Quote Originally Posted by Faily View Post
I like Vancian casting.
Quote Originally Posted by Eldan View Post
I love Vancian casting, think it's superior to many other magic systems in RPGs and will go on at length when asked about this. For several pages, if necessary.

I also think that D&D never has done Vancian magic that well.
What about Vancian do you like?

Quote Originally Posted by Telok View Post
Never going to happen of course. WotC is so married to "d20+mod >= dc" that they're blind to any other dice rolls. I'm waiting for them to rewrite random encounter & loot tables that way.
That would be… cool?

Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
This statement made my eyes pop out in disbelief.
Glad you were able to get them back in!

Quote Originally Posted by Anonymouswizard View Post
Remember that Quertus falls heavily on the side of the magic users, and wants them to be casting magic all the time.

Me? I'm off the opinion that wizards should not be casting many spellz.
I play Wizards; I'm more "falls on the side of the muggle supremacists", tbh.

That said, I think the description given by oldtrees1 is much closer than "casting magic all the time" to describing my position on the "what I want magical beings to do" front (which, obviously, is unrelated to my position in my first post regarding balance).

Quote Originally Posted by icefractal View Post
For being off the RNG,
Ah. Gotcha. I'm onboard with having skill matter more than chance, and with challenges like "walking" and "chewing solid food" be things that get outgrown by most.

Quote Originally Posted by icefractal View Post
For the other one, it's purely a suspicion. But I have noticed that sometimes when people describe what the good/roleplaying solution is, it involves listening very closely to the GM and then invoking elements they mentioned to prove you were listening. Where-as the bad/rollplaying solution involves the use of things that the player, rather than the GM, chose.

TBF, listening to the GM is a good thing, and there are plenty of situations where taking advantage of situational scene elements makes sense as the best idea. It's not an "always" thing.
Eh, I'm not sure if I'm following. That is, one could invoke mechanics with or without listening ("I hit AC 42, dealing 69 damage to… whatever"), even incoherently ("but it's 500' away… hovering over the middle of the grand canyon… and you're wielding a sword…"), just as one could go off-sheet with out without listening, and even incoherently.

But, what you were trying to convey was, you believe, sometimes, people mistake "not paying attention" for "playing the sheet"?

Am I close?

Quote Originally Posted by icefractal View Post
And to ask about one of yours in turn:Which of the following would you consider RPGs?
* Hero (I'm not going to call it HERO, it's not an acronym )
* Fate
* PbtA (let's say Masks, if the specific one matters)
* D&D 5E
* Exalted 3E
… well, my answer is gonna be weird.

To me, "role-playing" means giving answers as the character (close enough? You know what I mean, right?), answering "WWQD?".

In 5e D&D, the RNG is generally far more a factor than skill. Usually, a group of buffoons will do better than the trained professional.

So, in a reality that uses 5e, when a teacher asks a class, "why do we have governments?", it's highly likely that a student will give a better answer than what the teacher knows. The flow of knowledge is from the many to the one.

I can envision a society that follows this humorously inverted logic, and build a character who grew up in that society. So that, when it comes to sobbing problems in a 5e universe, I don't have to break character to suggest throwing more bodies at the problem, to know that "crowd-sourcing" is the tech of choice.

A system fails to be an RPG when you are forced to make decisions for the character that the character could not make. When you cannot construct a reality that logically produces the mindset in which the game is played.

That's how 4e fails to be an RPG.

When you *can* answer the question WWQD, but doing so is not just suboptimal but impossible, when you cannot act upon the roleplay answer, when you are constantly forced to metagame limit yourself to an unrealistically constrained list of options, it is also not an RPG, by my definitions.

This is how CRPGs fail to be RPGs.

So, to answer your question, well, I can't answer your question, because I don't know any of those systems well enough. You'll have to answer your question for yourself.

When you make decisions in those games, are you role-playing the character? Could a character in those systems have come to the answer you did? If so, if you can actually play the game in "actor stance" without needing to access metagame knowledge of "the more people helping, the quicker we'll accumulate failures -> only the person with the best modifiers should ever touch the dice", then it can be a role-playing game.

When the mechanics force you out of actor stance, because what's obvious to everyone at the table as the correct/best answer is impossible to achieve as a reasonable, trained response in character, when you cannot build a setting that makes sense of the rules, then it's not an RPG.

When the system explicitly prohibits you from taking actions that would be in character to take ("but… there aren't rules for…"), and this occurs too often / for too many important choices / forces too great a deviation from WWQD, then it's not an RPG.

So… are those RPGs? If I set the original SSI gold box series in them, could I try to burn down the slums? Could I say arbitrary things to whomever I choose, and get back reasonable responses? Could I try to steal someone's cow? Open a shop? Build a ship? Become mayor?

If I'm role-playing my character with no concept of what system I'm in, will my actions make sense, or will they seem pants-on-head? If the latter, can I (you) build a background based on the system such that you can then play strictly in character, and have them make reasonable decisions?

Or does the system force you to stop role-playing, and play the system?

Answer that, and you'll know my answer to whether or not those are RPGs.

Quote Originally Posted by Cluedrew View Post
I was actually expecting to see something about your extreme in-character views but that didn't come up.
I'm sure I'll add more entries over time (senility willing).

Quote Originally Posted by Cluedrew View Post
On the other hand:Pretty simple, it came from some comment about how if D&D lost its place as the iconic system then another would take its place. I mean considering every other entertainment medium, I'm not sure that's true (although trading card games is pretty close, Wizards of the Coast is doing a good job at that) but even if it is, could there be a "better" iconic role-playing game system?

I think there could be and picked out some features for it:
  • Generic System: Ideally a tool-box system with a solid set of defaults. The defaults are for people picking it up for the first time and then the tool-box (which is to say, it is designed to be easy to modify) allows people to adjust tone or setting. Although focused systems built from the ground up have a place, I don't think the iconic system should be one of them. Basically if all you can find is a game of the iconic system then you can still branch out to different types of campaigns.
  • Rules-Light(er): I don't really have a threshold on this other than to explain why I think it needs to be true: The system needs to be approachable*. I have had people refuse role-playing on grounds that they think it is all about these rules-heavy systems. It's too much for some people and that's a problem for the most visible system.
There are other things, like no fixed progression or reducing combat focus, that may or may not help. But those two are the ones I am confident would improve the hobby as a whole. And I don't even like generic systems as much, but I do think they would make a better standard.

* Any to anyone who thinks D&D is "approachable": I would like to point out you are a Giant in the Playground poster.
Hmmm… does ShadowRun count for "toolbox + defaults"? (I'm only familiar with really old editions, but… "point buy" of race / funds / skills / stats / magical aptitude priority… then WoD level "bad at math" (ish) optimizer's paradise of "starting costs have no relationship to upgrade costs"within those priorities (something I'm not personally terribly concerned about either way)… with pre-built "troll street samurai" / combat Mage / street shaman / decker / etc)

IME, the biggest… Hmmm… "boon" to "approachable" I've found for new players is, very sadly, having the GM make the characters for the players. "What do you want… OK, here's how this system says what I think you're saying."

The worst thing I've found for "approachable" is "what do I roll, and do I want high or low (or "highest without going over", or…).

Merging two ideas: do those who don't want to engage with "rules heavy" actually engage with the fiction? Will they try to serve steak to the vegetarian? What's your experience there?