it'd be the opposite, no? Because breaking an oath is so much worse, you make oaths much more rarely but when you do you gain the benefit that people take them very seriously. Whichever supernatural ends up with the 'can't break oaths' weakness would be much more trusted to never lie.

So now I know which supernatural to pretend to be. :smallbiggrin:


Part of the disconnect here might be, I'm not thinking of 'advancing in Tier' to be a normal part of week to week play. Changing Tier should be like stepping into a very different game, like reaching name level in OD&D and now you spend your time ruling the lands from a stronghold rather than going delving. The changes in power and vulnerability should work to separate the tiers into really distinct layers of play that interact with one-another asymmetrically. If you hit Tier 3, your problems really shouldn't be about paying the rent or keeping your boss off your back, and the game should not pretend that those things are still going to be problems for you.

Sure. But still, "now that I'm CEO instead of a grunt employee, there's so much less I can do" is not what we expect.


Tier 1 would be 'normal' living (even including that of e.g. soldiers or other skilled combatants) with supernatural-as-daily-life mods and sort of street-level problems. So like, 'I want to run an ice cream shop using ice magic' or 'my son is getting involved with a fang gang, what do I do?' kinds of things. With regards to power, supernatural abilities and the like would be little perks to daily life but not world-changing or broadly-acting stuff.

Tier 2 would be like, you're the CEO of a corporation, the commander of an army unit, the mayor of a town, the leadership of a secret society that secures, contains, and protects dangerous artifacts, etc. With regards to supernatural power, you could do some big workings at your scale - enchantments that make all of your employees forget the confidential stuff they worked on when they went home, creation of a whole hierarchy of thralls, construction of a floating fortress, creation of an entire magical industry, the ability to teleport anywhere, etc.

Tier 3 would be like, you're a minor deity with a domain that you have power over, you're a time traveller, you're the Guardian of the Threshold and all forces entering or leaving this reality must go past you, you're the progenitor of an entire new supernatural type and all of their powers turn on your decisions, a genie that can grant world-shaping wishes, etc.

Maybe could stretch that into 4 tiers instead, but going up a Tier should be really serious business, and it should be really obvious that the nature of the game will be different as a consequence. Maybe there would be a few ways to get some rare tier-crossing abilities so there's a bit more interoperability and so players could dip their toes into the new waters before leaping in (but with those tier-crossing things limited somehow rather than the at-will level that a proper member of the tier would have).

I'm not sure how I feel about this. My Vampire or mind-control mage can't become a CEO until they up their tier? My Werewolf knows she can't help the spirits birth a new species, because she's still just tier 1? My background for my newly-awakened tier 1 Fey can't be that I am the former mayor of a town?

On the one hand, it feels like "grouping by tier" will allow a lot of the "1st level character adventuring with 20th level party" feel that I love from the early days of the flagship; OTHO, grouping by tier feels like it will separate a lot of PCs that would otherwise work well together.


You'd still have more normal week to week advancement, but it would be things like picking up skills or learning new spells, not unlocking entire new levels of power.

This feels like something your average GM / module would care about, and want a metric for. Also, it feels like that day-to-day change metric is what video games based on the IP would display, much more than tier.


Fiction first certainly, over RAW. This gets away from iconicity and more to 'theory of what rules are for in design' stuff, but basically the rules should act as inspiration and promises or exchanges of decision power, rather than as restriction or requirement or depiction of 'how things are'.

Boy, this really annoys me - every example I came up with, I found myself on the "fiction first" side. :smallannoyed::smallamused:

It took me a while, but I eventually realized why I believe in RAW first, fiction second: because people are idiots. IME, when a GM changes the rules "for realism", they're much more often than not making the game and the realism much worse than if they'd just followed the rules. Thus, I believe in making rules with the fiction in mind, and a "rules first" attitude, to protect the realism, the fiction, from the idiot behind the GM screen.


- Complexity of language. Middle schoolers should be able understand it well enough that a group of normal 14 year olds can play the game based purely on the book with no adult coaching or needing to google anything.
- Complexity of rules. Something average 14 year olds or gifted 10 year olds can do without outside assistance.

3e can be handled competently by 7-year-olds. d20 + bonus vs target number isn't rocket science.

Silly Name
2023-02-25, 04:17 PM
Was talking about specialization/modus operandi, not proficiency. Also, the notion that one can be excellent at archery but utterly useless at melee is weird; you add your strength to the damage of composite bow attacks in real life too.

Is it? Archery and swordfighting(boxing/[your preferred martial art here] are very different skills with very limited interconnectivity. Sure, you need to be in good physical shape to perform well at either, but that's it. Same goes for fencing and wrestling: a good fencer isn't necessarily a good wrestler and viceversa.

Being generally physically strong is an advantage for all sorts of fighting (excluding firearms), but technique and experience don't magically bleed from one discipline to the other. And at the end of the day, pure physical strength can only carry you for so much when trying to fight in a way you're not trained in.

KorvinStarmast
2023-02-25, 04:42 PM
Yeah 200 pages is definitely the upper limit. I grabbed a 400ish page book as a point of comparison even half that is a lot. Especially considering the page size on most rulebooks. In fact at that size, I think that is probably the core rules, a selection of play options, the GM advice and an introduction to the official setting. There can be other books that build out more of any part of that, but considering the requirement of "approachable" I think if the system needs 200 pages... or maybe I should be looking at this as 100 pages without the air. You know what, I think I'll just stick with that is the upper limit, lower would be nice. I think 200 pages is too much.

As a point of reference: The Basic D&D rules are 180 pages (which has enough monsters to play), and as organized are a bit 'puffy' as regards prose style, so a well written game could come in under that.

Blades in the Dark, has a book that is too long. 318 pages, though that does include a few maps and illustrations, and some setting info.
It's too bad, in terms of barriers to entry problems if your target includes pre teens, or Adults with the short attention span affliction.

Take a look at page 3: "Before you start"
"Read this book, once through."

318 pages? They need a quick start guide.

NichG
2023-02-25, 04:59 PM
You keep saying this. I still have no idea what you mean. Why are you under the impression that learning gets harder? You generally get the same (or more) skill points each level in D&D, so learning stays the same or gets easier. Learning gets harder in WoD and most skill-based systems as you advance the skill, sure... but why do you feel that is unrealistic?

In D&D, learning gets harder because leveling gets harder. At Lv1 you can gain a level by killing baseline kobolds, but you can't do that at Lv10. Both the XP to next level and the difficulty of the things you have to deal with in order to actually earn a particular quantity of XP increase with level (in 3e/3.5ed). In 2ed the XP cost of the next level increased exponentially, even if particular XP sources never gave you less XP no matter how strong you were. In games running on milestone leveling, its more fuzzy and GM-dependent of course, so its hard to really talk about.

In WoD, learning does not actually get harder. You tend to gain a fixed amount of XP per session whether you were killing elder vampires or researching spells in a library or discussing the news over crumpets with a romantic interest. And the first rank of any skill always costs the same no matter how many other skills or other ranks you possess.



Yup, I absolutely call that Simulationist. If we couldn't do that IRL, it wouldn't be part of the game / we wouldn't care if it were part of the game, so it's a Simulationist concern.


For me it falls under the umbrella of UX things, which includes stuff that we can't do IRL but that feels good to be able to do in game. Like being able to take 5 minutes OOC to decide on what your character does in the next 6 seconds, or not having permanent limb loss happen by chance when enemies score a critical hit. The fact that it happens to align with reality in this particular case is just a bonus.



Sure. But still, "now that I'm CEO instead of a grunt employee, there's so much less I can do" is not what we expect.


Its interesting you say this, because I think you may be intuitively getting the 'UX, not realism' thing I was talking about on the above point. Because CEOs actually are a lot more limited in some ways than normal people. A tweet that would be speculation or griping for a normal person can become an insider trading or stock manipulation charge from the SEC. More of your time is taken up with mandatory duties, in a way that you can't just take a 3 month vacation from (at least not without losing that CEO power), or even a 3 day vacation in some cases. You end up with legal responsibilities to shareholders or VC investors, which may constrain your side activities (big potential problem for academic startup founders for example, even as there's also new opportunities).

Or if you're something like a monarch, and historically you lose access to things like the ability to choose who you marry or whether or not to have kids, privacy, the ability to take personal risks (sure you can do the socially acceptable ones like hunting or leading an army in a war, but walking in your own town without an armed guard is a no-no!).

Having something like 'I became a powerful vampire rather than a blood-bound ghoul and now the sun burns' is I think a lot more within existing expectations.



I'm not sure how I feel about this. My Vampire or mind-control mage can't become a CEO until they up their tier? My Werewolf knows she can't help the spirits birth a new species, because she's still just tier 1? My background for my newly-awakened tier 1 Fey can't be that I am the former mayor of a town?


You could become a CEO, sure. You couldn't start as a CEO in a Tier 1 game though. And even if you're a CEO, you couldn't buy your business skill up 7, which may mean there are some CEO 'special moves' that you don't get access to. You'd have to do all the CEO stuff with actual player skill rather than relying on the system for support if you wanted to play across tier. Which is also a fun thing to brag about actually - 'I managed to take the place of a deity and do their job as a Tier 1 character!'.



This feels like something your average GM / module would care about, and want a metric for. Also, it feels like that day-to-day change metric is what video games based on the IP would display, much more than tier.


In non-D&D games its less of an issue because advancement in any one thing tends to be sub-linear with time, whereas in D&D it tends to be super-linear. So e.g. if you were doing WoD, or 7th Sea, or other games with this kind of horizontal spread you could probably run the same series of events for a group of PCs with 50% more XP and it'd still be more or less okay. What XP tends to do is it decreases the chance that the party is going to be caught failing the go-fish element of skill games - a high XP group means that someone is going to have one or two ranks of whatever esoteric thing would be relevant, whereas with a low XP group its more possible that just no one has it. This does require a bit of care as far as skill design - its good if new skills open up to be invested in as play goes on (for example, supernatural specializations or things like that) so that characters don't become overly similar.

WoD kitchen sink campaign I played in had this thing where we could discover new hedge-magic types of skills through experimentation. So mid-campaign we discovered things like 'magical metallurgy' or 'aura sensing' or 'energistics'. That worked pretty well to keep things interesting over quite a large XP span by WoD standards (going from mortals at the start to going toe to toe with the neverborn and someone who had become the avatar of the wyld itself by the end).



Boy, this really annoys me - every example I came up with, I found myself on the "fiction first" side. :smallannoyed::smallamused:

It took me a while, but I eventually realized why I believe in RAW first, fiction second: because people are idiots. IME, when a GM changes the rules "for realism", they're much more often than not making the game and the realism much worse than if they'd just followed the rules. Thus, I believe in making rules with the fiction in mind, and a "rules first" attitude, to protect the realism, the fiction, from the idiot behind the GM screen.


It gets into a whole side conversation perhaps, but at least for me I start from the position that running a game and designing a game cannot be disentangled cleanly. You can basically flub the design side and pretend you aren't doing that job and only run modules and get a mediocre game out of it, sure, but the decisions you make as a GM when you actually are making decisions as a GM inextricably have design considerations mixed in.

Embracing that means taking 'issuing a ruling', 'writing a new rule', 'homebrewing something on the spot', 'designing an NPC', 'designing a location', 'deciding what large-scale forces in the world do', 'explaining something to a player', 'describing something' etc to all equally be atomic-level actions of the act of GM-ing, the way 'I move to this square' or 'I cast magic missile' or 'I say the following:' are atomic-level actions for players.

So given that, its natural to ask 'from the GM's point of view, why would I write a rule?'. What does the introduction of a rule for something do to the table dynamic, that might be different if instead you handled that with a spot ruling or just narrating outcomes?

The big difference, IMO, is that when you write a rule players can determine how that particular thing will work without needing to talk to the GM about it. That can serve multiple purposes: reducing cognitive load for the GM, parallelizing the game by letting players work on their own without going through the GM bottleneck (such as with character building or fixed prices in shopping), permitting long-range planning, changing the decision calculus of players by issuing a promise that they can rely on, and granting control over some elements or decisions to the players.

So why do I say fiction first? Because the fiction is one of the goals that the designer (and/or GM acting as designer) is using the act of 'writing a rule' to fulfill. The rules themselves have no intrinsic moral weight or value to them, they're purely instrumental in achieving particular table experiences, generating a coherent fiction, etc.

The problem with a GM throwing out a rule for sake of realism without considering what it does to the game (to the game's detriment) isn't that they should be respecting the rules first and foremost, its that they're being bad at design.

Hrugner
2023-02-25, 05:51 PM
I guess you'd want to make it easy to play, fun to talk about, exciting to make art for, and worth spending time thinking about.

For ease of play, you need to be able to boil the rules down to something fairly simple, but be based in something solid enough to make rulings over. So you'd have a class system that functions like a premade character and includes setting relevant lore and abilities, but the rules underneath that would be setting agnostic and modular or classless. You do as much of the combat math ahead of time and put in charts, but include the explanation for how the charts were derived in your DMG.

Fun to talk about requires that the players feel like they are important to the system, and that the DM can make the story interesting. For this, I think the randomness needs to be fairly low so that players feel like they are doing what they intend. You'd probably also want proper rules for scaling encounter complexity so that the DM can move through unimportant time consuming events while still letting the players interact with it. Pacing seems to be one of the harder bits to manage as a DM without making your players feel as if they've been pushed aside. Too many times you have complicated time consuming mass combat rules when what you really want is to hit the highlights and get the players back into it.

Exciting to make art for seems weirdly important to keeping a community going through slow news days or months. I'd say including art for everything, even just smaller illustrations for objects and abilities gives the artists something to get hooked into. You'd also want to make the setting distinct enough from modern culture so that illustrations and cosplay are identifiably from the game world, and also distinct from the millions of other universes out there while not being so bizarre that representing them isn't physically possible. Something like grayscale with a single color element per character, or a unique shading pattern would work. And of course you'd want to include the sort of things that really get the cosplay community going like sexy stuff and light up clothing.

To make it worth spending time thinking about, the rules need to be deep and complicated but produce something usable rather than a gear grinding mess. Making the game with the compression to a class/chart in mind should make this happen, we talk about "builds" quite a bit in certain games, but very rarely are games written with making builds as a goal. You also need to be able to extrapolate from your core rule concept to other types of encounters with a level of play scalability based on how important the actions are to the story being told.

So you launch with a narrow setting specific board or card game and an art book with rules for making your own character for the game. Make a few of those to gauge where fan appeal is. Feature the most liked characters in a larger campaign bundled with the deeper DMG style ruleset, making sure the characters are compatible with the boardgame.

Or not, who knows, predicting the next big thing isn't something you can do.

Quertus
2023-02-25, 06:42 PM
The problem with a GM throwing out a rule for sake of realism without considering what it does to the game (to the game's detriment) isn't that they should be respecting the rules first and foremost, its that they're being bad at design.

Sure. In those terms, the iconic flagship RPG should be well-designed (obviously). This means that morons trying to change the rules are going to make the game and the realism worse by doing so. The iconic flagship RPG should be such that rules-first and fiction-first, by competent GMs, are the same thing, so that rules-first is the attitude all the morons out there should approach the game with.

And, as you say, this comes with a lot of benefits, involving cognitive load and planning and intelligent decision-making and such.

NichG
2023-02-25, 07:23 PM
Sure. In those terms, the iconic flagship RPG should be well-designed (obviously). This means that morons trying to change the rules are going to make the game and the realism worse by doing so. The iconic flagship RPG should be such that rules-first and fiction-first, by competent GMs, are the same thing, so that rules-first is the attitude all the morons out there should approach the game with.

And, as you say, this comes with a lot of benefits, involving cognitive load and planning and intelligent decision-making and such.

The point is, design is a mandatory job at the table level too. Changing the rules is part of the job of actually running something. If you cut that out, you get something with a much lower ceiling of excellence no matter how well designed it is, because those designers have to design for all tables, all campaigns, all players, etc - and fit the result into a book that can be read in a reasonable time.

But a GM can do things for just their players, just the situation that is happening right now in their campaign, etc. So they can make rules that would be worse for some other table but better for theirs. They can also achieve much finer detail by only making rules about things that are in-context for their group at that time.

PhoenixPhyre
2023-02-25, 08:50 PM
The point is, design is a mandatory job at the table level too. Changing the rules is part of the job of actually running something. If you cut that out, you get something with a much lower ceiling of excellence no matter how well designed it is, because those designers have to design for all tables, all campaigns, all players, etc - and fit the result into a book that can be read in a reasonable time.

But a GM can do things for just their players, just the situation that is happening right now in their campaign, etc. So they can make rules that would be worse for some other table but better for theirs. They can also achieve much finer detail by only making rules about things that are in-context for their group at that time.

This. The designers aren't at my table. And I'm not designing for anyone else's table. The rules should give me a working framework that's easy to modify and robust under modification. As well as good enough for general use.

Pauly
2023-02-26, 02:58 AM
Re Art: The art should have a definite theme. People can look at VtM art or WH49K art and know what they’re looking at purely from the art style.

Re GM rulings/house rules.
I think it should be an opt in system. i.e. if the GM wants more they can add something. Not an opt out system like GURPS where the GM chooses which bits aren’t going to be used.
Also there should ge a guide for GMs about how to go about creating additional rules to the existing rules. Some points I would put in this section.
- the level of detail required is dependent on how important/how often this rule is to be used.
- Don’t let your expertise/enthusiasm for the subject take control. Look at it from the player’s/end user’s perspective and only do what is necessary.
- explain why simpler models are often better predictors than highly complex models. (ie you don’t need more complexity to get more realism)

ahyangyi
2023-02-26, 11:27 AM
For ease of play, you need to be able to boil the rules down to something fairly simple, but be based in something solid enough to make rulings over. So you'd have a class system that functions like a premade character and includes setting relevant lore and abilities, but the rules underneath that would be setting agnostic and modular or classless. You do as much of the combat math ahead of time and put in charts, but include the explanation for how the charts were derived in your DMG.

I find it a good idea to see all the design explanations.

However, why DMG? Why does the player get watered down stuff? How does that help?

Note that all games can include pregen characters, but the Player's handbook is usually expected to contain more freedom than pregens.

Quertus
2023-02-26, 11:56 AM
The point is, design is a mandatory job at the table level too. Changing the rules is part of the job of actually running something. If you cut that out, you get something with a much lower ceiling of excellence no matter how well designed it is, because those designers have to design for all tables, all campaigns, all players, etc - and fit the result into a book that can be read in a reasonable time.

But a GM can do things for just their players, just the situation that is happening right now in their campaign, etc. So they can make rules that would be worse for some other table but better for theirs. They can also achieve much finer detail by only making rules about things that are in-context for their group at that time.

Sure, but IME most GMs are terrible at design - the rules they produce will be much worse than what the flagship RPG ought to ship with. So creating a strong core framework of promises - a set strong and large enough to be sufficient play the game without resorting to any rulings - creates a higher quality experience for the players, which is good for the hobby. OTOH, if the players happen to be blessed with a GM who is good at design, the rules and even rule patterns can explicitly not cover everything, leaving the players free to use outside the box actions (yet be able to just fall back to less creative actions of the GM is exhausted / having a bad day / whatever). Wins all around.

As an added bonus, by making the flagship Complete - by providing adequate rules to cover the core gameplay loop of the intended play, you provide reinforcement of exactly what the game is supposed to look like, what the expected content looks like, what the core gameplay loop is supposed to entail. You need enough rules to write a sample run through that involves no rulings. So, for D&D combat, that probably involves, at a minimum, initiative, movement, attack, damage, and saving throws (and AC and HP and such), and probably changing/readying items, rules for mounts, and any specific rules for spells (including healing). Obviously, we’ll want more than the bare minimum, but what is encoded in the rules should be enough to play the game.


This. The designers aren't at my table. And I'm not designing for anyone else's table. The rules should give me a working framework that's easy to modify and robust under modification. As well as good enough for general use.

Huh. Ok, let’s set aside all the GMs too stupid to understand good design, and take this as the separate topic it is. Or two separate topics, actually. Let’s just take it for granted that the flagship RPG should be well-designed, and that it should be complete. The questions you’re bringing up are, should the rules be integrated, or modular? And should the flagship RPG have a single setting, or multiple?

Certainly, there’s plenty of people on the Playground who argue for integrated rules, who claim that you can’t just slap a new minigame or subsystem into a system that wasn’t designed with that in mind, and expect it to be any good. You can’t just bolt Magic onto CP2020, you can’t just bolt the multiverse onto D&D, whatever.

So what would you say to them, to those who claim that such modularity is bad, to try to convince them of the merits of a more modular design?

