the things table top can't seem to get right

[grimsly]

So I've been reading some old threads in different forums and noticed that there seem to be some things that just don't work very well in gaming. I'm talking about those things that are in the rules but you either a) never played with or b) tried a few times, then all agreed to never talk about again. So let's talk about some of them:

- encumbrance rules: I'll defend encumbrance rules, but it's only when I want to be a bit of a troll. Basically, the GM never thinks about them and the players don't want to be bothered with any more arduous arithmetic than they are already burdened with. They only seem to come up when the GM wants to mess with his players for not bringing an army of manservants.

- Rolling for stats: now I'm fully aware that old school players didn't even know what cheating was, and were never bitter about anyone outshining their characters, and that far from blaming the GM for their character's untimely demise, they simply thanked them for the privilege of being at their table, but us sub forty types have issues with having the dice tell us what we're supposed to play, and having Jeff roll so many 18s every time we play.

- food and water: yeah, we have a thread up on this one. It's painfully apparent that nobody enjoys bookkeeping as much as I do. Le sigh.

Is there a game that handles one of these well? Can you think of some I've missed? Have I inadvertently insulted your families honor? Let me know!

[Max_Killjoy]

I'm 42, and I've always hated rolling for stats.

[Geddy2112]

For encumbrance and food/water, these things simply stop being a concern for fantasy heroes after a few levels. I mean, once you get a bag of holding or similar encumbrance is never an issue. In the meantime, the BSF tends to carry everything, or whoever has a mount. Likewise, encumbrance won't matter much for characters in medium or heavy armor who are already taking those penalties, so why not carry a bunch of crap? A fair amount of magic users can simply create water from level 1, and creating food is not far behind. Then you get wilderness adventurer gods who can use survival or some other skill to find food for the party. Later on, most fantasy settings have a way of bypassing the need to eat, drink, or even sleep. Obviously this is not totally true for all fantasy systems but more or less it holds up. Even science fiction systems have technology in place of magic.

For dice rolling, my group does not do it for the very reasons you mentioned. Nobody likes it when they wanna be a caster and they have 1 14 to put towards their casting stat and the rest of the dice are no higher than 10, and meanwhile the rogue has 4 18's and outshines the table at everything. As a DM it is hard to balance encounters when characters are that variable, or that powerful/weak. We just do a buy or an array so everyone is more or less equal. Plus it does not take as long.

[nedz]

I always work out encumbrance for my characters but that might be just me - hell, I don't even use a spread sheet.

We've just switched over from rolling to using arrays - I'm not sure everyone is on board.

Real Old school was 3d6 in order BTW.

[Airk]

Encumberance is an important part of The One Ring, because it's not a dopey "You can carry Xmuch with no penalty, and then suddenly you start getting really weighed down" rule. Carrying stuff essentially reduces your "hitpoints" because you are more tired, so the more stuff you carry, the more easily you become Weary. The system works in part, however, because you DON'T track annoying stuff like food and water and arrows, so you don't need to constantly be adjusting your encumberance total.

Food and water are important parts of Ryuutama, because it's a game about journeys and getting lost and therefore maybe not having enough supplies is a thing. It also has encumberance, but the amount of stuff you need to carry is relatively low, and treasure isn't really a big thing (coins have no weight, IIRC), so the game is more about "Do we have enough supplies?"

But rolling for stats can go die in a fire.

[Tanarii]

Have I inadvertently insulted your families honor? Let me know!

You have insulted my family honor, and now you must die!

Seriously though, my current 5e campaign uses all these things. Plus ammunition tracking. Plus wandering monsters. Plus strict time tracking, both on the in-session and campaign level. Plus I've reintroduced henchmen. It's a sandbox: Combat-as-war is encouraged, wilderness is NOT level appropriate and is very dangerous, dungeons are level appropriate zones but you choose the level to adventure on and can easily overextend, lots of players across multiple different sessions, with PCs coming together as a party for specific sessions/expeditions in-game.

I certainly ignored all that stuff back in the day when playing BECMI, and occasionally 1e. But after doing a lot of historical reading on how the original designers ran their campaigns, I was inspired to recreate it with modern D&D. It works pretty damn well so far. But mostly because the players know exactly what they're getting into when they join up.

[kyoryu]

You have insulted my family honor, and now you must die!

Seriously though, my current 5e campaign uses all these things. Plus ammunition tracking. Plus wandering monsters. Plus strict time tracking, both on the in-session and campaign level. Plus I've reintroduced henchmen. It's a sandbox: Combat-as-war is encouraged, wilderness is NOT level appropriate and is very dangerous, dungeons are level appropriate zones but you choose the level to adventure on and can easily overextend, lots of players across multiple different sessions, with PCs coming together as a party for specific sessions/expeditions in-game.

I certainly ignored all that stuff back in the day when playing BECMI, and occasionally 1e. But after doing a lot of historical reading on how the original designers ran their campaigns, I was inspired to recreate it with modern D&D. It works pretty damn well so far. But mostly because the players know exactly what they're getting into when they join up.

Exactly. Those things work great in the game style for which they're intended for.

In a more 'dramatic' mode, with the One True Party on their Epic Quest, they suck.

Use the right tools for the job.