One setting vs many settings is kinda the opposite use of modularity. If the discussion were D&D vs a single Tolkien setting, D&D is Modular, in that you could run a Tolkien-like universe if you opted out of a lot of the content.

There’s some debate on whether a single strong setting or a more open design is better for the flagship (and I’m still reeling from the fact that I’d never considered running Urban Fantasy anywhere but Earth), but I’ll tentatively agree that IMO it’s probably best if the flagship weren’t inexorably tied to a single setting. But, that said, I do like the idea of one (or more!) of the settings having an official meta that is determined in official sanctioned events.


Re GM rulings/house rules.
I think it should be an opt in system. i.e. if the GM wants more they can add something. Not an opt out system like GURPS where the GM chooses which bits aren’t going to be used.
Also there should ge a guide for GMs about how to go about creating additional rules to the existing rules. Some points I would put in this section.

Generally agree. I think it’s a little odd to imagine “baby’s first RPG” having explicit design advice and this level of sophistication, but that doesn’t make it wrong. I believe in telling people things that they might not understand until later. That said, I’m terrified of the damage to the hobby that could be done by letting the wrong person write that advice.


- the level of detail required is dependent on how important/how often this rule is to be used.

Eh, that sounds good, but I think there are many superior heuristics, including “the level of detail should be dependent on what makes the game more fun”. I prefer to follow the advice of the man himself, that “everything should be as simple as it can be, and no simpler.”


- Don’t let your expertise/enthusiasm for the subject take control. Look at it from the player’s/end user’s perspective and only do what is necessary.

“Please be less enthusiastic” seems really odd advice, to the point I suspect it has been said by no successful RPG PR statement ever. So… what are you really trying to say here?


- explain why simpler models are often better predictors than highly complex models. (ie you don’t need more complexity to get more realism)

Which is why the mechanics of this game are, “everything is resolved by a coin flip”. Did you remember to wear pants? Coin flip. Did you spontaneously develop magic talent? Coin flip. Are you a god now? Coin flip. Nothing could be more realistic.

You may want to explain what you mean on this one, too.

NichG
2023-02-26, 02:52 PM
Sure, but IME most GMs are terrible at design - the rules they produce will be much worse than what the flagship RPG ought to ship with. So creating a strong core framework of promises - a set strong and large enough to be sufficient play the game without resorting to any rulings - creates a higher quality experience for the players, which is good for the hobby. OTOH, if the players happen to be blessed with a GM who is good at design, the rules and even rule patterns can explicitly not cover everything, leaving the players free to use outside the box actions (yet be able to just fall back to less creative actions of the GM is exhausted / having a bad day / whatever). Wins all around.

As an added bonus, by making the flagship Complete - by providing adequate rules to cover the core gameplay loop of the intended play, you provide reinforcement of exactly what the game is supposed to look like, what the expected content looks like, what the core gameplay loop is supposed to entail. You need enough rules to write a sample run through that involves no rulings. So, for D&D combat, that probably involves, at a minimum, initiative, movement, attack, damage, and saving throws (and AC and HP and such), and probably changing/readying items, rules for mounts, and any specific rules for spells (including healing). Obviously, we’ll want more than the bare minimum, but what is encoded in the rules should be enough to play the game.


Well if we take the philosophy of what rules are for first and foremost, rather than having that be a philosophy of 'the consequences of rules', then this is using rules wrong. Since rules are a promise, you want to use rules when promising is the correct action to take to establish the game, and not use rules for when it isn't. A set of rules being complete and covering at the get-go is incorrect, because not all things which can be resolved should have the method for their resolution be set out in promises in advance or handed to the players to resolve. So I'd argue this overreach is actually bad design, and actually doesn't help support the fiction when taken to that extreme.

We can see that in 3.5e, where the mechanics were comprehensive enough that it became a forum zeitgeist at least that if there weren't mechanics for it explicitly given then it didn't exist, and if one place gave mechanics for something it excluded the possibility of other ways of doing that thing. For the former, the example in memory for me is debates about things like D&D vampires - if you ignore the fluff, then strictly by the rules they do not need to drink blood nor do they suffer any kind of penalty for not doing it or any drive for doing it. Because people expect 'the things that matter have this specific format, and everything else you're free to ignore', the common thing to do was to behave as if fluff was not really to be taken seriously. For the other example, the treatment of feats as locking things that anyone could do behind needing to buy that specific thing is an outlook that became common (again, at least on these forums). But if you really take rules as promises and rather than as laws of physics, then of course its coherent that buying the feat buys you the certainty of how a given thing will work rather than being necessary in order to have the actual ability to do that thing.

As far as other things that can be done better without a complete cover, taking rules as promises should suggest that a rule is only appropriate for situations in which characters should actually have the correct knowledge of precisely how things will work. Meaning that if there's a power that isn't fully understood in that setting, you can emphasize that by making the rule coverage of that power spotty or by making 'soft' rules (i.e. things with weasel words like 'usually' or 'in most cases' in them). If there are things which are part of the true unknown, you shouldn't have rules for them at all until such a time as its appropriate to indicate that their behavior and function is now predictable. 'Obtaining a rule for something' can actually be a metagame intentional act by a player, that they work towards as a goal by having their character systematically study the thing until the point that it becomes appropriate for them to receive the ability to predict it.

So what I'd say is, write 'how the game is supposed to look like, what the expected content looks like, etc' in a 'fluff' stance, and don't provide specific mechanics for parts of that fluff, and make it clear that the fluff has teeth: the GM is supposed to prioritize what the fluff says is true about the setting and entities within it, even when the rules end up creating a conflict with that (but also try resolve that conflict both by trying to avoid creating rules in the core books that are likely to overreach because they don't generalize well, and also encouraging GMs to resolve those conflicts openly at the table in advance rather than making 'the rule doesn't work' a surprise event)

Any as far as quality, I have to say my experience is basically the total opposite of yours there. I basically won't play with any GM who tries to run things purely by the book in any published system out there. Maybe Nobilis or other games in that sphere, but calling what it has 'rules' would be very generous. Plus the overall direction of design evolution in commercial TTRPGs has, IMO, fallen way behind design in computer games. It used to be the opposite, with TTRPGs innovating and things like computer games cribbing the ideas, but now I see a lot of innovation in computer games (not all computer games obviously, but specific ones) that hasn't made its way back to commercial TTRPGs, but which the GMs I'm willing to play with (and myself as well) freely crib from and adapt.

Hrugner
2023-02-26, 06:29 PM
I find it a good idea to see all the design explanations.

However, why DMG? Why does the player get watered down stuff? How does that help?

Note that all games can include pregen characters, but the Player's handbook is usually expected to contain more freedom than pregens.

I'm talking about using classes in the way that pregen characters are typically used. The players guide would look similar to other players guides with a full suite of setting appropriate classes and customization options for those classes as well as pregen characters to use as examples, but the DMG would have the classless rules that could be used to create new classes as well as shorthand options for quickbuilding NPCs and such.

So you launch your game "Why is everything trying to eat me" with your 5 basic classes, doppelganger, mimic tamer, slime farmer, sleeper assassin, and fighter. Your mimic tamer can chose whether their mimic is a classic treasure chest, a freestanding wooden lawn structure, or a vehicle, and include access to mimic contacts within their chosen environment, and a choice between integrating mimics into their body or temporarily awakening inanimate objects as mimics. The DMG would be setting agonistic and classless but give you the tools used to rebuild WiETtEM classes as well as a cost value based on the available counters to class abilities. So when playing in setting you pick a class, but you could build something wildly different out of the DMG with substantial work, and you'd have cost variables for moving your class into a setting with better or worse counters to your abilities. So if you moved from the late 1800's WiETtEM game world to a far future cyberpunk setting where mimics are less surprising but everything is city so you always have access to your contacts, there would be rules showing how your scaling should be adjusted, and how to put those adjustments back into the simplified playable character chart.

So the focus is keeping the depth, but making sure it can be cleaned up and presenting the game in a way that reads easily.

Duff
2023-02-26, 07:47 PM
Quote Originally Posted by Duff View Post

I'm going to disagree here. Pure roleplaying has the disadvantage of decision paralysis. [...] Light crunch gives the player a small number of mechanical options.

Um... is this against the pure role-playing game or the rules-light, because those are different things.


Fair question and I was conflating them.

Definitely against rules light. Some players have not even done much in the way of choose your own adventure books or computer gaming.

Give them mechanical "buttons" so that those who need to learn how to decide actions can start with it as a multiple choice question
Probably also against pure roleplaying as well. A simple dungeon bash easily and obviously limits the number of decisions that have to be made.
"Do you go straight ahead toward the red glow, or do you head left, following the fresh air? Do you want to slow down to check for traps?"

Rules light and RP heavy can do that, but they're more intended to be "This is the situation, what do you do?" or even "What situation would you like to be in" which is a great starting point for players who have some improv skills.

Cluedrew
2023-02-26, 09:00 PM
Blades in the Dark, has a book that is too long. 318 pages, though that does include a few maps and illustrations, and some setting info.Is it that long? Wow, I remember that book going down pretty easily. I was using the Lancer book (free version) as a point of comparison. Similar length and so much harder to get through for me.

But yeah, if it is 200 pages than I think it should probably 4/5 sections, with only one section (the core rules) being recommend reading for all players. The section of player options they can just skim, should read over the one they actually choose. That leaves quite a bit of pages for things that is recommended for the GM. Plus soft recommends on the extra setting material and so on.


Definitely against rules light. [...] Give [players] mechanical "buttons" so that those who need to learn how to decide actions can start with it as a multiple choice question
Probably also against pure roleplaying as well. A simple dungeon bash easily and obviously limits the number of decisions that have to be made.
"Do you go straight ahead toward the red glow, or do you head left, following the fresh air? Do you want to slow down to check for traps?"So first, if I could quantify the rules weight I think the systems should have I think it would be something like "just a bit too heavy to be called rules light." So in broad strokes I think we are in agreement.

I don't think I mean what you think I mean by "primarily a role-playing game". I don't mean bringing this closer to free-form role-playing (which is actually how I got my start, I quite enjoyed it but I would never call that a role-playing game) but avoiding different types of rules in. The best way I can describe that right now is with the stance system.

Do you know that system? I think I do. It describes the relationship between the player and their avatar in the world. In war games, the player's avatar is a pawn with abilities for the player to use. In story-telling games, the player is the author that writes the avatar's story which overlaps with the broader story around them. In role-playing games, the player "is" the character (not quite the same "is" as with a self-insert, when the character is the player). The player is concerned with the story in the same way, but generally is limited to the character's abilities to try and shape it; generally with the notable exception of character creation. I think the game should be spent almost entirely in that middle space.

Pauly
2023-02-26, 09:00 PM
Generally agree. I think it’s a little odd to imagine “baby’s first RPG” having explicit design advice and this level of sophistication, but that doesn’t make it wrong. I believe in telling people things that they might not understand until later. That said, I’m terrified of the damage to the hobby that could be done by letting the wrong person write that advice.



Eh, that sounds good, but I think there are many superior heuristics, including “the level of detail should be dependent on what makes the game more fun”. I prefer to follow the advice of the man himself, that “everything should be as simple as it can be, and no simpler.”



“Please be less enthusiastic” seems really odd advice, to the point I suspect it has been said by no successful RPG PR statement ever. So… what are you really trying to say here?



Which is why the mechanics of this game are, “everything is resolved by a coin flip”. Did you remember to wear pants? Coin flip. Did you spontaneously develop magic talent? Coin flip. Are you a god now? Coin flip. Nothing could be more realistic.

You may want to explain what you mean on this one, too.

It kind of rolls up together.

I have had experience of GMs coming up with their own sub-systems that were detrimental to the game experience.

Example 1.
I played a Golden Age of Piracy campaign, iirc using Flashing Blades. The GM was both an enthusiastic sailor and very well versed in the ships and naval history of the relevant era. He came up with a homebrew sailing system that included
A 16 point compass rose.
Winds of variable strength and direction.
The sea state (size of waves) affecting navigation.
Ship performance being affected by the quality of the sails, condition of the hull, fouling on the hull, and how heavily laden the ship was.
Crew performance being affected by numbers, experience, morale, and health.
It was a highly crafted mini-game, but it took a whole session just to get through one naval encounter. No one else at the table was that interested in the fine points that he was. Navigation was a similar mess of finely tuned period details that made doing it a miserable chore for the players.

After a while we took an axe to the GM’s system and cut it down to a much more manageable size. And the encounters turned out the same as they would have in the highly detailed simulationist original model, but could be resolved in a quarter of the time.

Example 2.
I played a campaign 5 or 6 years ago where the GM was an enthusiastic amateur cook and made cooking a big theme of certain encounters. Trouble is I’m a professional chef.
At one point we were tasked with making a souffle in a medieval fantasy kitchen. At which point I explain to the GM that it is impossible with the available technology.

Getting into the weeds in the details risks slowing the game down, for no real benefit and the GM may not be quite as expert in their area of enthusiasm as they think they are.

It comes back around to keep things as simple as they need to be and no simpler.

NichG
2023-02-26, 09:04 PM
Example 2.
I played a campaign 5 or 6 years ago where the GM was an enthusiastic amateur cook and made cooking a big theme of certain encounters. Trouble is I’m a professional chef.
At one point we were tasked with making a souffle in a medieval fantasy kitchen. At which point I explain to the GM that it is impossible with the available technology.


I am oddly curious about this. Is the issue temperature control, the presence of drafts, contaminants in cooking vessels, or something else?

Pauly
2023-02-26, 09:14 PM
I am oddly curious about this. Is the issue temperature control, the presence of drafts, contaminants in cooking vessels, or something else?

It’s three main issues.
1) Temperature control. Woodfired ovens can’t maintain the consistent heat at a set temperature.
2) development of cast iron ovens, which stop the air currents.
3) clocks. Souffles require precise timing in the absence of tempered glass windows the only way to know when you’re souffle is done is by the clock. I know clocks existed, but I’m talking about a clock affordable enough to be put into the kitchen.

Side issues include the availability of sugar, degree of standardized milling of flour and refining for flour sugar required for consistent results, and parchment paper for collars, but these are things that can be overcome or handwaved.

KorvinStarmast
2023-02-26, 09:51 PM
Is it that long?
Yes. My pivot point here is "Barriers to Entry"

Wow, I remember that book going down pretty easily.
You are not a new player. Nor am I.

So in broad strokes I think we are in agreement. We have an accord. :smallsmile:

FuriousTheCat
2023-02-27, 02:45 AM
I've been a long time reader, but just made an account to throw by 2 cents in.

I've been tinkering making RPGs for the past decade & even got a few chances to playtest my creations at conventions with good consistent fanfare, after a few bumpy starts.
I would be able to run games in under an hour, which included running everyone through the rules & pre-gen characters, scene & narrative, 1 exploration challenge, 1 social challenge, and 3 combat challenges at a table with 5 to 6 people, but the system could run many more people once they were familiar with the system.

The goal was try to create what I thought would be my ideal/iconic RPG:
*Fast combat.
*Greater depth of combat than DND.
*Allow large player counts.
*Easy to Play/DM for.
*Degrees of success for social & exploration challenges.
*Easy to create characters, but every "level" consisting of interesting balanced choices to make your character unique.

Some of the design choices I made included:
*Die Pool made of 6 different types of results.
*Simultaneous turns.
*Automated enemies.
*Movement being theatre of the mind.
*Abilities activated by getting one or more results of a certain combination.
*Items "activated" by discarding a die.
*Players having resources & tools to work together to manipulate results of die.
*Talent "Trees" to limit choice overload.

As you could probable tell by the list of design decisions it made the game feel a bit board-gamey. Although I enjoyed running the system it made people engage with the game more like a board game then an RPG once we started resolving solving a scene with dice instead of narrative.

Pauly
2023-02-27, 06:47 AM
I've been a long time reader, but just made an account to throw by 2 cents in.

I've been tinkering making RPGs for the past decade & even got a few chances to playtest my creations at conventions with good consistent fanfare, after a few bumpy starts.
I would be able to run games in under an hour, which included running everyone through the rules & pre-gen characters, scene & narrative, 1 exploration challenge, 1 social challenge, and 3 combat challenges at a table with 5 to 6 people, but the system could run many more people once they were familiar with the system.

The goal was try to create what I thought would be my ideal/iconic RPG:
*Fast combat.
*Greater depth of combat than DND.
*Allow large player counts.
*Easy to Play/DM for.
*Degrees of success for social & exploration challenges.
*Easy to create characters, but every "level" consisting of interesting balanced choices to make your character unique.

Some of the design choices I made included:
*Die Pool made of 6 different types of results.
*Simultaneous turns.
*Automated enemies.
*Movement being theatre of the mind.
*Abilities activated by getting one or more results of a certain combination.
*Items "activated" by discarding a die.
*Players having resources & tools to work together to manipulate results of die.
*Talent "Trees" to limit choice overload.

As you could probable tell by the list of design decisions it made the game feel a bit board-gamey. Although I enjoyed running the system it made people engage with the game more like a board game then an RPG once we started resolving solving a scene with dice instead of narrative.

Thank you very much for sharing your experience. Your system sounds very intriguing.

Just to comment on the ‘greater depth of combat than DnD’. Speaking as a person who has wargamed more than RPGed and someone who has run participation wargames at conventions.
Caveat: I haven’t played your system so my comments are generalized not directed at you specifically.
Lots of RPGers want a game with more depth of combat than DnD offers. The usual path they go down is increasing complexity and increasing the number of choices available to players. DnD is actually loaded with depth of choice, it’s just that the choice is mostly cosmetic and meaningless. You do the more or less the same thing but with a different flavor. The path I’d go down is to reduce the number of choices but to have the choices be far more meaningful.
One of the best examples in RPGs is combat in Cyberpunk 2020. Combat is stupidly dangerous. i.e. if you do something stupid you will die. However once players get the hang of movement, cover and different firing techniques combat becomes much more like shadow boxing with feints and bluffs to draw the enemy into unfavorable positions. Once you’re in an unfavorable position the wise thing to do is to cut your losses and bug out, not fight it out to the last.

gbaji
2023-02-27, 09:20 PM
Huh. I wasn't aware any civ games actually offered a real set of choices for spending unit XP - I only remembered automatic leveling. Of course, I mostly played the early games.

I don't think they do, in any version I recall playing. While the game engine does track unit advancement, the person playing the game does not actually make any choices. Unless I'm just forgetting some version of the game? I don't recall ever having a screen pop up saying that "spearman unit 5 gained a level! Would you like to advance in a) movement, b) damage, or c) hps?". It just advanced on its own, and had pretty much generic levels (1-5, green units started at 2, units built with a barracks started at 3, and gained exp up to 5). I think civ3 had armies that you could assemble and make choices with, but that's about the closest you ever came to actually making advancement decisions for units.


Now, sure, depending on the system, maybe 2 level 4 guys get crushed by a single level 12, or maybe it's a fair fight, or maybe they have the advantage. So there's a little information that you need to draw from the system itself. But, heck, I honestly wouldn't know where to place my bet on a fight between two 4th degree black belts and one 12th degree black belt IRL.

Sure. Matching up multiple character comparisons is always a math puzzle, but one that is even less "clear" if you don't have numbers to compare in the first place. And it's a reasonable bet, even if you know nothing about a game system, that a "level <X> <a class>" will always be more or less powerful than a "level <Y> <same class>", based on the numerical ranking of X and Y.


gonna put your question and the response together here:


You've lost me. Here's where I am: In D&D, my Conehead Venerable Grey Elf Wizard 20 is looking at around a 42 Int, which means 18 skill points that level. If I really want them to learn pottery, they can be bloody great at pottery.

So, D&D characters can advance from "Zero to Demigod" of a skill in a single level, particularly at high level.



However, your Lv20 elf can never learn another skill without losing one they had previously learned if they're in a campaign that doesn't permit advancement to epic level. And even if they are in such a campaign, in order to improve by even 1 point in any of those skills, they have to deal with world-ending scale threats (e.g. things within a few CR of 20). Rather than just going to the local community college and taking pottery classes for a few weeks.

And if we're talking about the Lv20 Strength Fighter... well.

I'd put it even more directly:

Assuming that characters are competing against other characters (and NPCs) at the same (or near the same) level as themselves, then yes, the higher level you are, the less capable you are of learning something and being good enough at it relative to your level. It is an inherent problem with level based game systems. Let's ignore Quertus' INT stat bonus, and just assume that someone who focused on baking their entire career (and is now say a level 19 baker), will have the same potential to have a high INT, and thus the same INT bonus as Quertus' mage. Let's assume that both characters have the same total number of skill points to gain at each level (let's just arbitrarily say 5 for this example). If we assume that a level 19 baker character just leveled up to 20, and has spent say just two of his 5 skill points each level becoming better at baking, that means he's going up from 38 to 40 skill points in "baking" (he could be even better, but lets assume he's been putting other skill points into other things along the way as well, but has otherwise really focused on baking).

Quertus' character also dings to level 20. He's never put any points in baking (cause he's a wizard, right?). He decides to try his hand at baking. But the best he can possibly do is put all 5 of his skill points into the skill. Which makes him 35 skill points lower than the professional. There's no way for Quertus to *ever* be even in the same ballpark as that guy. Theres just such a huge skill difference that the pro-baker can consistently succeed at things that Quertus effectively has zero chance of making.

But, let's say that the same two characters were each level 1, and dinged to level 2. The baker has put 2 of his skill points into baking each level, so he just increased his skill to 4 (plus his INT bonus of course). Quertus has never put points in baking, but also puts 2 points at level 2 into it, bringing him up to 2 (also plus his INT bonus, which we'll assume is the same as the bakers). So he's only 10% lower at baking against his "peer" (someone the same level as him), despite having spent half as much "time" into learning how to bake. Both could attempt similarly difficult baking tasks and be pretty close in terms of success (random die roll matters more than their relative difference in skill).

But wait you say! That's not fair, because in example 2, Quertus had half as much baking experience, versus only 5% as much in the first example. Um... Ok. Let's be fair and assume each is only wiling to put 2 skill points per level in it, and lets say that the professional has put 2 points in every single level, and Quertus started at level 11. Both ding 20, and the professional has a 40 skill (plus INT), and Quertus has a 20 skill (plus INT). Same basic problem, just slightly different numbers. Quertus is still in the "I will struggle to make stuff the other guy has a high chance of succeeding at" situation.

Given the way D20 systems work, and how levels work, all skill differences are in a range of 20 points. Anything outside of that is "you have no chance at all". The assumption of the game system is that
folks at the same/similar levels should be within a given "range" of relative skills at the "things they are good at", which should keep them within that 20 point range (plus or minus 10 to be in a realistic ball park). At low levels, it's very easy to stay within that 20 point range and just have slight variations of "how good am I relative to someone else" bit. But the more you level, the more extreme the differences between someone who "focused on this skill" versus someone who didn't. And it reaches a point (only about mid level really) where, if you haven't been putting points in a given skill all along, there is a rapidly dimishing value in doing so. To a point where there is mathmatically zero value in doing so.

This is most prevalent in skills that are relative to some opposing skilled opponent. Skills that are "PC vs game environment" are worth putting points into. So riding, survival, swimming, etc. "Nature" doesn't become more difficult/dangerous as you level up (well, usually). But anything that is an "opposed skill"? You are going to be comparing your skill against some opposing skill, and that opposing skill will increase with level. So a high level rogue will be expected to be able to pick extremely difficult locks (the skill of the person making the lock). Same deal with disarming traps, with spotting people trying to sneak up on you, and yeah... trying to win a baking competition. The fact that you are higher level, means you are expected to face opponents of the same/similar level (and guess what? The exp system also tends to enforce this as well). So sure, your level 20 guy taking baking as a skill for the very first time, will be able to compete well against a level 1 baker. Heck. With an assumed higher stat for bonus, maybe even against someone in the level 3 to 5 range. Um... Grats? You "defeated" someone 15+ levels lower than you? We'll be alerting all the bards in the kingdom to your amazing feat!

That's how level, especially in a system like D&D, creates a problem with trying to learn new things. The very nature of the game system requires a scale to level calculation that precludes trying to learn many things later on.

Um... To be fair though, skill based systems can suffer from this as well though. Especially "point buy" systems. Basically, any game that has any sort of power progression system will tend to assume that to challenge the PCs, they have to face NPCs that are of a similar "power level" (whatever that means). So you're going to tend to face opponents with similar skill points spent in various things the game system provides us with. And yeah, if I've got 20 skill points in <insert ability here> and I'm facing opponents for whom 20 skill points is "good", I'm going to question whether I should put points I gained into something new that maybe starts at zero. By not putting those points into my best skill I may find myself falling behind against opponents. Skill buy systems have to have some sort of either limit per buy, or more often increased points per skill rank to offset this (and most do).

Systems that have "learn by doing" instead of skill buy from granted experience points, tend to work even better IMO. Doubly so if there's some sort of "skill gain cap by relative difficulty" instead of "exp gain cap by relative level". The former system can actually encourage highly skilled characters to branch out into "new things" they aren't as good at. You actually learn "new things" faster than "things you're already really good at" too. As with all things, there's a lot of different ways to handle this. Again though, a lot of those methods are *not* what I would consider great ideas for an "iconic replacement for D&D".



In hindsight I did a terrible job with the example. So I'm going to try to reverse it, instead of trying to explain how fey-sworn agent could be descriptive I'm going to unpack the assumptions in the fighter example, what if I knew as much about D&D as you knew about Don't know if this will work but here we go.
Fighters fight; that follows.
Physical fights is technically a jump*, but not a big one. Especially with the rogue (solves stealth challenges), cleric (social and mystic) and magic user (mystic challenges focus) in the mix. So the fighter handles physical combats; got it.
Melee combat? Why not ranged combat as well, its not like there is an archer class to compete with. (Ranger? Isn't that an explorer for wilderness adventures?)
What if I want to focus on my offensive abilities when I level up and don't take and damage reduction skills when I level up?
I considered throwing out some things to point out that there is also nothing about using weapons in there either, so monk could be folded into that as well.

I think a couple other people commented on this though. The very word "fighter" gives us information. When we hear that word, we think "boxer" or maybe "wrestler", or "MMA", right (or "gladiator" if we're in a more historical mood)? A fighter is "someone who fights". The very class name is quite descriptive. Even if we know nothing else about the game system, we can get a pretty good image in our minds of what that means. Same deal with "magic user/wizard", or "thief/rogue", or "cleric". Those are common terms. We knew what they meant (in a broad sense at least) before D&D ever came out. They're part of our standard lexicon. We immediate imagine someone who is strong, tough, can take a hit and dish it out, etc. This is someone we would not want to face in a ring, in the same way that a thief/rogue is someone we might not want to run into in a dark alley. A cleric is someone we might seek out for spiritual guidance or maybe healing or something. A magic-user/wizard is someone we might expect to be casting spells on people (although pre-LotRs, most "wizards" seemed suspiciously to use shapechanging as their primary magic, and not so much tossing fireballs and lightning bolts around, so that one might require some additional info).

So yeah. I'm suggesting that any "iconic" replacement for D&D would have needed to have similarly well understood descriptions of different character types. And, while I will restate my lack of preference for class and level based games, if the objective is to introduce people into the very concept of "roleplaying", then starting with well understood "roles" within a broadly understood genre/setting, will tend to work best. If I'm already trying to make the leap to "playing a role in a game", giving me easy to follow guidelines like having classes with 80% of the "role" already filled in, kinda helps people along. You just fill in the personality bits now, and that's something you can learn as you go along. You can just be "generic fighter" or "generic thief" when first starting, and still manage to play the game and have fun doing so. Absence of such well defined roles for characters starting out on day one, will likely result in players sitting at a table, staring at a character sheet asking "Um... what am I supposed to do again?".

It's really easy for new players to understand "Hey. I'm a fighter, so when a fight starts, I run towards the enemy and engage them". Not so much if they have to look at a combination of skills and abilities on a character sheet and figure out what they should be doing in any given situation. The latter is what experienced RPG players tend to prefer, since it gives us far greater variation in the characters we can define and play, but that's absolutely *not* what you want for new players, doubly so if there are no actual players at all who know how to play RPGs (ie: we're actually trying to use this game system to introduce the concept of TTRPG to the world for the first time ever).

FuriousTheCat
2023-02-27, 09:22 PM
The usual path they go down is increasing complexity and increasing the number of choices available to players. DnD is actually loaded with depth of choice, itÂ’s just that the choice is mostly cosmetic and meaningless. You do the more or less the same thing but with a different flavor. The path IÂ’d go down is to reduce the number of choices but to have the choices be far more meaningful.

I agree with this sentiment, and its tangential to one of the issues I had with my system.

My die came in three types: Physical [P], Spiritual[S], Mental[M]. Each had Successes (S) on the opposite side of Resistances (R) with a d6 typically looking like this [2S,S,S,R,R2R]. For combat you would deal damage with your Successes, and that damage would be reduced by Resistances that matched that type of damage. For example 2 Physical Success against 1 Physical Resistance would culminate in 1 damage.

Thus base flavor thus was cosmetic with [P](S) = Hit Hard / [S](S) = Hit Fast / [M](S) = Hit the Right Spot / [P](R) = Shrug Off / [S](R) = Dodge / [M](R) = Avoid

This flavor also suffered from the fact it didn't make much sense. (I.E. you can't "Dodge" being "Hit Hard".)

The only thing differentiating the types is the associated abilities & resources.


One of the best examples in RPGs is combat in Cyberpunk 2020. Combat is stupidly dangerous. i.e. if you do something stupid you will die. However once players get the hang of movement, cover and different firing techniques combat becomes much more like shadow boxing with feints and bluffs to draw the enemy into unfavorable positions. Once youÂ’re in an unfavorable position the wise thing to do is to cut your losses and bug out, not fight it out to the last.

Yeah I'll have to give Cyberpunk 2020 a try some time, that does sound like good fun. A good RPG should push players to regularly shake up the Player's optimal play pattern.

A thing I was happy with my game "Grim Gears" was the combat consistently felt really intense. Players had a lot of simple impactful decisions every round.

FuriousTheCat
2023-02-28, 01:40 AM
Given the way D20 systems work, and how levels work, all skill differences are in a range of 20 points. Anything outside of that is "you have no chance at all". The assumption of the game system is that
folks at the same/similar levels should be within a given "range" of relative skills at the "things they are good at", which should keep them within that 20 point range (plus or minus 10 to be in a realistic ball park). At low levels, it's very easy to stay within that 20 point range and just have slight variations of "how good am I relative to someone else" bit. But the more you level, the more extreme the differences between someone who "focused on this skill" versus someone who didn't. And it reaches a point (only about mid level really) where, if you haven't been putting points in a given skill all along, there is a rapidly dimishing value in doing so. To a point where there is mathmatically zero value in doing so.

This is most prevalent in skills that are relative to some opposing skilled opponent. Skills that are "PC vs game environment" are worth putting points into. So riding, survival, swimming, etc. "Nature" doesn't become more difficult/dangerous as you level up (well, usually). But anything that is an "opposed skill"? You are going to be comparing your skill against some opposing skill, and that opposing skill will increase with level. So a high level rogue will be expected to be able to pick extremely difficult locks (the skill of the person making the lock). Same deal with disarming traps, with spotting people trying to sneak up on you, and yeah... trying to win a baking competition. The fact that you are higher level, means you are expected to face opponents of the same/similar level (and guess what? The exp system also tends to enforce this as well). So sure, your level 20 guy taking baking as a skill for the very first time, will be able to compete well against a level 1 baker. Heck. With an assumed higher stat for bonus, maybe even against someone in the level 3 to 5 range. Um... Grats? You "defeated" someone 15+ levels lower than you? We'll be alerting all the bards in the kingdom to your amazing feat!

That's how level, especially in a system like D&D, creates a problem with trying to learn new things. The very nature of the game system requires a scale to level calculation that precludes trying to learn many things later on.

Um... To be fair though, skill based systems can suffer from this as well though. Especially "point buy" systems. Basically, any game that has any sort of power progression system will tend to assume that to challenge the PCs, they have to face NPCs that are of a similar "power level" (whatever that means). So you're going to tend to face opponents with similar skill points spent in various things the game system provides us with. And yeah, if I've got 20 skill points in <insert ability here> and I'm facing opponents for whom 20 skill points is "good", I'm going to question whether I should put points I gained into something new that maybe starts at zero. By not putting those points into my best skill I may find myself falling behind against opponents. Skill buy systems have to have some sort of either limit per buy, or more often increased points per skill rank to offset this (and most do).

Systems that have "learn by doing" instead of skill buy from granted experience points, tend to work even better IMO. Doubly so if there's some sort of "skill gain cap by relative difficulty" instead of "exp gain cap by relative level". The former system can actually encourage highly skilled characters to branch out into "new things" they aren't as good at. You actually learn "new things" faster than "things you're already really good at" too. As with all things, there's a lot of different ways to handle this. Again though, a lot of those methods are *not* what I would consider great ideas for an "iconic replacement for D&D".

To clarify by skill systems you mean systems like DND 3.5 / Shadow Run/ etc. correct?

In DND 5e couldn't you just get the "Skilled" / "Skill Expert" to learn X new skill?

What is your opinion on how DND 5e handles things?

Also as a follow up what do you think of bounded accuracy?

My opinion on the matter is that for combat, but for skills it feels weird, and think the whole skill system needs a serious overhaul.



I think a couple other people commented on this though. The very word "fighter" gives us information. When we hear that word, we think "boxer" or maybe "wrestler", or "MMA", right (or "gladiator" if we're in a more historical mood)? A fighter is "someone who fights". The very class name is quite descriptive. Even if we know nothing else about the game system, we can get a pretty good image in our minds of what that means. Same deal with "magic user/wizard", or "thief/rogue", or "cleric". Those are common terms. We knew what they meant (in a broad sense at least) before D&D ever came out. They're part of our standard lexicon. We immediate imagine someone who is strong, tough, can take a hit and dish it out, etc. This is someone we would not want to face in a ring, in the same way that a thief/rogue is someone we might not want to run into in a dark alley. A cleric is someone we might seek out for spiritual guidance or maybe healing or something. A magic-user/wizard is someone we might expect to be casting spells on people (although pre-LotRs, most "wizards" seemed suspiciously to use shapechanging as their primary magic, and not so much tossing fireballs and lightning bolts around, so that one might require some additional info).

So yeah. I'm suggesting that any "iconic" replacement for D&D would have needed to have similarly well understood descriptions of different character types. And, while I will restate my lack of preference for class and level based games, if the objective is to introduce people into the very concept of "roleplaying", then starting with well understood "roles" within a broadly understood genre/setting, will tend to work best. If I'm already trying to make the leap to "playing a role in a game", giving me easy to follow guidelines like having classes with 80% of the "role" already filled in, kinda helps people along. You just fill in the personality bits now, and that's something you can learn as you go along. You can just be "generic fighter" or "generic thief" when first starting, and still manage to play the game and have fun doing so. Absence of such well defined roles for characters starting out on day one, will likely result in players sitting at a table, staring at a character sheet asking "Um... what am I supposed to do again?".

It's really easy for new players to understand "Hey. I'm a fighter, so when a fight starts, I run towards the enemy and engage them". Not so much if they have to look at a combination of skills and abilities on a character sheet and figure out what they should be doing in any given situation. The latter is what experienced RPG players tend to prefer, since it gives us far greater variation in the characters we can define and play, but that's absolutely *not* what you want for new players, doubly so if there are no actual players at all who know how to play RPGs (ie: we're actually trying to use this game system to introduce the concept of TTRPG to the world for the first time ever).

Yeah its quite the conundrum of how to get player's the wide range of options to make what they want, while giving new players a nice theme and simple mechanics to get the basics.

Classes in DND do the complexity ramp pretty well with for example the paladin starts basic with two abilities typically used outside of combat, 2nd level they get their fighting style & 1st LVL spells, third level they get their oath, 4th Feat /ASI, 5th Extra Attack + 2nd Level spells.

An ideal RPG should likewise have a good progression of ability choices & options as someone level, but start from some well defined points.

I don't particularly like how classes can lock interesting abilities behind a class progression. That being said DND 5e did do a good job mitigating issues with their class system with front loading & the subclasses that grab spells out of another class.

Pauly
2023-02-28, 03:39 AM
To clarify by skill systems you mean systems like DND 3.5 / Shadow Run/ etc. correct?

In DND 5e couldn't you just get the "Skilled" / "Skill Expert" to learn X new skill?

What is your opinion on how DND 5e handles things?

Also as a follow up what do you think of bounded accuracy?

My opinion on the matter is that for combat, but for skills it feels weird, and think the whole skill system needs a serious overhaul.



For skill systems, especially referring to non-combat skills, I think the choice boils down to bell curve + small modifiers or flat roll + big modifiers.

Put me down for bell curve + small modifiers.

I think part of the issue with D&D is that characters originally weren’t intended to progress beyond level 7 or 10 depending on how far back you go. And for non-combat skills it more or less works OK at those character levels. At higher levels is when you start running into the really absurd contortions.

Cluedrew
2023-02-28, 08:38 AM
I've been a long time reader, but just made an account to throw by 2 cents in.I am honoured that this is the thread that got you to take that step.


The goal was try to create what I thought would be my ideal/iconic RPG: [Removed from quote for length.]

As you could probable tell by the list of design decisions it made the game feel a bit board-gamey. Although I enjoyed running the system it made people engage with the game more like a board game then an RPG once we started resolving solving a scene with dice instead of narrative.Yeah, I am trying to separate "the ideal iconic" vs. the one I personally would like best. There is some overlap but there are also some significant differences. Part of the reason everyone can look at this so we can try to account for individual quirks. This actually has very little to do with what you actually said, it just got me thinking. Moving on.

I'm actually fine with combat not being deep because it is just another scene in the story that we can use to shape the story and express characters. That being said, if it is deep, keeping it fast to resolve and not complex in terms of total rules would definitely be good. I also think that there being one unit of character advancement is good too, and somehow we hadn't talked about that yet.


The very word "fighter" gives us information. When we hear that word, we think "boxer" or maybe "wrestler", or "MMA", right (or "gladiator" if we're in a more historical mood)? A fighter is "someone who fights". The very class name is quite descriptive.Considering that of the four examples you listed, only the last is really a fighter in a D&D sense (the other three would be monks) I am still going to disagree. In fact I think every D&D class could accurately be described as a fighter, just swap out the method of fighting. "Weapons Master" might be a better name for the the D&D fighter class. But at this point it is self referential enough that it doesn't matter.

On a positive note, I think your stuff on the problems with level systems is very good.

gbaji
2023-02-28, 03:13 PM
To clarify by skill systems you mean systems like DND 3.5 / Shadow Run/ etc. correct?

I mean "systems in which advancement is purely in terms of skill/skill-points gained and *not* level based. So, Shadowrun: yes. 3.5 D&D: No.

The problem with level based progression is that skill points gained is tied to level. And level is itself tied to a host of other things as well. Skills are tacked on to a game like D&D, and not really an intergral component of it.


What is your opinion on how DND 5e handles things?

Couldn't say. My experience with 5e is extremely limited. I've literally played it a couple of times, at a "game day" hosted by a friend and/or family member, where I just showed up, was handed a character sheet to play, and then played. So I can't speak intelligently to the anything about progression in the game itself.

It played well as a single shot game though, so there is that. Felt very much like "do X abilities every encounter you want, do Y X number of times" kind of management. Worked well enough, and had a fun enough variation of different character types and powers and whatnot. Not at all very much like old school D&D though. I've heard many people say it's very video game influenced, and I would have to agree. But not necessarily a bad thing though.


Also as a follow up what do you think of bounded accuracy?

My opinion on the matter is that for combat, but for skills it feels weird, and think the whole skill system needs a serious overhaul.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean. I mean "bounded accuracy" in a broad sense means that how well you do something tapers off or stops at some level (which could be above, below, or both of some relative threshold).

I tend to be a fan of "scaling opposed values" in game systems. Which, ironically, is very similar to how D&D handles things. You can think of it as a range of "ability" at something, with an opposed range of "ability" opposing that. The result creates a "window of efffect" which determines outcomes. As long as the two opposed values are within the "window" of eachother, we see a range of effects (which could be linear or curved). Outside that range, we should see either near automatic success or failure.

The problem D&D has is that the range can be extremely large relative to the size of the window. And the higher level you get, the bigger that relative difference is. The window is basically a D20 sized window. That's what you are rolling and then adding to your skill+bonus, and then comparing against the opposing skill/resistance/difficulty+bonus. But since all of those values are level granted, as levels increase, the size of that range keeps increasing, but the size of the window does not. That's the point I was making earlier where you could literally have 30-50 points of skill, and another dozen or so bonus points from stats and other things, but the window is still only a D20 worth (20 points).

Other games have much narrower ranges of skills. Or they use different dice mechanics (like Shadowrun for example) to manage things.



I don't particularly like how classes can lock interesting abilities behind a class progression. That being said DND 5e did do a good job mitigating issues with their class system with front loading & the subclasses that grab spells out of another class.

Yet another issue with class/level progression systems. There are benefits, but you take the negatives with them.




I think part of the issue with D&D is that characters originally weren’t intended to progress beyond level 7 or 10 depending on how far back you go. And for non-combat skills it more or less works OK at those character levels. At higher levels is when you start running into the really absurd contortions.

It was "odd", in that it was clear that they originally intended to only have folks reach about "mid level range", and fighters (and sub classes) gained very little past that point. Other classes were extremely limited in advancement as well (monks and druids specifically). Also, only humans did not have level caps. Other races could only reach certain levels in specific classes (like 7 or 9 most of the time). I suspect that was designed for multiclassing elements though (which itself was a "weird" system).

Ironically, the spell progressions suggested that they intended for folks to level up to mid to late teens though. So go figure!


Considering that of the four examples you listed, only the last is really a fighter in a D&D sense (the other three would be monks) I am still going to disagree. In fact I think every D&D class could accurately be described as a fighter, just swap out the method of fighting. "Weapons Master" might be a better name for the the D&D fighter class. But at this point it is self referential enough that it doesn't matter.

Only if you start out knowing there's a "monk" class in the first place (and have a preconcieved notion of what that means). The idea that any "fighter" who fights bare handed is really a "monk" is only a thing you think of because you learned it from D&D. If there was no monk class, but just a "fighter" class, and that class could use any weapons (including bare knuckle fighthing), would you even think "this should really be called a monk?".

I had a DM who actually made an adventure based on the absurdity of D&D players assumptions about monks. He had a group of evil Hecate worshipers (clerics) living where clerics live: In a monestary. They were "monks" in the actual traditional sense (literally no one thinks of a monk being anything other than a holy man if they weren't exposed to D&D). Let's just say that much hilarity ensued when the players confronted these "monks" and couldn't figure out where all the spells were coming from...

Pauly
2023-02-28, 03:51 PM
I
It was "odd", in that it was clear that they originally intended to only have folks reach about "mid level range", and fighters (and sub classes) gained very little past that point. Other classes were extremely limited in advancement as well (monks and druids specifically). Also, only humans did not have level caps. Other races could only reach certain levels in specific classes (like 7 or 9 most of the time). I suspect that was designed for multiclassing elements though (which itself was a "weird" system).

Ironically, the spell progressions suggested that they intended for folks to level up to mid to late teens though. So go figure!
.

My reading at the time was that the higher level spells were intended to be for NPCs, the classic Conan opponents or allies giving scrolls to Conan.

Which brings me to a design point.
If something exists in the world the PCs will want to have it for themselves. As soon as dragons exist PCs will want a pet dragon or a dragon mount. It doesn’t matter what your world building fiction is, players are like toddlers with poor impulse control whenever they see something shiny.

Creating content that is supposed to be locked away from PCs is a bad idea. For a more advanced games if it has to be done you can keep it vague and leave it up the the GM to flesh it out. But for an iconic game anything created has to be useable by the PCs.

ahyangyi
2023-02-28, 08:02 PM
Only if you start out knowing there's a "monk" class in the first place (and have a preconcieved notion of what that means). The idea that any "fighter" who fights bare handed is really a "monk" is only a thing you think of because you learned it from D&D. If there was no monk class, but just a "fighter" class, and that class could use any weapons (including bare knuckle fighthing), would you even think "this should really be called a monk?".

I had a DM who actually made an adventure based on the absurdity of D&D players assumptions about monks. He had a group of evil Hecate worshipers (clerics) living where clerics live: In a monestary. They were "monks" in the actual traditional sense (literally no one thinks of a monk being anything other than a holy man if they weren't exposed to D&D). Let's just say that much hilarity ensued when the players confronted these "monks" and couldn't figure out where all the spells were coming from...

And both D&D 5e and pathfinder has support for the "unarmed fighter who isn't a monk" archetype. And the monk wasn't defined to be unarmed fighters in 4e either (they were psionic casters casting spells with their fists).

Anyways, the boxer is definitely more fighter than monk even in the context of D&D.

Cluedrew
2023-02-28, 09:23 PM
Only if you start out knowing there's a "monk" class in the first place (and have a preconcieved notion of what that means). The idea that any "fighter" who fights bare handed is really a "monk" is only a thing you think of because you learned it from D&D. If there was no monk class, but just a "fighter" class, and that class could use any weapons (including bare knuckle fighthing), would you even think "this should really be called a monk?".That is not a disagreement, it is my point. Hence why they fact they (maybe, ahyangyi refutes this) better implemented as monks is a problem.


Creating content that is supposed to be locked away from PCs is a bad idea. For a more advanced games if it has to be done you can keep it vague and leave it up the the GM to flesh it out. But for an iconic game anything created has to be useable by the PCs.Also on a simple design note, why create content players aren't going to use. Have rules for how players are supposed to interact with and put everything else in background lore.

CarpeGuitarrem
2023-02-28, 10:43 PM
I don't think they do, in any version I recall playing. While the game engine does track unit advancement, the person playing the game does not actually make any choices. Unless I'm just forgetting some version of the game? I don't recall ever having a screen pop up saying that "spearman unit 5 gained a level! Would you like to advance in a) movement, b) damage, or c) hps?". It just advanced on its own, and had pretty much generic levels (1-5, green units started at 2, units built with a barracks started at 3, and gained exp up to 5). I think civ3 had armies that you could assemble and make choices with, but that's about the closest you ever came to actually making advancement decisions for units.

This is probably a sidetrack, but it switched to this system in Civ 4 and has retained it for 5/6. Every unit has a skill tree, and once it accumulates enough XP, it earns a "promotion" that you can then use to invest in the skill tree.

Pauly
2023-03-01, 01:39 AM
Also on a simple design note, why create content players aren't going to use. Have rules for how players are supposed to interact with and put everything else in background lore.

One example is a sci-fi game where alien tech exists as something the designated enemy uses against the players. No matter what the fiction/world building as to why the PC races can’t use the tech is players will want to use it themselves.
It’s one reason why bioconstructs are a go to sci-fi enemy because then it’ easy to say you can’t have it because it needs to grow within the user.

iirc necromancy spells such as ‘raise dead’ were originally walled off from the PCs in D&D, but the players insisted they get to use them. Races like Orc and kobold were not meant to be PC classes, but since they exist and rules exist for them they get turned into PC classes.

Even if the clear and sole intent of the designer is for an item to not be useable by PCs, players will want it anyway.

FuriousTheCat
2023-03-01, 01:51 AM
It played well as a single shot game though, so there is that. Felt very much like "do X abilities every encounter you want, do Y X number of times" kind of management. Worked well enough, and had a fun enough variation of different character types and powers and whatnot. Not at all very much like old school D&D though. I've heard many people say it's very video game influenced, and I would have to agree. But not necessarily a bad thing though.

I agree that it can feel a little gamey. Its a little better than DND 4E do X thing 1x a scene / 1x a day.

As part of another system that I worked on (another project :smalltongue:) I made everyone's abilities run off of a universal resource that you could either exhaust as a 1x a day for certain powerful effects that I wanted to limit, but otherwise you could spend it on an ability. When you spent the resource you would get all of them all back at the end of the scene / or if you gave up a bit of your action. For example in PE 2E it would map as giving away 1-3 of your 3 actions away to get the corresponding number of resources back.



I tend to be a fan of "scaling opposed values" in game systems. Which, ironically, is very similar to how D&D handles things. You can think of it as a range of "ability" at something, with an opposed range of "ability" opposing that. The result creates a "window of efffect" which determines outcomes. As long as the two opposed values are within the "window" of each other, we see a range of effects (which could be linear or curved). Outside that range, we should see either near automatic success or failure.

The problem D&D has is that the range can be extremely large relative to the size of the window. And the higher level you get, the bigger that relative difference is. The window is basically a D20 sized window. That's what you are rolling and then adding to your skill+bonus, and then comparing against the opposing skill/resistance/difficulty+bonus. But since all of those values are level granted, as levels increase, the size of that range keeps increasing, but the size of the window does not. That's the point I was making earlier where you could literally have 30-50 points of skill, and another dozen or so bonus points from stats and other things, but the window is still only a D20 worth (20 points).

Other games have much narrower ranges of skills. Or they use different dice mechanics (like Shadowrun for example) to manage things.

I agree that windows can be really large in DND, which can create some weird conflicts especially early level where the D20 plays a bigger part than someone's stats. I feel that a new Iconic RPG should do something fresh with resolution.

I've just tried out a playtest recently with using D8s, and being skilled at something and/or advantage upgraded the die, and likewise being untrained or disadvantage downgraded the die. So windows varied from 1d4+X to 1d12+X

D4<->D6<->D8<->D10<->D12. For example a 3+ goes from 50% on a D4 to 83% on a D12.

With this you modify the die (window) & add the appropriate attribute (2-8) to the roll, and sometimes but rarely an additional bonus from a Talent/Skill/Feat.

The issue with something like this is you have to be extremely careful with each + point available as it has a lot larger effect than a + bonus with a D20. Without other adjustments you are more likely to run into issues of either always hitting or never hitting.


For skill systems, especially referring to non-combat skills, I think the choice boils down to bell curve + small modifiers or flat roll + big modifiers.

Put me down for bell curve + small modifiers.

I think part of the issue with D&D is that characters originally werenÂ’t intended to progress beyond level 7 or 10 depending on how far back you go. And for non-combat skills it more or less works OK at those character levels. At higher levels is when you start running into the really absurd contortions.

I likewise like small modifiers & relatively consistent outcomes. In 3.5 things gets really weird with how high your rolls got as mentioned earlier by folks.

I think there are opportunities to go beyond what DND has done with non-combat skill checks. Dungeon World / Path Finder 2e/ Legend of the 5 Rings/ etc. all have degrees of success or other things that make resolving non-combat skill checks more interesting.

For example a thing I've been trying is rolling multiple die & checking each against a Test Number. For example Roll 5D8 each with +4 against a Test Number of 7, and needing to beat to succeed. This gets you a result between 0-5 successes. I then labeled the successes (s) like so:
(0S)No, and... (1S) No (2S) No, but (3S) Yes, but (4S) Yes (5S) Yes, and

This or a similar pattern maps plenty well on a D20 system.

Running it about a weak ago, I had a player rolled (2S[No,but]) for perception and let them spend a resource for a reroll, they rerolled & got a (3S[Yes,but]) and told them I would give them part of the information, but if they wanted more they would need to spend another resource they proceeded to described the dim scene with some goblins around a fire near the underground river. They spent another resource and discovered that there were a bunch of goblins hiding along the rocky outcropping of the room.

For combat I made each Success mean you get to roll X damage die. Due to the nature of multiple checks against a number it creates a pseudo bell curve.

See below for results for slightly better than average hit rate:

0S=.2%
1S=1%
2S=6%
3S=18.5%
4S=32.4%
5S=30.3%

DND 5e mimics this somewhat with a Fighter's multiple attacks.

NichG
2023-03-01, 02:09 AM
I guess this is more of a general game design aside than specifically an 'iconic game design' thing, but in recent systems I've designed for my own table I've moved away from 'directly opposed rolls between things you can invest in' because of the all-or-nothing build logic that ends up stemming from that (as well as the sort of metagame issue of the DM trying to match the party with reasonable things to do, meaning that e.g. one person specializing can drag others along with them and things like that).

Instead I much more favor the paradigm of 'fixed DCs to do special tricks, plus scalable extra success based on how much you exceed the DC'. When two things are logically opposed, I prefer to design such that they don't directly undo each-others function (this is also important with regards to things like healing or spell/dispel patterns - I try to make sure the system moves towards a resolution rather than allowing indefinite holding patterns to exist).

So for example lets say we have a skill called Sword and a skill called Dodge. You could say 'roll Sword and the target rolls Dodge and if you get more successes/higher score then you hit!'. But instead I'd build it something like:

- When attacking with a sword, roll your Sword against DC 10 to hit. For each 5 you beat the DC by, you can add one rank worth of 'side-effects' from the list of Sword side-effects, any universal side-effects you have the feat for (so, spontaneously turn the hit into a trip, etc), or can freely activate any [Momentum] martial maneuvers you possess keyed off of either Swords or Attacks (costs 1 rank = 5DC per level of the maneuver).
- If you are being attacked (e.g. by a sword) you may spend AP/minor action/etc to attempt a Dodge. Roll Dodge against a base DC 10 - if you succeed you avoid the hit but are unbalanced and cannot dodge again until you spend a full round action re-adjusting; if you beat the DC by 5, you can re-adjust at the cost of a standard action, if you beat it by 10 then a move action, if you beat it by 15 you don't need to readjust, and if you beat it by 20 you don't even use up the AP/action you staked on the dodge.

Then you might have some effects that would raise or lower those base DCs, but probably not by more than +/- 5 (or maybe +/- 10 depending on feel) across the entire power scale of the system, and not as an automatic 'you are expected to get these things to be a viable combatant' design. There would also be things like status conditions or effects that just say 'you can't dodge this' or 'you can't sword this', but probably not as persistent or permanent states. Of course the numbers, thresholds, mechanics etc depend on the specifics of the system, and that example is a little complex when it stands on its own (but those extra bennies from beating the flat DC would be a repeated design pattern and there'd be a standardized concept for it like 'Momentum' that you get on any skill roll where you beat the DC so its not like a separate list you have to memorize for every single skill - you would always get Momentum for each 5 you get and there would be standard ways to spend Momentum and to sort of know what sort of things it should do and so on, but that's hard to get across in just a short post...).

Pauly
2023-03-01, 03:43 AM
I've just tried out a playtest recently with using D8s, and being skilled at something and/or advantage upgraded the die, and likewise being untrained or disadvantage downgraded the die. So windows varied from 1d4+X to 1d12+X

D4<->D6<->D8<->D10<->D12. For example a 3+ goes from 50% on a D4 to 83% on a D12.

With this you modify the die (window) & add the appropriate attribute (2-8) to the roll, and sometimes but rarely an additional bonus from a Talent/Skill/Feat.

The issue with something like this is you have to be extremely careful with each + point available as it has a lot larger effect than a + bonus with a D20. Without other adjustments you are more likely to run into issues of either always hitting or never hitting.



I likewise like small modifiers & relatively consistent outcomes. In 3.5 things gets really weird with how high your rolls got as mentioned earlier by folks.

I think there are opportunities to go beyond what DND has done with non-combat skill checks. Dungeon World / Path Finder 2e/ Legend of the 5 Rings/ etc. all have degrees of success or other things that make resolving non-combat skill checks more interesting.
.

I’m working in a similar idea for a system I’m homebrewing. The Cliff’s notes version:
Every shift of the dice is equivalent to a +1 modifier. D6 has an average outcome of 3.5, D6+1 is 4.5 which also is the same as a D8. D6+2 is 5.5 as is D10. So rather than applying modifiers, the dice get changed.
I’m also using a 3D6 base system, but changing dice (ability, skill, equipment in a x,y,z axis frame of thought) based on +1 standard deviation D8, +2SDs D10, +3 SDs (top 1%) D12.
All tests are done against a target difficulty of 12. Players roll the dice, read the number and then know if they succeeded. No counting modifiers. Mechanics are in place for multiple successes and critical success/failure.
One issue that I’m coming across is table management, making sure people have the right dice on the right place and I’ve built some trays for players to use which has helped a lot.

Treating the dice changes as traditional +/-1 s I end up with possible range from -3 (If anything de serves a -2 modifier then it is not possible to attempt) to +5 (if the modifiers reach +6 or better it’s an auto-success).

Using 3D6 with modifiers is a much easier sell, but once the players get the hang of changing their dice rather than doing math they’re enjoying using the mevhanic.

ahyangyi
2023-03-02, 11:18 AM
I’m working in a similar idea for a system I’m homebrewing. The Cliff’s notes version:
Every shift of the dice is equivalent to a +1 modifier. D6 has an average outcome of 3.5, D6+1 is 4.5 which also is the same as a D8. D6+2 is 5.5 as is D10. So rather than applying modifiers, the dice get changed.
I’m also using a 3D6 base system, but changing dice (ability, skill, equipment in a x,y,z axis frame of thought) based on +1 standard deviation D8, +2SDs D10, +3 SDs (top 1%) D12.
All tests are done against a target difficulty of 12. Players roll the dice, read the number and then know if they succeeded. No counting modifiers. Mechanics are in place for multiple successes and critical success/failure.
One issue that I’m coming across is table management, making sure people have the right dice on the right place and I’ve built some trays for players to use which has helped a lot.

Treating the dice changes as traditional +/-1 s I end up with possible range from -3 (If anything de serves a -2 modifier then it is not possible to attempt) to +5 (if the modifiers reach +6 or better it’s an auto-success).

Using 3D6 with modifiers is a much easier sell, but once the players get the hang of changing their dice rather than doing math they’re enjoying using the mevhanic.

Tried some simulation with AnyDice:


total modifier
highest success rate
composition
lowest success rate
composition


-3
1.56%
3d4
1.56%
3d4


-2
10.42%
2d4+d6
10.42%
2d4+d6


-1
25.78%
2d4+d8
23.61%
d4+2d6


0
40.00%
2d4+d10
37.50%
3d6


1
50.00%
(any)
50.00%
(any)


2
60.16%
d6+2d8
58.33%
d4+d6+d12


3
68.36%
3d8
66.41%
d4+d8+d12


4
74.53%
2d8+d10
72.92%
d4+d10+d12


5
79.50%
d8+2d10
77.43%
d4+2d12


6+
auto-success
N/A
auto-success
N/A



Also, d10+mod against DC 7 gives a quite nice and simple approximation of this.

gbaji
2023-03-02, 02:17 PM
This is probably a sidetrack, but it switched to this system in Civ 4 and has retained it for 5/6. Every unit has a skill tree, and once it accumulates enough XP, it earns a "promotion" that you can then use to invest in the skill tree.

Huh. Weird. I must have completely blanked that out. Been a long time since I played any Civ games, but I did play them a *lot* back in the day. I actually had to look this up, absolutely certain that this didn't exist, and... Huh. Of course, as soon as I saw the freaking icons for the upgrades, I remember it clearly. :smallconfused:

May have to pull out my old civ disks and play again.



That is not a disagreement, it is my point. Hence why they fact they (maybe, ahyangyi refutes this) better implemented as monks is a problem.

Ah. Ok. I read your earlier post as saying that this is how things should be, not just how D&D "quite strangely" makes things.

But yeah, to my earlier point, at it's most simple, if you're going to use classes, especially as some sort of iconic "we're introducing the concept of roleplaying characters" game, simple and broad is probably best. A "fighter" is someone who focuses on fighting. A "magic user" is someone who uses magic to do things. A "thief" is someone who steals stuff. A "cleric" is some sort of holy man who prays and heals folks. Pretty simple. And exactly what D&D initially started with.


Also on a simple design note, why create content players aren't going to use. Have rules for how players are supposed to interact with and put everything else in background lore.

I do think that all content in a game should be usable by anyone/anything. At least on the rules and game system level. This does not mean that every single thing must be a playable character race, or that everything can be made to be useful to the PCs. That's more a game setting issue though. If you want to have playable dragons, once you have rules for dragons, it's easy to do so. But if your game setting doesn't allow this, you just don't allow it. The core rules should not care either way, though. Those decisions should be left up to the GM in terms of what sort of game is being run.

I don't allow players to run dragons in my game, not because the rule mechanics for dragons are different, or stats/abilities don't work as player races, but because the lore of my game world says that dragons are super rare beings with a power level that is outside the range that *I* allow players to play. I also don't allow players to start out with a new character who is a "1000 year old uber lich lord who rules over the land of Doom". Those are things I create as the GM and put into my world to be obstacles/enemies (or sometimes allies) for the players to encounter and deal with while playing the game.

I tend to allow any sort of more "normal" power level race to be played if players really want. However, when I create a setting for my game(s), I tend to populate them with specific sets of people. This tends towards some sets of races to be more availble and accepted in the area I'm running scenarios than others. The players can play other races, if they want, but I'll warn them as to likely problems they will have (which can range from "you're strange and from far away, but people have heard of your kind and will probably accept you", to "you're strange and from far away, but people have heard of your kind and don't trust/like you", to "you're really strange and from far away, but people have heard of your kind and will probably try to kill you on sight").

If players really want to play some oddball race, I can always set them up in a new/different area in the game world, starting a new set of characters in that new area, where said race may fit better. This doesn't preclude them world traveling around as well, but allows for starting adventures in a new location to get these characters up to speed, so to speak. Doing this, even in an otherwise already existing game world can be a lot of fun and a nice break for the players.

I try to only limit player options based on the practicality of those options in the existing game setting.


Oh. And since I forgot to quote the latter bits. I do think using different dice is a neat way of doing things (though does require more dice, so there's that). I also really like the "yes/no; and/but" resolution set. For a lot of skill outcomes, that aren't always just binary outcomes, that's a nice way of looking at things.

Pauly
2023-03-02, 03:33 PM
Tried some simulation with AnyDice:

Also, d10+mod against DC 7 gives a quite nice and simple approximation of this.

Thanks for that. I”d some rough back of the envelope calculations and come up with something similar.

I want to stick with changing dice instead of using modifiers for 3 reasons.
1) I use combat damage as keyed off the die roll (high, medium or low depending on the situation) so changing the dice gives more granularity to damage dealt
2) extra range of results. 3d6+3 has a range of 6 to 21, where 3d8 has a range of 3 to 24. Critical failure is 6 or less and critical success is 18+. If I use 3D6 then I set the crit thresholds to 5< and 15> off the dice but that requires players use the dce= modifiers for success and unadjusted dice for crits. By using the 3d[N] the better you are at something the more likely you are to get a crit.
NB “crit” in my system generally means earn meta currency, but they sometimes can spend it immediately for example to force an opponent they are grappling to drop a weapon.
3) I really really want to use a roll dice, read dice, get outcome system. No maths, no modifiers, no extra steps. The way it runs with 3d[N] is one roll tells you if you hit, how much damage you do and if you get a crit just off the dice.

Luccan
2023-03-03, 06:40 PM
I think if it's going to be the premier game, it should be cheap to get into. In the age of the internet this is easy to do: free rules (that aren't barren but still tempt you to buy) or a Name Your Price option would work, but as long as you aren't trying to gouge every last penny out of the buyer you should be fine.

It should also use a resolution method reasonable to the average buyer. If you have to buy any specialty accessories (weird dice, tokens, third example, etc.) it's a bigger barrier to entry. So I suggest using 6-sided dice exclusively. They're fairly common, being used by many board games, and can be bought in large numbers. And if we're assuming it's gonna be bigger than D&D, then D&D dice will almost certainly get more rare/expensive

Silly Name
2023-03-04, 04:57 AM
And if we're assuming it's gonna be bigger than D&D, then D&D dice will almost certainly get more rare/expensive

A set of polyhedral dice isn't particularly expensive to manufacture. Sure, if we assume an alternate timeline were D&D never got as big as it did, we can also envision hobby shops not having big reserves of polyhedral dice sets, but enough tabletop games use various dice shapes to justify their existence.

Pauly
2023-03-04, 03:00 PM
I think if it's going to be the premier game, it should be cheap to get into. In the age of the internet this is easy to do: free rules (that aren't barren but still tempt you to buy) or a Name Your Price option would work, but as long as you aren't trying to gouge every last penny out of the buyer you should be fine.

It should also use a resolution method reasonable to the average buyer. If you have to buy any specialty accessories (weird dice, tokens, third example, etc.) it's a bigger barrier to entry. So I suggest using 6-sided dice exclusively. They're fairly common, being used by many board games, and can be bought in large numbers. And if we're assuming it's gonna be bigger than D&D, then D&D dice will almost certainly get more rare/expensive

On the first point, free to play quickplay rules and pen and paper character sheets is a good start. But for something to be iconic it has to survive, and D&D has already almost died once when TSR collapsed. It has to make a profit.

On the second point I disagree.
When people join a group they want something that makes them feel special, better than the normies. If you’re a fan of a football team you wear their ccolors, if you’re a goth you wear the clothes, if you’re into cars you buy a vintage Mustang. Also the further you get i to your niche the important it is to differentiate yourself from the rest of the people within that niche.
Having a bunch of dice separates gamers from normies. Having a bunch of polyhedral dice separates RPGers from boardgamers whose dice mostly live in boxes and wargamers who mostly use lots of D6 or a single D10.
If you are in someone else’s home and meeting them for the first time and you see they have a small pile of polyhedral dice on a shelf somewhere you know they are RPGer. And if you say to your host ‘cool d10 bro’ you are signaling to them that you are also a RPGer.

Pauly
2023-03-04, 10:54 PM
I guess this is more of a general game design aside than specifically an 'iconic game design' thing, but in recent systems I've designed for my own table I've moved away from 'directly opposed rolls between things you can invest in' because of the all-or-nothing build logic that ends up stemming from that (as well as the sort of metagame issue of the DM trying to match the party with reasonable things to do, meaning that e.g. one person specializing can drag others along with them and things like that).

Instead I much more favor the paradigm of 'fixed DCs to do special tricks, plus scalable extra success based on how much you exceed the DC'. When two things are logically opposed, I prefer to design such that they don't directly undo each-others function (this is also important with regards to things like healing or spell/dispel patterns - I try to make sure the system moves towards a resolution rather than allowing indefinite holding patterns to exist).
.


Thinking about this some more there are 2 main ways ways to deal with difficulty.
1) Fixed DC + variable dice (most often some form of bell curve mechanic)
2) Variable DC + fixed dice (most often a flat dice)

I think what the iconic game needs is dependent on the scale of character’s progression.
The bell curve works best when everyone is more or less the same, genres such as super spies, sci-fi, low fantasy.
The flat dice works better when there is a big range of possible actors, genres such as high fantasy, superheroes.

Thinking on a mechanic for using tiers as opposed to skills. I think I have come up with a mechanic that may work.
Using roll 3 dice and count successes. This gives any action 4 possible outcomes :- 0,1,2 or 3 successes. However the target DC changes with each tier and the type of dice change with what tier your skill is that is being tested.
Tier 1 difficulty 3+
Tier 2 difficulty 4+
Tier 3 difficulty 5+
Tier 4 difficulty 6+
Tier 5 difficulty 7+

Tier 1 skill 3D4
Tier 2 skill 3D6
Tier 3 skill 3D8
Tier 4 skill 3D10
Tier 5 skill 3D12

For combat
1 success, lowest dice = damage, 2 successes medium dice = damage, 3 successes, highest dice = damage.
If you more than double the target number then you do double damage.

For example Superman is fighting Lex Luthor. Superman is Tier 5 melee fighter and Lex Luthor is a Tier 1 melee fighter. Lex Luthor can’t hurt Superman in melee at all as he can’t roll a 7 on a D4. However in return Superman rolls 3 D12 needing 3+ to hit and doing double damage for every 6+ he rolls. On any half decent roll Superman will punch Lex Luthor into the stratosphere.
This kind of differential is out of place in a reality adjacent kind of setting, but totally appropriate for a more fantastic setting.

SimonMoon6
2023-03-05, 09:37 AM
For example Superman is fighting Lex Luthor. Superman is Tier 5 melee fighter and Lex Luthor is a Tier 1 melee fighter. Lex Luthor can’t hurt Superman in melee at all as he can’t roll a 7 on a D4.

One of the things I love about Mayfair's DC Heroes RPG is how it handles this sort of thing. Since it is designed to emulate superhero comic books and since superhero comic books often have people winning fights unexpectedly (either due to bad writing or due to unique one-of-a-kind situations that can't otherwise be handled in a game), the game was designed to allow those things to happen.

For example: Spider-Man fought Firelord, one of the former heralds of Galactus, on par with the Silver Surfer. Spider-Man cannot hurt Firelord no matter what. So, Spider-Man tries luring Firelord into situations where Firelord will take damage from other sources, but it's not enough. Nothing Spider-Man can do will stop Firelord. So, Spider-Man just gets really annoyed and punches Firelord a whole bunch of times. And Spider-Man wins. Why? Well just because. That's an actual comic book story.

Another example: Maybe Lex Luthor throws a rock at Superman. Obviously, this shouldn't hurt Superman. Oh, but wait, this particular rock just happened to be a meteorite containing a new form of "super kryptonite" that will instantly KO Superman. That's a ridiculous plot contrivance that happens to be particularly convenient, but that could happen in a comic book (as far as I know, that never happened in a comic book, but it easily could have).

So, if you want to emulate comic books (and you may not want to, of course), there always needs to be a way for the underdog to win a fight, even if it is extremely unlikely. That's why Mayfair's DC Heroes RPG had what people these days call "exploding" dice (where if you roll doubles, you keep rolling and add the results).

So, for example, if Lex Luthor (without power armor) had something like a DEX of 5 and a STR of 3 (I'm looking at someone's writeup of Golden Age Lex Luthor since I don't have my books handy) and Superman has a DEX of 10 and a BODY of 18, it would be pretty unlikely for Luthor to hit Superman, much less hurt him. Luthor would have to roll a 15 on 2d10 just to hit Superman, but would do no damage.

To do damage, Luthor would have to roll a 36 on 2d10, which is not possible without some doubles. And even that would do minimal damage. To actually do enough damage to KO Superman with a rock, Luthor would have to roll 140 on 2d10 (really unlikely even with doubles) and even then, Superman could use "Hero Points" to absorb the damage unless Luthor did so much damage that Superman couldn't absorb it all (which would only happen if he rolled 230 on 2d10). And that's for the post-Crisis Superman. It's even worse if you're talking about the much more powerful pre-Crisis Superman.

But that's an extreme example. For things like "Spider-Man vs Firelord" or "generic thug vs Batman", it's much more likely to happen, while still being pretty unlikely.

Vahnavoi
2023-03-05, 01:40 PM
Obligatory reminder that a tabletop roleplaying game need not involve dice at all, and by narrowing your considerations to a small set of not-that-different ways of doing small math with dice, your ideas of "iconic roleplaying game" are trapped within a paradigm that roleplaying games adopted from wargames, and wargames adopted from earlier tabletop games.

Which is why the discussion of "roleplaying game dice" just makes me roll my eyes. All those dice were adopted from earlier types of games, d4s and d20s go back literal centuries, possibly millenia. Even if tabletop roleplaying games had never risen to prominence, there would still be games using other types of dice. d6s are in fashion now, because at a point they were cheap and easy to make, which lead to games being based around them, which then lead to newer games, including roleplaying games, piggybacking on existing equipment. Any kind of game using other type of dice making it big could, in theory, change the trend.

Quertus
2023-03-05, 03:18 PM
I lost a long post a few days back, so if it seems like I’m ignoring anyone, that’s why. Senility willing, I may backtrack.

I actually came here to talk about dice, and I see they’re already a current topic. :smallbiggrin:

Dice

Dice pools are slow. Adding lots of situational modifiers is slow. “Slow” is a 4-letter word. So we don’t want the flagship RPG to be slow, and involve any of these things, do we?

Well… it depends. It depends on… pacing. On what a roll represents. On how many and which mindsets we want the flagship to support.

Roll pacing brainstorming

(Insanity hazard ahead - you’ve been warned)

Should the flagship RPG have one clear “right” way to play, or should it support as many play styles as possible?

So, what goes into how often one rolls, into how much effort the players should put into that roll?

Well, there’s granularity - rolling for each individual attack, vs “roll combat” to determine the outcome of the conflict. And there’s CaW vs CaS, where oldschool CaW considers having to roll in the first place to indicate a fail state. Oh, should we (the system? The GM?) encourage or discourage rolling? I played a WoD game where every time we scored a critical success on a roll, we earned a free XP on the skill rolled; CoC only advanced skills by rolling them.

Oh, should rolls be Player-driven, or GM-initiated?

And, obviously, related to this is simple rolls vs simple DCs, bonus hunting, fiat vs bell curve vs dice pool…

So, if that’s some part of the questions / considerations, what do I think?

I think “as many as possible” is better for an RPG in general, but perhaps that’s a disadvantage for the flagship? Or maybe I’m backwards, and “one right way” is better, except for the flagship? Well, unless it’s proven otherwise, I’ll assume “as many as possible” is best for the flagship.

I favor Simulation, realism, verisimilitude. Irl, I don’t have to swat at a fly while it’s on your head, nor do so with the soda I have in hand - I have a lot of control over exactly what risks, stakes, and chances of success I have at an action, so long as I’m willing to invest the time, choose my tools and approach… all within the limits of my domain Knowledge. And I like to see that kind of fidelity to verisimilitude, that amount of agency in my games.

Is that best for the flagship? Eh, not necessarily as the default, but as I believe “as many as possible” is optimal, I’m still siding on “realism being an option” is optimal. The task “swatting a fly” shouldn’t have “hit someone with a soda” as an inherent fail state.

Oh, right, brainstorming: rolling the dice is not playing the game. Making meaningful choices is playing the game. The flagship should be built understanding this.

But which outcomes should be determined by dice?

Is there any chance it would be best for the hobby if the flagship were diceless?

What bad habits can people form here? Rolling for everything instead of roleplaying? Wasting game time not knowing what to roll? Wasting game time on / trying to roll for superfluous things? Failing from not seeking out advantages / bonuses?

Really, it seems most everything could be a bad habit if carried into a game with different assumptions. Personally, I’m probably least fond of… “button push” mindset, especially augmented by “get rewards for rolling” mechanics. I’m least troubled by… players learning to save time by rolling (and pre-rolling) everything for themselves. And yes, I realize that those sound like almost contradictory stances. But, if push came to shove, I’d say that the best habits for players to develop in this regard would be to make creative choices that don’t rely on their character sheets… but to be able to translate those choices back to the sheet when applicable, and quickly and preemptively make all necessary rolls to the best of their ability.

Is it beneficial for the flagship to be really bad in some ways here? To encourage people towards other, better RPGs, better suited to their needs? Would the hobby benefit if the flagship was always tediously slow with rolls (exploding dice pools of variable sizes based on external factors and hunting bonuses, summed and spent on diverse results)? If the rolls never took the situation into consideration (Superman had the same chance of success as Aunt May in combat)? If it has bounded accuracy (a dozen Aunt May are much more dangerous than one Superman)? If rolls were always really fast and Gamist, and unapologetically made absolutely no sense to the Simulation or the Narrative?

A crazy guess

My guess is, we’re not really going to do much better than D&D in the “dice” department, as a) combat is really quick (if the players aren’t idiots) and detailed, with minimal effort put into each roll; b) CaW avoiding Combat/rolling gives experience acquiring every possible bonus/advantage… 3e unbounded skill checks also do this (neither does it well); c) Exploration and Social pillars give more freeform roleplay options (especially in earlier editions), with some options for testing whether your GM is good enough to register “getting advantages” like covering yourself in mud, or replacing that soda with a fly swatter; rolls, if they exist at all, cover huge swaths rather than micro transactions. Clear, distinct silos with different play experiences, to let the player learn what kind of game they’re actually looking for. Is this the optimal, 10/10, would highly recommend as a flagship option?

Pauly
2023-03-05, 03:55 PM
@Querus.
Very interesting post. I’ll take some time to digest it properly, but my initial reaction.

Resolution speed.
Not just the dice speed it is more than the dice. It’s the time from decision to resolution.
As you say anything that slows this process down is bad and you correctly point out dice pools play slow, even if they are theoretically capable of quick play.
Other things that slow down resolution:
- long lists of modifiers. Especially when those modifiers derive from multiple sources.
- variable as opposed to pre-set difficulty
- having to look up tables of outcomes to determine the resolution
- dice management. The more often you have to change the number and type of dice being used.
All of these things can be ameliorated to some extent through various table aids or techniques, but I think we can assume first time RPGers will struggle with these aspects.

Silos -v- distinct (non combat) skills.
This I think is more a genre issue than a should a game have it issue. If the iconic game is say an investigative type game such as CoC or Gumshoe then lots of distinct social skills and nuances in how to use them make sense. If the iconic game is some swashbuckling heroic combat oriented game then silos make more sense.

You can’t out a focus on everything everywhere all at once. You need to pick what the game will focus on and put the spotlight there and have less detail elsewhere. D&D puts the spotlight squarely on combat and leaves the social side in blurry broad brushes. D&D is a good example of a game putting a focus where it wants the focus and being vague about other things. Whether the iconic game will have the same focus as D&D is open to debate.

Quertus
2023-03-05, 05:02 PM
Not just the dice speed it is more than the dice. It’s the time from decision to resolution.

Just looking at this bit real quick. Dice are much more important for the “decision to resolution” bit you mentioned, but there’s a lot more to consider about action tempo. For example, in the right setup for a “you see a goblin” scenario, I could probably spend half an hour just asking questions in order to get enough information to actually understand my character’s first impression of said goblin. So it’s not just “decision to resolution”, but “scenario to resolution” that needs to be mapped to understand the game tempo, how many scenarios / how many rolls a session likely consists of / contains, etc.

Mind you, I think I’d hate a game where every scenario (or even more than one every few sessions on average) involved intricate Q&A sessions *unless* those were tied heavily into Exploration and Discovery of entirely new things (which Fantasy (sword and sorcery) and Space are IMO much better suited to than Urban Fantasy) *or* were clear focal points (the only door our Thief couldn’t open; someone who snuck into camp and put a knife to someone’s throat; a gazebo; the artifact at the end of the dungeon).

Personally, I’m in favor of scenarios where everyone contributes (due to micro transactions, like D&D combat), where everyone theoretically can contribute (complex multi-step puzzles reliant on player skill), or that are fast enough that in one session you can get through a number of scenarios equal to at least twice the number of players. Reason: to optimize the odds that everyone gets to participate organically (rather than through forced, “this looks like a job for Aquaman” style spotlight sharing). Not sure which of those might be best for the flagship to aim for, but I’m pretty sure “I sat there and twiddled my thumbs” is not what the theoretical flagship system should aim for players to walk away saying.

Cluedrew
2023-03-05, 10:29 PM
I think if it's going to be the premier game, it should be cheap to get into. In the age of the internet this is easy to do: free rules (that aren't barren but still tempt you to buy) or a Name Your Price option would work, but as long as you aren't trying to gouge every last penny out of the buyer you should be fine.Evil Hat seems to give away their systems and they were doing all right last time I checked. I don't know how you manage business like that but I agree in principle on ease of access. Give away the quick-start guide or player reference and sell the complete book, make money from physical prints only or related products, have a super small core team and use volunteers outside of that. You probably do need the core team and some way to pay them beyond that I couldn't say.


It should also use a resolution method reasonable to the average buyer. If you have to buy any specialty accessories (weird dice, tokens, third example, etc.) it's a bigger barrier to entry. So I suggest using 6-sided dice exclusively. They're fairly common, being used by many board games, and can be bought in large numbers.2d6+stat has worked out great in some systems I've played (Powered by the Apocalypse and sort of one with a more traditional single target number system).

52-card deck would be another option. Either as a really weird d13 or remove 5 from the 6-10, face cards are critical and aces are desperation actions. I don't know what that is I just made it up.

Pauly
2023-03-06, 01:04 AM
Evil Hat seems to give away their systems and they were doing all right last time I checked. I don't know how you manage business like that but I agree in principle on ease of access. Give away the quick-start guide or player reference and sell the complete book, make money from physical prints only or related products, have a super small core team and use volunteers outside of that. You probably do need the core team and some way to pay them beyond that I couldn't say.
.

The model I was thinking of was quickplay rules + free to play VTT.
With the VTT the free version is what’s in the quickplay rules.
Compatible with the free version is the subscription VTT which has the full rules, and purchase of the core rule book gives you a 2 or 3 year free subscription. Free players can play with subscription players.
As supplements drop, those who buy the book scan in a QR code and get access to it on the VTT, but if you don’t buy the book you can buy plug ins to add in the content you want to use to your account.
You can have a situation where you have a game with some free to play players and some players who have subscriptions and the F2P get see what they’re missing out on, and people who haven’t bough the new supplement get to see what’s in it being used.

Vahnavoi
2023-03-06, 03:29 AM
You people do remember that a game product doesn't have to be pure text and accessories can ship with the rulebook, right? Board games get away with shipping all kinds of special dice, card decks, playpieces and playboards, any board game with mass following (such as Chess) has business around selling fancy novelty boards and playpieces that don't even impact the game. The same is, or at least was, true of D&D, so why not another iconic roleplaying game?

Pauly
2023-03-06, 03:51 AM
You people do remember that a game product doesn't have to be pure text and accessories can ship with the rulebook, right? Board games get away with shipping all kinds of special dice, card decks, playpieces and playboards, any board game with mass following (such as Chess) has business around selling fancy novelty boards and playpieces that don't even impact the game. The same is, or at least was, true of D&D, so why not another iconic roleplaying game?

My experience is that only one player in a group, often the DM, wants the full box set. The other players are happy with the core rulebook and whatever character related supplements they need.

I can’t think of any game that shipped as a box set that was successful that also didn’t sell the core rules as a stand alone item.

Vahnavoi
2023-03-06, 04:46 AM
My experience is that only one player in a group, often the DM, wants the full box set. The other players are happy with the core rulebook and whatever character related supplements they need.

And? The same is true for most multiplayer board games, only one set per playgroup is required and often only that many are bought.


I can’t think of any game that shipped as a box set that was successful that also didn’t sell the core rules as a stand alone item.

You can get the rules to many iconic board games for free, yet the physical game boxes still sell. For a concrete example, Chess can be played on pen and paper, yet people still buy Chess boards and pieces. So, what is your observation supposed to entail?

Quertus
2023-03-06, 06:26 AM
If the game has dice

All players need dice

Only GM has boxed set

Boxed set is not a solution to getting dice to all players.

But, really, $4 for dice? Most teens can afford that, a photocopy of a character sheet, and a mechanical pencil on their weekly allowance, so cry me no tears for their plight.

Vahnavoi
2023-03-06, 08:49 AM
A boxed set can include all game equipment necessary for an entire playgroup and indeed, when it comes to board games, that is the norm. And not in any way mutually exclusive with selling spare pieces as separate items to individual players.

gbaji
2023-03-06, 03:56 PM
For example: Spider-Man fought Firelord, one of the former heralds of Galactus, on par with the Silver Surfer. Spider-Man cannot hurt Firelord no matter what. So, Spider-Man tries luring Firelord into situations where Firelord will take damage from other sources, but it's not enough. Nothing Spider-Man can do will stop Firelord. So, Spider-Man just gets really annoyed and punches Firelord a whole bunch of times. And Spider-Man wins. Why? Well just because. That's an actual comic book story.

To be fair to Firelord, IIRC, Spiderman didn't "win" at all. Spiderman just doged all his attacks. Eventually Firelord just got exhausted from blasting at him and more or less passed out from exertion (which, yeah, is still kinda silly too). I'm not sure how much Spiderman's attacks actually had to do with anything. But given that Firelord's entire reason for being there was basically because he'd heard of this great Earth food called "pizza" and wanted to try some (but his method of heating up the ovens was a bit over the top, which lead to the entire confrontation with Spiderman in the first place), once they got past the initial (and incredibly tropish "Marvel Team Up" style fight), they became fast friends and Spiderman took him to the best pizza places in New York (well, except the one with the now melted oven. oops!).

Of course, that still resulted in Spiderman getting a rep for "single handedly defeating a Herald of Galactus", so there's that.

Pauly
2023-03-06, 08:07 PM
And? The same is true for most multiplayer board games, only one set per playgroup is required and often only that many are bought.



You can get the rules to many iconic board games for free, yet the physical game boxes still sell. For a concrete example, Chess can be played on pen and paper, yet people still buy Chess boards and pieces. So, what is your observation supposed to entail?

That the box set of an RPG is a supplemental product. The main product is the core rulebook, and I’d say the first 2 or 3 supplements. For D&D that’s the core rules, monster manual, and player’s handbook(s).

A box set is nice and something I’d like to see more RPGs offer. But I’d put it on the list of ‘nice to have’ list not the ‘must have’ list.

SimonMoon6
2023-03-06, 09:59 PM
To be fair to Firelord, IIRC, Spiderman didn't "win" at all. Spiderman just doged all his attacks. Eventually Firelord just got exhausted from blasting at him and more or less passed out from exertion (which, yeah, is still kinda silly too).

That's not how I read this. Spider-Man keeps punching Firelord until Firelord passes out. Spider-Man would've continued attacking Firelord's unconscious body if the Avengers had not shown up.

Here are the pages in question:
https://64.media.tumblr.com/36581dc20958e618257489c04480781c/tumblr_inline_orb69td4Ll1s16be1_1280.jpg
https://64.media.tumblr.com/3a1302444e91705cc4343a9b53f2b123/tumblr_inline_orb69uzsKb1s16be1_1280.jpg

Or the full story here:
https://hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger.tumblr.com/post/162505849970/why-peter-parker-beating-firelord-is-not-as-bad-as

gbaji
2023-03-06, 11:28 PM
That's not how I read this. Spider-Man keeps punching Firelord until Firelord passes out. Spider-Man would've continued attacking Firelord's unconscious body if the Avengers had not shown up.

Here are the pages in question:
https://64.media.tumblr.com/36581dc20958e618257489c04480781c/tumblr_inline_orb69td4Ll1s16be1_1280.jpg
https://64.media.tumblr.com/3a1302444e91705cc4343a9b53f2b123/tumblr_inline_orb69uzsKb1s16be1_1280.jpg

Or the full story here:
https://hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger.tumblr.com/post/162505849970/why-peter-parker-beating-firelord-is-not-as-bad-as

Yeah. I think I have that issue (certainly did at the time it came out, so unless I sold it at one point, it's still packed away somewhere). IIRC, there were a lot of questions raised about it at the time, and the response in the Q&A section some number of episodes later (which they used to have in the back of the comics, you know back before there was an internet for this sort of thing) was that Firelord collapsed due to over exerting his powers, largely because he was an egotistical idiot, but also because even though he could level city blocks with his powers, he just couldn't actually hit Spiderman. The explanation was that he just keep blasting and blasting at Spiderman because he couldn't believe that such a lowly human could possibly threaten him, and the more he missed, the more angry he got about it. When Spiderman finally goes full out on him, it's basically the last straw sort of thing.

Always felt that was somewhat of a lame retcon to the story. But to be honest, they had to come up with some explanation for the printed sequence. The reality is that Firelord, as a Herald of Galactus (even a "former herald"), should not have even felt a punch from Spiderman. Well. Felt. But not actually been injured by it. He's Thor level in terms of being able to take hits. And that's if he's not using his cosmic powers to shield himself (which we can assume he was not because he was so frustrated at Spidey). I suppose we could also place that squarely in one of Spiderman's greatest powers: The ability to annoy people into making terrible mistakes.

Eh. This was also a time period when Marvel was getting a lot of writers in the bullpen who would go somewhat "off script" with characters they particularly liked or had some special interest in "developing", by having them suddenly be much more powerful than they should be, or using their powers in ways that were not technically supposed to be possible. They often had to have more senior members rein those things in and then walk them back later. One of the things that Marvel had historically been quite good at was setting up some firm "rules" about which characters could do what, relative power levels, how different powers and abilities worked, etc. It's what allowed them to be so successful for so long with a number of different characters in different books, but all technically living in the same world (and often same city). But yeah, there were some folks who periodically decided to go outside the lines, so to speak.

This was one of those times. So yeah, they couldn't actually retract what happened, but they did retcon it as much as they could.

I mean. Technically Spiderman also defeated the Juggernaught too (sorta). Oh. He also took on the entire X-men (and kinda "won", sorta) in Secret Wars, as well. Which is in the same general time period as well (as the Firelord fight, not Juggernaught which happened a few years earlier IIRC). I think a lot of this was that in that time period Spiderman was maybe perceived as being a "street level" hero, and therefore not on the same level as the Avengers, or Fantastic Four (or the X-men), so there was this need to have him fight (and defeat) various high powered folks from those various books to "prove he is worthy" or something.

And yeah, I think they went a little overboard from time to time with that.

Vahnavoi
2023-03-07, 02:37 AM
That the box set of an RPG is a supplemental product. The main product is the core rulebook, and I’d say the first 2 or 3 supplements. For D&D that’s the core rules, monster manual, and player’s handbook(s).

A box set is nice and something I’d like to see more RPGs offer. But I’d put it on the list of ‘nice to have’ list not the ‘must have’ list.

You think that because that is how some past and current roleplaying games have been produced. For a new game, it's possible to change that approach. Not even a new idea. There have been roleplaying games that primarily shipped as boxed sets, with all necessary play equipment. Worth noting is the rationale behind one of these: it shipped as such because it was aimed at complete beginners, and it would be silly to assume complete beginners have all gaming equipment at hand.

Silly Name
2023-03-07, 08:04 AM
You think that because that is how some past and current roleplaying games have been produced. For a new game, it's possible to change that approach. Not even a new idea. There have been roleplaying games that primarily shipped as boxed sets, with all necessary play equipment. Worth noting is the rationale behind one of these: it shipped as such because it was aimed at complete beginners, and it would be silly to assume complete beginners have all gaming equipment at hand.

Personally, stuff like special dice and "necessary" trinkets are a huge turn-off from a TTRPG. I understand and can even appreciate them in a boardgame, because, well, it's a boardgame - the game pieces are kinda a fundamental part of the experience.

For me, a TTRPG should require only the rules, pen and paper, some resolution method that is easy to "hack" even from scratch or has negligible costs (a set of 6-sided dice, a deck of playing cards, a bag of coloured marbles)[1], and lots of imagination. I wouldn't be eager to play a TTRPG that wants me to use their Doo-DaahTM or be unable to play correctly.

[1] Hell, stuff like Ten Candles doesn't even need that - just imagination and some tealights, but it's likely not a good starting point for absolute beginners.

Easy e
2023-03-07, 10:47 AM
A set of polyhedral dice isn't particularly expensive to manufacture. Sure, if we assume an alternate timeline were D&D never got as big as it did, we can also envision hobby shops not having big reserves of polyhedral dice sets, but enough tabletop games use various dice shapes to justify their existence.

I can walk into any dollar store or large chain store and find Polyhedral Dice now-a-days. If we assume this Iconic Role-playing game gets as big as D&D, then Polyhedral dice or tarot cards,; or whatever it needs will be available widely.

That said, I hate Custom Dice with a passion.

Quertus
2023-03-07, 11:11 AM
Personally, stuff like special dice and "necessary" trinkets are a huge turn-off from a TTRPG. I understand and can even appreciate them in a boardgame, because, well, it's a boardgame - the game pieces are kinda a fundamental part of the experience.
For me, a TTRPG should require only the rules, pen and paper, some resolution method that is easy to "hack" even from scratch or has negligible costs (a set of 6-sided dice, a deck of playing cards, a bag of coloured marbles)[1], and lots of imagination. I wouldn't be eager to play a TTRPG that wants me to use their Doo-DaahTM or be unable to play correctly.

[1] Hell, stuff like Ten Candles doesn't even need that - just imagination and some tealights, but it's likely not a good starting point for absolute beginners.

As I already said, a set of “D&D dice” can be had for $4, which is a negligible price. Fight me! :smallwink:

That said, I agree that tools that are really only useful in their game (“force dice” and other such single-purpose props) are really cool in a board game, but not in an RPG. OTOH, the MtG percentiles with mana symbols for… the 10, iirc… and, too a lesser extent, the spin down d20s can be used in other contexts, so they don’t bother me.

gbaji
2023-03-07, 12:19 PM
Personally, stuff like special dice and "necessary" trinkets are a huge turn-off from a TTRPG. I understand and can even appreciate them in a boardgame, because, well, it's a boardgame - the game pieces are kinda a fundamental part of the experience.

For me, a TTRPG should require only the rules, pen and paper, some resolution method that is easy to "hack" even from scratch or has negligible costs (a set of 6-sided dice, a deck of playing cards, a bag of coloured marbles)[1], and lots of imagination. I wouldn't be eager to play a TTRPG that wants me to use their Doo-DaahTM or be unable to play correctly.

I think the point here is that if the initial release of an "iconic" game doesn't ship with whatever "special" trinkets are required to play, then the game likely wont become iconic in the first place. I suppose you're arguing that our replacement iconic game shoult just not use something like exotic dice (just D6s if dice are used), but it's worth noting that D&D *did* have such "special trikets", and yet was the "iconic" game we're all talking about in terms of what alternative could replace it.


I can walk into any dollar store or large chain store and find Polyhedral Dice now-a-days. If we assume this Iconic Role-playing game gets as big as D&D, then Polyhedral dice or tarot cards,; or whatever it needs will be available widely.

That said, I hate Custom Dice with a passion.

I'm not a huge fan either. Just give me dice with numbers on them, please.

There's a bit of a chicken and egg issue here though. You can walk into those stores and buy special dice today *because* D&D became such a big thing, and inspired others to use such dice in their games, which in turn reached a critical mass of demand to justify putting those dice on shelves in non-specialty stores. So I'd ammend your statement to "..., or whatever it needs will become available widely". It wont start that way on day one, so yeah, if this game does use things not commonly sold in regular stores, then those things should be included, at least in the introductary set.

Either that, or you go with Silly Name's sugestion and just use already existing "standard" materials. It's actually a big deal. If we're assuming there does not already exist an "iconic" game in our alternate time line here, then we can't assume such materials are widely available until well after we create it. I recall the first time I actually saw any dice other than six sided in the game section of a department store (or similar, don't recall where exactly). It was late 80s (might even have been early 90s). So a decade or so *after* D&D was released. Meanwhile, you could buy D6s and cards at any convenience store on nearly any steet corner. Specialty gaming stores were rare too. There was exactly one in the late 70s and early 80s in the town I lived in. A second was added sometime early to mid 80s. The first one closed down around late 80s, but a new one opened up around the same time. The second one closed around the early 90s, and no new stores have opened since (so back down to one game store). Smaller metro areas often did not have *any* such stores at all (though often back then, comic book stores would take up the slack if the region couldn't support a dedicated game store). They're not needed as much these days, precisely because you can buy RPGs and other stuff at "normal" stores, and you can order tons of stuff online. But that's because of a large adoption of RPGs. We have to assume that isn't the case when considering our brand new iconic game though.

Silly Name
2023-03-07, 12:35 PM
I can walk into any dollar store or large chain store and find Polyhedral Dice now-a-days. If we assume this Iconic Role-playing game gets as big as D&D, then Polyhedral dice or tarot cards,; or whatever it needs will be available widely.

That said, I hate Custom Dice with a passion.

Just for clarification, when I said "special dice" I meant to refer to stuff like the Fudge dice, or the Force dice for that one Star Wars RPG. "Standard" polyhedral sets (d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20) are fine by me, because those dice can easily be "universal": you can use them for a variety of games, and they don't have markers tied to a single IP or system.

Vahnavoi
2023-03-07, 01:37 PM
Personally, stuff like special dice and "necessary" trinkets are a huge turn-off from a TTRPG. I understand and can even appreciate them in a boardgame, because, well, it's a boardgame - the game pieces are kinda a fundamental part of the experience.

For me, a TTRPG should require only the rules, pen and paper, some resolution method that is easy to "hack" even from scratch or has negligible costs (a set of 6-sided dice, a deck of playing cards, a bag of coloured marbles)[1], and lots of imagination. I wouldn't be eager to play a TTRPG that wants me to use their Doo-DaahTM or be unable to play correctly.

And that's valid as a personal preference, but as a game design principle, it's just limiting. Special equipment can allow for doing things faster than the alternative, or sometimes doing new things entirely. Let's take those custom dice people hate as an example: you can replace any specialty die with a normal die with the same number if sides and a table look-up. So you can "hack" any such system to work with pen & paper and a normal dice. The appeal of the specialty die is that it allows skipping a step: you get the result directly from the roll.

Furthermore, as with the idea that the "main product" of a roleplaying game is just the rulebook, this idea of a sharp distinction between board games and roleplaying games stems just from what past and current games have done. The idea that special equipment couldn't or shouldn't be as fundamental to a roleplaying game doesn't follow from anything else and is not in any way binding to new games. Ultimately, anything that's doable at a tabletop is fair game for tabletop game design. Saying "no" to special equipment as a matter of principle can only stiffle innovation in that direction and keeps people from thinking up equipment that would be worth it.

What's fair for a roleplaying game is actually more expansive, because roleplaying games are not limited to tabletop.

---



That said, I agree that tools that are really only useful in their game (“force dice” and other such single-purpose props) are really cool in a board game, but not in an RPG. OTOH, the MtG percentiles with mana symbols for… the 10, iirc… and, too a lesser extent, the spin down d20s can be used in other contexts, so they don’t bother me.

No such thing as a tool only useful for one game... well, okay, in theory single-purpose tools exists, but in practice, once something exists, more uses can be thought for it. My first d8 and d12 were appropriated from a Bionicle board game and not soon after I figured hexagonal map pieces fron Tikal and the moving gameboard of Labyrinth could easily be used for procedurally creating terrain in roleplaying games.

One could even make a business strategy out of it, selling a boxed set containing special equipment at a loss just to get the equipment out there, then design new games using the same equipment. If this sounds exotic, I recommend taking a closer look at what some electronic entertainment companies, notably Sony with Playstation 2, have done.

The point being, a lot of people here are thinking like fringe developers designing games that cost pennies to make, and, frequently in real life, also sell for pennies. It's not clear to me these approaches are good even for making a popular game, nevermind iconic.

Hrugner
2023-03-07, 02:09 PM
There's certainly an appeal to having some unique stuff you can browse at the gaming shop, but I doubt game shopping looks the way it did 30 years ago, so I'd have to ask the younger folks here about that. I've also lost interest in knickknacks and clutter as I've gotten older as well, while those things were big draws for me when I wasn't the one doing the cleaning. Locally at least, the game tables, that used to be in the back of the building, are sitting right upfront, so trading on the experience and the visual appeal of playing could be enough of a draw for vendors that they would create the appearance of ubiquity for you.

Which means there's still a chance for my base 8 abacus resolution tracker.

Quertus
2023-03-07, 06:40 PM
Let's take those custom dice people hate as an example: you can replace any specialty die with a normal die with the same number if sides and a table look-up. So you can "hack" any such system to work with pen & paper and a normal dice.

---

No such thing as a tool only useful for one game...

It's not clear to me these approaches are good even for making a popular game, nevermind iconic.

I can translate

1: Red Force
2: --
3: --
4: Blue Force
5: Blue Force
6: 2x Blue Force

sure.

What I can't do is the reverse
Red Force: 1
-- : ???
Blue Force: ???
2x Blue Force: 6

Making the Force die I just made up less useful than a d6.

I think Fate(?) has a +1/-1 die that is effectively a d3 instead of the d6 its cubic structure would otherwise indicate.

And then there's complex dice, where the lookup would be more like
#--!: 1
**!: 2
@@*: 3
#+++: 4
#@+: 5
--**: 6

While, yes, each face may technically be unique, it's still a pain to parse, and it's also seemingly arbitrary which face gets assigned to which result.

I posit it's best for the health of the hobby if the Iconic game has tools that are more omni-purpose than single-purpose.

Pauly
2023-03-07, 08:56 PM
Furthermore, as with the idea that the "main product" of a roleplaying game is just the rulebook, this idea of a sharp distinction between board games and roleplaying games stems just from what past and current games have done. The idea that special equipment couldn't or shouldn't be as fundamental to a roleplaying game doesn't follow from anything else and is not in any way binding to new games. Ultimately, anything that's doable at a tabletop is fair game for tabletop game design. Saying "no" to special equipment as a matter of principle can only stiffle innovation in that direction and keeps people from thinking up equipment that would be worth it.



One could even make a business strategy out of it, selling a boxed set containing special equipment at a loss just to get the equipment out there, then design new games using the same equipment. If this sounds exotic, I recommend taking a closer look at what some electronic entertainment companies, notably Sony with Playstation 2, have done.
.

Let me preface this by saying I like boxed set RPGs and would like more of them to be available.

Having been in the gaming scene in the early ‘80s when boxed set RPGs were a thing. There were several issues.
1) Confusion as to what the product was.
If it looked like a board game then that’s what people assumed what it was when they were browsing. Some very good miniature wargames (Johnny Reb, Napoleon’s Battles, Command Decision) had players not realize that they were miniature wargames, and it took a more persuading to get other wargamers interested.
I often saw boxed RPGs such as Runequest (AH edition), Top Secret, and Twilight 2000 put on the “boardgames” shelves not with the RPG shelves.
2) Lower physical quality of the rulebooks.
Rulebooks in this era were often softcover and not very well bound. The protective box made investing in a physically more robust book appear wasteful.
The perfect bound hardcover rulebook has developed into the industry standard. These rulebooks are both harder wearing and look more physically impressive.
3) Many players didn’t want the full boxed set.
They just wanted the bits they would use.
4) cost
Putting a sturdy perfect bound hardcover book in a sturdy box is much more expensive than putting a cheap book in a sturdy box or selling a sturdy book by itself.

We had boxed RPGs and hardcover book RPGs available at the same time, and the hardcover books won by a healthy margin.

Cluedrew
2023-03-08, 08:25 AM
Either that, or you go with Silly Name's sugestion and just use already existing "standard" materials. It's actually a big deal. If we're assuming there does not already exist an "iconic" game in our alternate time line here,Honestly, alternate history view or "we wave a magic wand today", either works. Really though, I don't want to loose out on the decades of the development of the genre since D&D first came out. And I stand by the statement that role-playing games have gotten better since then. Not that the old systems were actively bad back then (I mean some of them were, but so are some of the more modern releases) but with so many other experiments in design to learn from the good systems are getting even better.


Just for clarification, when I said "special dice" I meant to refer to stuff like the Fudge dice, or the Force dice for that one Star Wars RPG. "Standard" polyhedral sets (d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20) are fine by me, because those dice can easily be "universal": you can use them for a variety of games, and they don't have markers tied to a single IP or system.I feel Fudge dice are, structurally, universal dice. They are just a number range, like a d6 or d12, except the range is -1, 0, 1. I even invented a short hand notation for them in dice outcome math: dF. (The other one that isn't d[number] is d%, which goes from 0-99 instead of the d100's 1-100.)

SimonMoon6
2023-03-08, 09:08 AM
I mean. Technically Spiderman also defeated the Juggernaught too (sorta).

But at least it wasn't a matter of punching him out.


Oh. He also took on the entire X-men (and kinda "won", sorta) in Secret Wars, as well.

Yeah, this is another one of those crazy moments, though at least it was brief. And in Secret Wars, he also took out Titania with one punch (well, his punch knocked her off of a roof of a tall building, but she also should be outside the range of people he can beat).

But the Spider-Man vs X-Men fight is something I put in the same category with "Karate Kid vs the Fatal Five", where an agile hero can get away with making the occasional attack and dodging everything else, even when totally outclassed. But it's still an example of "comics not always being consistent with power levels" and "fights occasionally going in ways that most RPGs would not be able to simulate unless they're so completely vague in their rule-set that anyone beats anyone half the time anyway".

For anyone who doesn't know: Karate Kid is a superhero with no superpowers (except what he calls "super karate"). He has a Legion flight ring that lets him fly, but otherwise, his only special ability is his mastery of the martial arts (like, all of them, possibly even futuristic alien martial arts). Meanwhile, the Fatal Five are some of the most powerful supervillains the Legion has ever had to deal with. Mano can disintegrate anything (even a planet) with a mere touch. The Persuader's axe can cut through anything (even concepts, like gravity). Validus is *more* powerful than Superboy/Superman, back when that meant something (back when NOBODY was more powerful than Superman). Tharok is a scientific genius along the lines of Brainiac 5. And the Emerald Empress is there too (her indestructible giant floating eyeball has sort-of Green Lantern ring powers, sort of). When Karate Kid thought he was dying, he went to make a suicide attack on the Fatal Five. The only problem is: he won.

Again, that should never have happened. But he's agile and could make the occasional attack between dodging people (much like Spider-Man), so he was allowed to win a fight that he should never win. Very few RPGs have a mechanic that allows for such battles to go in completely the wrong way *occasionally* while *usually* having fights go in the expected way.

Vahnavoi
2023-03-08, 09:20 AM
@Pauly: your conclusion is dubious for several reason. Let me contrast your observations with some from my locale, both from the past era and now:

1) Localized version of the boxed set of Basic D&D moved the most units by far and is what became entrenched in imaginations of people. This was helped by the fact that it made its way to board game sections and toystores. Having your main product be a neat little book crammed next to other neat little books in a shelf reading "roleplaying games" is great if your target audience is people who already know what roleplaying games are and expect them to be confined to a neat little books. When trying to catch new people, this is not so great. Getting some "confused" people buying your product isn't necessarily bad, and the way you stress it again strikes me as over-emphasizing the difference between board games and tabletop roleplaying games.

2 & 4) A box and hard covers are different solutions to the same problem. Using them both for the same product is redundant. You're also missing several steps, as far as my locale is considered at least: a box can be costlier than hard covers, but hard covers are also more expensive than soft covers, so what you say became industry standard, didn't. Well into the 2000s, locally produced games tended towards being leaflets and soft covers, made with less and sold for less (at least in terms of copies) than earlier boxed sets. Foreign-made hardcovers also did not sell as many copies and did not become as iconic as the boxed sets - the foreign producers moved to that format because they too had less money and were targeting smaller audiences. Basically, the change in "industry standard" happened because the entire hobby moved from a period of rapid growth to a period of slow growth, with game designers moving from making games to beginners, to making games for existing enthusiasts.

3) the above started changing in late 2000s and early 2010s, when local game designers started to worry about continuity of the hobby. This directly lead to creation of one of the newer boxed set games for beginners. The time window overlaps heavily with WotC making and publishing 5th edition, along with several wider-scale technological changes both renewing visibility and popularity of tabletop games as a hobby. This includes (somewhat) lower costs for hardcover books, so we also saw increase in local hardcovers roleplaying game products, but it's still noticeable that many of these are reprints, new editions or new localizations for established fanbases.

So, those people who want just the book? Or just the bits they want to use? They aren't who the boxed sets are for. The products that appeal to them aren't necessarily what would appeal to widest range of people, nor what would help make a new game into something iconic. Furthermore, a lot of people in this group you describe, who actually exist now? They got into the hobby because they played the old boxed sets or soft covers. Current success of hardcover products is in part just due to the playerbase being older, and thus having more money, so that they even can pay for the increased quality. If they aren't using that same money for boxed sets, it's because they have a decade or two collecting game equipment behind them.

So, when you say hard covers won by a healthy margin, I have to question: won at what?

gbaji
2023-03-08, 05:10 PM
Again, that should never have happened. But he's agile and could make the occasional attack between dodging people (much like Spider-Man), so he was allowed to win a fight that he should never win. Very few RPGs have a mechanic that allows for such battles to go in completely the wrong way *occasionally* while *usually* having fights go in the expected way.

And yeah, that's the main point. Unlikely things that happen all the time in authored stories just can't be simulated in an RPG. Some people really try to anway, but that's usually a fools errand (and often results in horribly exploitable rules that utterly break the game setting over time). The unfortunate fact is that these occasional "OMG look at that!" moments in novels, films, comic books, etc, when translated into game mechanics more often than not just make the whole thing silly and/or inconsistent.

If Robin can reliablly expect to punch out Superman, then the game has no actual power balance to it. If it happens "occasionally", and it's under control of Robin's player, then we're really back to the starting point (Robin can always beat Superman, so why is Superman "super"?). If it's not under the control of Robin's player, then it become GM fiat/railroad. And if it's just "random luck"? it'll never work out in the way it does in the comic books. Like... ever. The game system just devolves into "random outcomes based on die rolls", with the stats/abilities/powers not really mattering anyway (like the points in "Who's line", right?).

What's funny, and is a point to consider in game design, is that players always *think* they want stuff like this. But when they actually play a game that has it? They will tend to hate it. Even if the game system is tweaked so the breaks always fall in their favor (which, again, many players think they will want), there's something supremely unsatisfying about "winning" when you know you can't actuallly lose (especially when you realistically should have lost).

Quertus
2023-03-08, 08:09 PM
On the first point, free to play quickplay rules and pen and paper character sheets is a good start. But for something to be iconic it has to survive, and D&D has already almost died once when TSR collapsed. It has to make a profit.

This has been stuck in my brain for a bit. Why would it be bad if the flagship RPG were, say, run by a(n actual or functional) non-profit by volunteers, and the rules were available as free PDFs, as well as purchasable soft and hard-copies? Why would it be bad if the flagship couldn't collapse, because it wasn't a business, and didn't care about profits, but was instead a labor of love by dedicated fans of the system/hobby? Why would that be bad for the health of the hobby?

Hrugner
2023-03-08, 08:48 PM
Fan run services still collapse. If the work product of the volunteers is good enough, some for profit business will poach the talent. They're also susceptible to being taken over by nutters as there's no entry requirements. Imagine a game entirely run by people who would otherwise be forum moderators.

It seems unlikely to produce something that would become iconic since it's directionless, without standards, and fragile.

ahyangyi
2023-03-09, 04:47 AM
This has been stuck in my brain for a bit. Why would it be bad if the flagship RPG were, say, run by a(n actual or functional) non-profit by volunteers, and the rules were available as free PDFs, as well as purchasable soft and hard-copies? Why would it be bad if the flagship couldn't collapse, because it wasn't a business, and didn't care about profits, but was instead a labor of love by dedicated fans of the system/hobby? Why would that be bad for the health of the hobby?

It seems to me that the various iterations of Pokemon RPG systems (PTA, PTU, Pokemon 5e which was shut down by Wizards) all worked OK.

( But, obviously, relying on an external IP is definitely a bad idea for anything bigger than a fan project. This only serves as examples where fan projects work well and last long )

Vahnavoi
2023-03-09, 06:26 AM
It's possible to create long-lasting services, with strong internal standards, based on volunteer work. Where I live, scouting works this way, as do the largest roleplaying game and japanese pop-culture conventions, and several smaller sports.

Here's the thing, though: part of why this tradition of volunteer work has been so strong, is because the country I live in is small enough that for-profit endeavors are hard to pull off. So either hobbyists do the thing themselves, at a cost to themselves, or the thing doesn't get done. But this also contributes to the difficulty of doing the thing for profit: people are so used to the thought of something being done out of passion, for a low cost, that they're actively hostile to paying more money for it. So there's very few full timers - most people have to work some other job to pay for their passion projects.

The point being: this kind of model works for a certain scale, up to a certain scale. For a small country with a small number of hobbyists, it may outright be necessary, but trying to do the same internationally is dubious.

Which is why we'll talk about scouting next.

Scouting is a very diverse hobby. It's not based around a single game, indeed, scouts are one of the likeliest people to play and invent multiple different types of games, from physical sports and skill competitions to live-action roleplaying to card games and tabletop games. What keeps them organized, what binds all these seperate activites done under the banner of scouting as scouting, is a system of virtues and teaching.

The same applies to those smaller sports. Sports organizations don't exist just to maintain a particular ruleset. They all also have a method for teaching that sport and a method for organizing events concerning that sport. Those are what keep them afloat.

Now look at how people react to the thought of being taught how to play or how to hold games on these forums. Even when blatantly giving advice (and hence being engaged in teaching), the moment somebody uses the word "teaching", some people will raise their defenses and cry out how it's not anybody's business at a table to teach anyone anything.

Are these the kind of people who'd get together and spark a world-wide movement? Even a country-wide movement? Hell, a functional local game club that can last beyond the original members losing interest?

Cluedrew
2023-03-09, 08:10 AM
This has been stuck in my brain for a bit. Why would it be bad if the flagship RPG were, say, run by a(n actual or functional) non-profit by volunteers, and the rules were available as free PDFs, as well as purchasable soft and hard-copies?Nothing, it just has to be sustainable. Which generally means getting a critical mass of volunteers that as individual availability and interest waxes and wanes the group still has enough to keep it going. Along with all the usual criteria for having a healthy organization.

It totally can work. I play Android: Netrunner and although that was started (twice) by for profit organizations, now it is run by fans because the for profits abandoned it and the fans went "this is ours now".

And honestly, I don't care that much, people are welcome to discuss the organization that creates the system, but mostly the thread is about system design.

Quertus
2023-03-09, 09:41 AM
And honestly, I don't care that much, people are welcome to discuss the organization that creates the system, but mostly the thread is about system design.

It’s just human nature that those are related, though. So, in effect, I was probing to ensure that “structures and system designs that likely would only be produced by nonprofits” were fair game for this discussion, probing on how questions of flagship profits could be handled when determining what would be optimal for the health of the hobby.

Easy e
2023-03-09, 10:58 AM
Non-profits have a pretty long history of being sustainable. Just because something is a non-profit does not mean it is not run by professional, salaried folks, with a large employee base. It also does not mean that they will not be motivated to make money, they just can not have a "profit". All money earned becomes re-invested in the business, and that includes paying out salaries, bonuses, and other incentives.

Many Insurance companies in the US are Non-Profit, and look how they approach the business of Insurance. It is a business first, just like their For-Profit peers.

Vahnavoi
2023-03-09, 11:40 AM
Fair point. A further breakdown of different non-profit organization models would likely be in order.

Pauly
2023-03-09, 03:36 PM
Fan run services still collapse. If the work product of the volunteers is good enough, some for profit business will poach the talent. They're also susceptible to being taken over by nutters as there's no entry requirements. Imagine a game entirely run by people who would otherwise be forum moderators.

It seems unlikely to produce something that would become iconic since it's directionless, without standards, and fragile.

The other issue about volunteer/fan run services is IP, and having the money to protect it.

If they create something valuable someone will take the opportunity to pay for and file IP protection on it, The Schlock Mercenary web cartoon created “7 Habits of highly Effective Mercenaries”, which someone else lifted and rewrote as “7 Habits of Highly Effective Managers”, then [tl;dr version] proceeded to file cease and desist orders and prevented Schlock Mercenary’s creator from using what he had created.
The “peeing Calvin” sticker that has became ubiquitous is a rip off of Bill Watterson’s art. Watterson is famous for rejecting any and attempts to merchandize Calvin and Hobbes beyond books and calendars. But because [tl;dr version] he doesn’t merchandize his IP he doesn’t have the money to pay lawyers to stop all the ripoffs.

Also you may be able to protect your rights in a region, but that still doesn’t help much if what you create becomes iconic. Disney prevents the distribution of Kimba the White Lion, outside of Japan despite the Lion King being a complete and wholesale theft of the original Japanese IP. Likewise the Squid Game is a total and shameless theft of an original Japanese anime, and last I heard the creators of the Squid Game hadn’t paid a single cent to the original IP.

Volunteer run organizations have a lot of benefits. Having the means and money to protect their IP isn’t one of them.

NichG
2023-03-09, 04:30 PM
Stopping rip-offs is vastly overrated, especially if profit isn't the motive. Just dump everything into the public domain and if you're at a point where there are lots of rip-offs, congratulations, you actually made an iconic RPG!

Pauly
2023-03-09, 09:59 PM
Stopping rip-offs is vastly overrated, especially if profit isn't the motive. Just dump everything into the public domain and if you're at a point where there are lots of rip-offs, congratulations, you actually made an iconic RPG!

You do realize that someone can rip you off, file IP protection then prevent you from using your own creations? Even if you win in court the cost and delays will kneecap you.

NichG
2023-03-09, 10:32 PM
You do realize that someone can rip you off, file IP protection then prevent you from using your own creations? Even if you win in court the cost and delays will kneecap you.

I've seen lots of people worry over things like that. I've yet to see it happen in any opensource project or other community activity that I happen to follow. I wouldn't disbelieve that it has happened before, but I certainly wouldn't lose sleep over it. Getting into how I'd actually react if something like that happened in one of my own projects would be getting too close to legal advice to discuss here however.

Now, someone else making a ripoff and selling that ripoff? Sure, I've seen a lot of that. But again, so what?

SimonMoon6
2023-03-10, 05:15 PM
And yeah, that's the main point. Unlikely things that happen all the time in authored stories just can't be simulated in an RPG.

My claim is that it is simulated appropriately in Mayfair's DC Heroes RPG.



If Robin can reliably expect to punch out Superman, then the game has no actual power balance to it. If it happens "occasionally", and it's under control of Robin's player, then we're really back to the starting point (Robin can always beat Superman, so why is Superman "super"?).

Fortunately, neither of these are true in Mayfair's DC Heroes RPG.



And if it's just "random luck"? it'll never work out in the way it does in the comic books. Like... ever.

Well, obviously, you won't simulate the *exact* fight exactly as you saw it. That's the point. When luck is involved, different results can happen. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the *same* result is insane, when luck is involved. Nobody wants a game where Spider-Man always beats Firelord. Instead, to simulate the comics, you need a game where Spider-Man *sometimes* beats Firelord and it should be very rare, almost impossibly rare, but it should still be possible.

(Also, in addition to exploding dice, DC Heroes technically also has a game mechanic whereby "popular" heroes (like Spider-Man, Superman, Batman, Wolverine, etc) will win fights more often than they should because they have more "hero points" to help adjust the odds, but that's beside the point.)



The game system just devolves into "random outcomes based on die rolls", with the stats/abilities/powers not really mattering anyway (like the points in "Who's line", right?).

It's not like that at all. Instead, the usual results happen MOST of the time. Like 99% of the time. Or even 99.99999999999% of the time, Robin will not beat Superman. It's only that 0.00000000001% of the time that he might win. Just like how, in the comics, there's that tiny percent chance the writer was an idiot who thought it would be cool to have Robin win.

Instead, rolling dice is exciting. You know how, in D&D, rolling attacks is usually pretty boring. Either you hit or you miss. And then you move on to the next attack. And your damage is fairly predictable. If you have a dagger that does d4 damage and you have no strength bonus, you can't hurt someone with DR 10. Not ever. Even on a critical hit, it's not going to happen.

But in DC Heroes... oh, wow, Robin rolled two 10s on 2d10? That's a total of 20... and he gets to roll again! Oh my gosh, what's going to happen? A hush falls over the audience as he picks up the dice and rolls again... two 8's this time! That's a total of 36! And he gets to roll again. Oh, my goodness... is he going to do it? He picks up the dice, blows on them for good luck, and rolls again... And the result is...

Well, you get the idea. Dice rolling is thrilling. Will someone buck the odds? It's like winning the jackpot at a slot machine. You can't count on it happening, it's not the usual situation to experience. But when it does happen? Wow!

But the comment about "random outcomes based on die rolls"... I mean, that's why we have dice in the games anyway, right? Should we take out the dice and just say, "Oh, your PCs look pretty powerful. I guess you just defeat the demon lord. He probably doesn't have a chance." Or should we just hope to see some "random outcomes based on die rolls" during the fight? I mean, what's the point of dice in a game anyway? Should we all just hop over to Amber, the diceless RPG?

Vahnavoi
2023-03-11, 04:22 AM
I find the point to take home from NichG is that things like being commercially succesful or guarding intellectual property are different goals than becoming iconic. Just like many artists who found no success during their lifetimes, yet became world-famous and widely imitated in posteriority, we can imagine a situation where the creators of a game get screwed over but their work persists.

Not even all that different to what's happened to D&D. It's good to remember the original creators were ousted from their company fairly early on and the company itself failed and was absorbed by a competitor later. If anything, D&D was a success despite attempts to guard the IP, not because of them; TSR's litigious practices were a public joke at a point and arguably contributed to their failures. WotC arguably walked into the same trap with 4th edition and then almost walked into it again when they wanted to change the Open Game License.

KorvinStarmast
2023-03-11, 11:07 AM
If anything, D&D was a success despite attempts to guard the IP, not because of them; TSR's litigious practices were a public joke at a point and arguably contributed to their failures. WotC arguably walked into the same trap with 4th edition and then almost walked into it again when they wanted to change the Open Game License. Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them ...

Pauly
2023-03-11, 03:43 PM
Not even all that different to what's happened to D&D. It's good to remember the original creators were ousted from their company fairly early on and the company itself failed and was absorbed by a competitor later. If anything, D&D was a success despite attempts to guard the IP, not because of them; TSR's litigious practices were a public joke at a point and arguably contributed to their failures. WotC arguably walked into the same trap with 4th edition and then almost walked into it again when they wanted to change the Open Game License.

The reason why companies such as Disney and TSR are/were so aggressive is that IP law works on a “defend it or lose it” principal. The tl;dr is that you can’t selectively enforce IP protection, and failing to protect it allows others to treat it as if it had been abandoned. TSR were litigious because that’s what the system required them to be if they wanted to keep IP protection.

Besides TSR didn’t fail because of their IP protection decisions. They failed because they made bad IP. They moved the focus of D&D away from broad appeal to beginners to more niche products that limited their appeal to hard core fans, Dark Suns being the best example of this.

NichG
2023-03-11, 03:49 PM
The reason why companies such as Disney and TSR are/were so aggressive is that IP law works on a “defend it or lose it” principal. The tl;dr is that you can’t selectively enforce IP protection, and failing to protect it allows others to treat it as if it had been abandoned. TSR were litigious because that’s what the system required them to be if they wanted to keep IP protection.

Besides TSR didn’t fail because of their IP protection decisions. They failed because they made bad IP. They moved the focus of D&D away from broad appeal to beginners to more niche products that limited their appeal to hard core fans, Dark Suns being the best example of this.

That's trademarks, not copyright, and certainly not how public domain works.

Vahnavoi
2023-03-11, 04:49 PM
1) the point being contested is whether trying to "protect IP" was a good decision to begin with, restating legal motives to do so does not move the discussion anywhere.

2) TSR didn't fail because of just one thing, and I'm willing to bet being overly litigious did, in fact, harm them. Consider: When WotC acquired D&D and did their own edition, they put up the Open Gaming License. OGL is what made their d20 system so widespread, and part of that is because OGL promised WotC won't go after third parties for using their mechanics. It would be hard to not see the entire existence of OGL as an attempt to rectify TSR's mistakes.

Hrugner
2023-03-12, 05:02 PM
My only concern with being able to "defend the IP" comes down to whether the original or derivative RPG will end up being the iconic one. Back when D&D started working it's way into position, the shape of the hobby market was very different, now we have the "influencers as marketing" format which is used to hijack, or at least guide, grass roots movements. You also end up in the advertising for revenue loop, where engagement produces revenue so the hobby product suffers, being unnecessarily stretched for ad space. This is also why I think presentation is something I think is very important for sitting in that iconic space, as the presentation is more protected than the rules could ever be. So the best choice to be in the iconic position needs to be the one that could be in that position.

Also, nonprofit is not the same as volunteer only, or fan run. Nonprofits need to reinvest any profit into the company's goals or into wages for the workers, they still profit, but the profit can't be reinvested into some other interest.

I'm not saying that a profit model is necessary for success, you just need to be able to out perform the profit model as it will try to cannibalize successful enterprises. Doing things the profit model simply can not do is probably a good space to look at for succeeding as iconic since the competition will be lighter.

ahyangyi
2023-03-13, 12:17 PM
My only concern with being able to "defend the IP" comes down to whether the original or derivative RPG will end up being the iconic one.

Well, having a lot of derivatives should be part of the definition of iconicity.

gbaji
2023-03-14, 03:26 PM
Non-profits have a pretty long history of being sustainable. Just because something is a non-profit does not mean it is not run by professional, salaried folks, with a large employee base. It also does not mean that they will not be motivated to make money, they just can not have a "profit". All money earned becomes re-invested in the business, and that includes paying out salaries, bonuses, and other incentives.

Many Insurance companies in the US are Non-Profit, and look how they approach the business of Insurance. It is a business first, just like their For-Profit peers.

Very valid points. "non-profit" does not at all mean "not motivated by the bottom line". It just means that no one "owns" the money the business makes and gets to pocket it (no individual owners or shareholders). The business still makes "profits", and retains them, and operates using those profits. They just can't be put into an individual persons pocket. The people who run the non-profits, however, can still pay themselves any salaries they want, and often can use the "profits" for themselves (in "business appropriate ways" of course). Non profits that are "cause" based rather than "service" based can be even more problematic IMO, since often the people running them do so out of some personal goals/objectives, which (not surprisingly) align with those of the non-profit (cause that's why they're there, right?). But this means that there's a heck of a lot of overlap between "personal stuff" and "non-profit funded" stuff. Not at all poo pooing non-profits, I just don't automatically assume sunshine and roses either.

Um... But as to gaming? Technically, all RPGs rely on non-profit work to succeed. What do you think every GM is doing? That's a ton of "content" being created, with no expectation of pay, and (usually) out of a fair amount of "labor of love". The RPG company itself can be about profits, but success only occurs if a whole heck of a lot of individuals decide to take those rules and then do something creative with it at their gaming tables.

Players are not just consumers of the RPG product, but producers of that product as well. I suppose this is a way in which RPGs are somewhat unique.




My claim is that it is simulated appropriately in Mayfair's DC Heroes RPG.


Fortunately, neither of these are true in Mayfair's DC Heroes RPG.

To be fair, I've never played that particular game. So I'll take your word for it on how it works.



Well, you get the idea. Dice rolling is thrilling. Will someone buck the odds? It's like winning the jackpot at a slot machine. You can't count on it happening, it's not the usual situation to experience. But when it does happen? Wow!

But the comment about "random outcomes based on die rolls"... I mean, that's why we have dice in the games anyway, right? Should we take out the dice and just say, "Oh, your PCs look pretty powerful. I guess you just defeat the demon lord. He probably doesn't have a chance." Or should we just hope to see some "random outcomes based on die rolls" during the fight? I mean, what's the point of dice in a game anyway? Should we all just hop over to Amber, the diceless RPG?

Yes and no. My personal preference is for game systems where the dice act as modifiers to some degree, but not to the point of completely overturning high degrees of probability. I'm actually not a fan of exploding dice mechanics, for this very reason. I much prefer game sessions where the players used their heads, correctly assessed the situation, and then come up with a good way to deal with it, than just "got lucky with the dice and won".

My issue with the "lucky dice" situation is twofold:

1. I'm notoriously unlucky with die rolling. I hate (with an absolute passion) "lucky roll wins" mechanics, even when the odds should be heavily tweaked the other direction. I'm the guy who *always* travels the craft path in Talisman because I've literally lost to the freaking 50/50 "dice with death" space soooooooooooo many times. And not like "I lost 2 or 3 times before winning" (which is what normal people consider "bad luck"), but "went up there with 8 health (I had the runesword that particular game so I was uber powered up), a medipack, and a heal spell, and died because I lost the die roll 12 times in a row" level of absurdity. And that's not exploding dice stuff either.

2. It tends to either be irrelevant, or completely take over the game. If the "random really lucky thing" only happens extremely rarely, then it can't be relied on. So no matter how "exciting" it may be to watch the exploding dice of amazingness, it's always ultimately irrelevant. From a scenario design and play perspective, the players can't have been relying on that lucky die roll to succeed, so they were going to succeed anyway. That "luck" was irrelevant to the result. But by having it in the game system, you create a slim chance that it *does* overturn the "expected outcome". Assuming the players are planning and driving the encounters (usually), and you aren't just a capricious killer GM, then that "luck" doesn't ever actually help the players. But, it presents the possibility that it hurts them by having the NPCs get "super lucky outcome" that causes all their well laid plalns to fall to ruin.

And it's for the 2nd reason that I heavily dislike these mechanics in games I run. On the players side, as a GM, you're basically just re-writing the details of the ending. So "the PCs succeeded because they had a good plan, and executed it" becomes "the PCs succeeded because wonderboy got a super lucky roll". Ok. Fun. But, again, somewhat irrelevant. But on the flip side, as a GM, you are finding yourself having to handwave away, or scamble to salvage the scenario, when the NPCs should have had a similarly "super lucky" result.


I guess that both as a player and a GM, I don't put much value in "good die rolls". That's something anyone can do, and is random. It says nothing about the person who rolled the dice. I actually find it odd that some people take such great pleasure and pride in mere random chance. I place much greater value on good play. So yeah. I prefer systems that reward good play over lucky rolls. Heaven forbid we encourage people to actually think and plan when playing a game. That's not to say that random die rolls don't have a place. They do (and should IMO). But they should only really alter the details of what is going on a bit. And yeah, create the occasional "oopsie" moment (when that sneaky type fails his roll while tip toeing past someone, say). They should never be the absolute "make or break" in terms of outcomes.

My opinion of course. YMMV.

Cluedrew
2023-03-17, 07:24 AM
On Lucky Dice: It seems to me that if you want lucky dice to matter you would want a tiered success system. So you could be rolling expecting (or just reasonably hoping) to get a mid level success but occasionally you get a strong or even critical success. I also like tiered success levels generally. It might be slightly more complicated than pass/fail systems but I think it is worth it. And most of the problems I've seen with them come from people (GMs, sometimes designers) have been to harsh on the middle levels of success.

SimonMoon6
2023-03-17, 08:55 AM
On Lucky Dice: It seems to me that if you want lucky dice to matter you would want a tiered success system. So you could be rolling expecting (or just reasonably hoping) to get a mid level success but occasionally you get a strong or even critical success. I also like tiered success levels generally. It might be slightly more complicated than pass/fail systems but I think it is worth it. And most of the problems I've seen with them come from people (GMs, sometimes designers) have been to harsh on the middle levels of success.

That's certainly a possibility. The new version of TORG (called TORG Eternity) does that, though I think it takes away from the whole "anything is possible" idea of the setting, where the PCs are able to alter reality with possibility energy, so that with enough extra rolls, almost anything can happen (though in TORG, unlike DCHRPG, the PCs have some control over getting rerolls, since you can spend a "possibility" to get an extra roll).

Pauly
2023-03-18, 04:06 PM
On “protect the IP” I was referring specifically to the fiction.

A technical process such as a game mechanic can’t be copyrighted. At the highest you can claim cooyright on your description of how the process works. I hadn’t looked into the OGL issue previously because I don’t like D&D as a game, and having finally read it I think the whole thing is a house of cards built on quicksand in an earthquake prone region during typhoon season. But since the OGL thread is locked I won’t continue further.

Derivatives is a good way to ensure iconicity. Maybe you could make some trademarkable logos and license them out, but I would steer clear of the OGL path. The idea of even trying to copyright the game mechanics hadn’t crossed my mind.

Quertus
2023-03-19, 08:12 AM
So, it was brought up in another thread that the wealth of defined options in 3e leads to creativity among players not seen from (many) other systems. And I agree with this sentiment. And hold such creativity as one of the best parts of RPGs. As such, IMO, it would be optimal for the health of the hobby for the iconic RPG to have a large amount of static content, designed as independent “voltronable” pieces, as players-facing options. Like D&D has.

Pauly
2023-03-19, 10:42 PM
So, it was brought up in another thread that the wealth of defined options in 3e leads to creativity among players not seen from (many) other systems. And I agree with this sentiment. And hold such creativity as one of the best parts of RPGs. As such, IMO, it would be optimal for the health of the hobby for the iconic RPG to have a large amount of static content, designed as independent “voltronable” pieces, as players-facing options. Like D&D has.

Yes and no. From my perspective there was a wealth of cosmetic options that gave the appearance of choice but didn’t really lead to any deeper gameplay.

For a simple example martials could choose to trade AC for extra damage by either using two weapon fighting or two handed weapons. You got basically the same result no matter which path you chose. The trouble is that when it came to melee the D&D path is to charge into combat, stand still and wale on each other until someone falls over. Choosing between 2 weapon fighting or two handed weapons seems like a choice, but it’s really just choosing the cosmetic way of describing [+ damage, - AC].

I’d prefer to see more meaningful options rather than more ways to describe doing the same thing.

One way is to give the players lots of static choices.
Another way is to give the players fewer choices but give them more freedom to join the pieces together in ways they want.

NichG
2023-03-19, 11:08 PM
Yes and no. From my perspective there was a wealth of cosmetic options that gave the appearance of choice but didn’t really lead to any deeper gameplay.

For a simple example martials could choose to trade AC for extra damage by either using two weapon fighting or two handed weapons. You got basically the same result no matter which path you chose. The trouble is that when it came to melee the D&D path is to charge into combat, stand still and wale on each other until someone falls over. Choosing between 2 weapon fighting or two handed weapons seems like a choice, but it’s really just choosing the cosmetic way of describing [+ damage, - AC].

I’d prefer to see more meaningful options rather than more ways to describe doing the same thing.

One way is to give the players lots of static choices.
Another way is to give the players fewer choices but give them more freedom to join the pieces together in ways they want.

From the thread in question, the context is more at a strategic level than at a round-by-round combat level. So more like for example being able to use a summon spell to get something with an at-will Lv1 spell to fire it into an Energy Transformation Field to create an iron factory.

Pauly
2023-03-21, 06:26 AM
From the thread in question, the context is more at a strategic level than at a round-by-round combat level. So more like for example being able to use a summon spell to get something with an at-will Lv1 spell to fire it into an Energy Transformation Field to create an iron factory.

To use some other more higher level examples. The functional difference in 3.5 between
- a wizard and a sorcerer
- a paladin and a fighter/cleric
- a bard and a rogue/wizard
Is what attributes powered their abilities.
At a micro level it gives the appearance of a lot of choice, but at a macro level the difference is how you describe how they perform their actions.

I’d rather a system that had 2 or 3 different systems to cast magic rather than 16 different ways to cast the same magic.
I’d rather a melee system that gave you different tactical options such as falling back to avoid damage, circling around an opponent to find a weak spot, or causing morale failures by displays of intimidation rather than 20 different ways of standing still and whacking away at the other guy.
I’d rather a ranged system that gave each class of ranged weapons a distinct advantage (eg crossbows can go on overwatch, shortbows have rapidity of fire, longbows have superior armor penetration) than the brand anonymous archery system in 3.5. Once characters who specialize in ranged combat took a few feats it didn’t feel like it really mattered as to what type of bow they had. The main reason for differentiation was what type of bow your class was allowed to use.

Vahnavoi
2023-03-21, 11:53 AM
In case of d20 D&D, both arguments apply. It simultaneously has enough mix-and-match pieces to give room for inventive emergent play, and a truck load of conceptual and mechanical redundance. Even staying within confines of its own design paradigms, you could have nearly all of the former while significantly cutting down on the latter.

NichG
2023-03-21, 01:09 PM
To use some other more higher level examples. The functional difference in 3.5 between
- a wizard and a sorcerer
- a paladin and a fighter/cleric
- a bard and a rogue/wizard
Is what attributes powered their abilities.
At a micro level it gives the appearance of a lot of choice, but at a macro level the difference is how you describe how they perform their actions.


Again I think without explicit reference to that other discussion, this sort of misses the point. The options we were talking about aren't so much about build options but rather the sorts of options that an already built character has to reach for to answer 'what can I do about this situation?' when the situation in question isn't something that you could have realistically anticipated and built for in advance.

So things like 'We need to fortify this bridge before the enemy army arrives in the next few days? Okay, there's a Lyre of Building, Wall of X spells, Instant Fortress, Polymorph Any Object, Move Earth, summon a bunch of helpers to build, telekinesis to move objects around, plant growth to use trees as supports, ...'
Or 'Okay, I really want to get this Personal spell from this one class on a character who doesn't have that class or UMD, so... we could use Magic Jar to have someone capable of casting it possess them and cast it on 'themselves', but we need to figure out how to get the Wu Jen to be able to cast Magic Jar...'

D&D has a sort of combinatorial space of things characters can do that is complex enough that you can't instantly see everything that can be done with it just by reading the rules. So a decade later, people still discover new things. That's an interesting property for a game to have, whether it's needed for iconicity or not.

Pauly
2023-03-21, 11:40 PM
Again I think without explicit reference to that other discussion, this sort of misses the point. The options we were talking about aren't so much about build options but rather the sorts of options that an already built character has to reach for to answer 'what can I do about this situation?' when the situation in question isn't something that you could have realistically anticipated and built for in advance.

So things like 'We need to fortify this bridge before the enemy army arrives in the next few days? Okay, there's a Lyre of Building, Wall of X spells, Instant Fortress, Polymorph Any Object, Move Earth, summon a bunch of helpers to build, telekinesis to move objects around, plant growth to use trees as supports, ...'
Or 'Okay, I really want to get this Personal spell from this one class on a character who doesn't have that class or UMD, so... we could use Magic Jar to have someone capable of casting it possess them and cast it on 'themselves', but we need to figure out how to get the Wu Jen to be able to cast Magic Jar...'

D&D has a sort of combinatorial space of things characters can do that is complex enough that you can't instantly see everything that can be done with it just by reading the rules. So a decade later, people still discover new things. That's an interesting property for a game to have, whether it's needed for iconicity or not.

Just to put the counter argument.
Situation - enemy is coming and we need to fortify the bridge.
Players Actions - use magic spells to create defenses.
Apart from the Lyre of Building which is a magic item, all the other choices described are just different ways of describing casting vancian magic spells to build the defenses. I don’t know the Lyre of Building, but I assume it operates as a battery that powers standard building spells, either by charges or uses per day so it acts as having an additional spellcaster (?).

This is what I’m getting at when I say that 3.5 gives the appearance of much more complexity than it really has. And at a micro level it is true that there is a huge amount of complexity to 3.5, it’s just that when you zoom out to the macro level a lot of the complexity is breadth (different ways to describe doing the same action) as opposed to depth (choosing between actions that have meaningful difference).

NichG
2023-03-22, 12:07 AM
Just to put the counter argument.
Situation - enemy is coming and we need to fortify the bridge.
Players Actions - use magic spells to create defenses.
Apart from the Lyre of Building which is a magic item, all the other choices described are just different ways of describing casting vancian magic spells to build the defenses. I don’t know the Lyre of Building, but I assume it operates as a battery that powers standard building spells, either by charges or uses per day so it acts as having an additional spellcaster (?).

This is what I’m getting at when I say that 3.5 gives the appearance of much more complexity than it really has. And at a micro level it is true that there is a huge amount of complexity to 3.5, it’s just that when you zoom out to the macro level a lot of the complexity is breadth (different ways to describe doing the same action) as opposed to depth (choosing between actions that have meaningful difference).

I think we're talking past each-other here. You seem to still be talking about the choice of what character class to play, whereas what I'm talking about is the way in which something like 'I want to become an immortal sentient sandwich' isn't an atomic action in the rules, wasn't designed to be possible with the rules, but it turns out it can still be achieved via the right combinations of atomic actions in the rules. That those all happen to be actions belonging to one class or another isn't really relevant to the point.

Like, you could say 'chess isn't really complex because if you zoom out its all just about the ELO ratings of the players, where the stronger player wins more frequently'. You could zoom out like that, but you're using the wrong level of detail in order to understand the actual point being made, so the counter-point ends up not being relevant.

Pauly
2023-03-22, 02:00 AM
I think we're talking past each-other here. You seem to still be talking about the choice of what character class to play, whereas what I'm talking about is the way in which something like 'I want to become an immortal sentient sandwich' isn't an atomic action in the rules, wasn't designed to be possible with the rules, but it turns out it can still be achieved via the right combinations of atomic actions in the rules. That those all happen to be actions belonging to one class or another isn't really relevant to the point.

Like, you could say 'chess isn't really complex because if you zoom out its all just about the ELO ratings of the players, where the stronger player wins more frequently'. You could zoom out like that, but you're using the wrong level of detail in order to understand the actual point being made, so the counter-point ends up not being relevant.

I’m not talking specifically about class or combat or any other single element of 3.5. I’m making the assertion that most of the ‘choices’ in 3.5 boil down to cosmetic choices.
You can play 3.5 with the 4 original D&D classes (fighter, wizard, cleric, thief) and with a bit of multi-classing and with the weapons, items and spells from the core rulebook you’ll end up with the same depth of play as you get as allowing the whole kit and kaboodle of all the bolt-on extras. What all the extras provide is additional breadth. Which I’m not saying is a bad thing and games do need breadth as well as depth.

Chess on the other has much fewer moving pieces snd options for players yet has much greater depth, which is brought about by the engineering of of support snd balance and complex interactions between different pieces

Vahnavoi
2023-03-22, 04:14 AM
Again, both arguments apply.

NichG's point is that d20 has rule elements that are like Lego blocks: compare the blocks side by side and they can be near-identical, but the more you have them, the more different ways there are to arrange them, towards ends not seen by just staring at the individual blocks.

Pauly's point is that a lot of this block building, in practical gameplay, boils down to rolling a d20, add modifiers, compare to target value.

It's the difference between being able to build a lot of different bridges from the same set of blocks, versus being able to build the same bridge from a lot of different blocks. Again, the specific system under discussion has lot of both going for it.

And I think it's easy to confuse which games do which. For example, a lot of rules-lite generic games which use the same mechanics for everything seem like they'd belong to the former group, but actually belong to the latter. The ability to attach arbitrary natural language descriptors to die rolls is only a diversion from the fact that regardless of what descriptors you use, you end up rolling a die, and then rolling a die again, and again, to infinity. All the interesting parts happen outside the system, on the level of natural language, and anybody who can do that well can drop die rolling entirely.

NichG
2023-03-22, 12:57 PM
I’m not talking specifically about class or combat or any other single element of 3.5. I’m making the assertion that most of the ‘choices’ in 3.5 boil down to cosmetic choices.
You can play 3.5 with the 4 original D&D classes (fighter, wizard, cleric, thief) and with a bit of multi-classing and with the weapons, items and spells from the core rulebook you’ll end up with the same depth of play as you get as allowing the whole kit and kaboodle of all the bolt-on extras. What all the extras provide is additional breadth. Which I’m not saying is a bad thing and games do need breadth as well as depth.

Chess on the other has much fewer moving pieces snd options for players yet has much greater depth, which is brought about by the engineering of of support snd balance and complex interactions between different pieces

Still talking past eachother. The existence of choices which are cosmetic or the fact that you can play in the part of the game in which say all choices are cosmetic, doesn't negate the point I'm making that there are also things whose interactions are so unexpected that we're still discovering new things in the system now. I also suspect that what I'm talking about doesn't map on to what you're calling 'depth of play' here. I'm not sure its exactly breadth either, the way you're using the word.

What I'm getting at is more like a kind of specially limited Turing universality, where eventually you can make the system weigh on things it has no prior concept of by chaining together enough pieces. But the 'specially limited' part is that you indeed have to chain together an unspecified number of pieces to get there which somehow scales with certain conceptual 'distances' from the core system rather than e.g. a system that lets players write down a new skill by name and then just 'do that thing'. But I don't have a single term to cover that particular idea of a feeling. 'Capable of successive emergence' maybe, to be clunky about it.