[BWR]

Encumbrance: we always play with it. The bookkeeping is so minimal it's hardly worth mentioning. Yes, magic does make things easier but there is a distinct difference between "can carry a lot more than normal/don't need to carry food and drink" and "can carry whatever you want". You still need to keep track of what you have and how you can carry it, even if you can carry ridiculous amounts. Unless you have the right magic item you don't have infinite ammunition. Your magic bag can't contain an army's worth of armor, you can't carry the entire inventory of the local hardware store, and unless you have the right magic, food and water can be absolutely vital to keep track of. It isn't as much of an issue for higher-level folks but it is never a non-issue unless you don't actually need to eat (like being undead or something.

Rolling for stats: Hell yeah. Every time. Sometimes you get sucky stats and you try to figure out what to do. Sometimes you get ok stats and can do pretty much whatever. Sometimes you get really awesome stats and a great feeling of epicness. Yes there are plenty of systems built from the group up to use point buy or similar methods and that's fine but for D&D and derivatives I will always choose rolling and expect people roll in games I run. In short, rolling for stats is fun even if you sometimes get bad results.
I still have players who like 3d6 in order.

[Fumble Jack]

IMO, encumbrance and food/water come into play pending on setting (D&D) for me, I heavily favor Dark Sun, which those rules come a bit to the forefront in keeping in theme with the setting. Though I will agree in more traditional fantasy settings, those rules tend to get glossed over

[Darth Ultron]

Your three of encumbrance, food and water and rolling for abilities, is a lot more just old vs new. The new players, especially 2000 and on hate all that ''old stuff'' as they just want to video game roll play. And rolling of abilities is a great way to play, but sure it does not fit in with the modern ''build'' idea for the roll players. But it's great for a role player. You roll some dice, then create a character off the rolls. A rolled character is unique, and not a lame point buy copy that always have high stats in the wanted stats.

There is noting wrong with the older editions food/water rules or encumbrance rules, if you want to play that type of game.

Some you ''missed'':

Spell Components

Weapon/equipment breakage

Instant Character Death

Any negative effect on a character that can not be removed simply

[Knaight]

You've missed a few. While there's at least one game that gets all of these right, they're horribly outnumbered by the ones that screw it up in some way.

-Noncombat conflict
It's rare to even find a half decent set of rules for chase scenes, let alone something that isn't action. On top of that, very few games are made well for a game that isn't at some level about fighting things. Then you get into things like tool use in these conflicts, and it's rare to even see a decent attempt.

-Vehicle rules
It's one thing when a fantasy game is sloppy about this, but it happens all the time in modern and even futuristic settings. A normally rules light game suddenly turns into a horrible bloat of crunch (d6 Space), a normally rules heavy game suddenly decides to dial up the weight yet further until it gets out of control (GURPS Vehicles), or they turn into decoration which does jack-all.

[Max_Killjoy]

Your three of encumbrance, food and water and rolling for abilities, is a lot more just old vs new. The new players, especially 2000 and on hate all that ''old stuff'' as they just want to video game roll play. And rolling of abilities is a great way to play, but sure it does not fit in with the modern ''build'' idea for the roll players. But it's great for a role player. You roll some dice, then create a character off the rolls. A rolled character is unique, and not a lame point buy copy that always have high stats in the wanted stats.

Whereas I'd consider rolled stats and "building from the roll" to be part and parcel of the days of roll-played dungeon-crawling gold-and-XP-and-level-up roll-on-tables-driven gaming. Most of the problems that "old schoolers" like to attribute to "kids these days and their video games" were just as prevalent in the early days of gaming.

But then I've been gaming for a LONG time... I have a copy of an AD&D DMG that I bought during the original print run, with a d100 table for coming up with different sorts of "ladies of the night" -- will the dice give us a haughty courtesan, or a wanton wench? Roll-playing indeed.

[Mastikator]

So I've been reading some old threads in different forums and noticed that there seem to be some things that just don't work very well in gaming. I'm talking about those things that are in the rules but you either a) never played with or b) tried a few times, then all agreed to never talk about again. So let's talk about some of them:

- encumbrance rules: I'll defend encumbrance rules, but it's only when I want to be a bit of a troll. Basically, the GM never thinks about them and the players don't want to be bothered with any more arduous arithmetic than they are already burdened with. They only seem to come up when the GM wants to mess with his players for not bringing an army of manservants.

- Rolling for stats: now I'm fully aware that old school players didn't even know what cheating was, and were never bitter about anyone outshining their characters, and that far from blaming the GM for their character's untimely demise, they simply thanked them for the privilege of being at their table, but us sub forty types have issues with having the dice tell us what we're supposed to play, and having Jeff roll so many 18s every time we play.

- food and water: yeah, we have a thread up on this one. It's painfully apparent that nobody enjoys bookkeeping as much as I do. Le sigh.

Is there a game that handles one of these well? Can you think of some I've missed? Have I inadvertently insulted your families honor? Let me know!

The games I enjoyed the most were low fantasy medieval games that involved rolling for stats, encumbrance rules and bookkeeping food and water.

Rolling for stats forced players (or at least me) out of their comfort zone and made them (me) roleplay characters that they never thought they would. It was instantly and ultimately a better experience.

Encumbrance and food added an extra dimension of gameplay, it made survival and mortality real and palpable even when we weren't faced with monsters. Nature itself became an enemy.

[2D8HP]

-Rolling for stats: now I'm fully aware that old school players didn't even know what cheating was, and were never bitter about anyone outshining their characters, and that far from blaming the GM for their character's untimely demise, they simply thanked them for the privilege of being at their table, but us sub forty types have issues with having the dice tell us what we're supposed to play, and having Jeff roll so many 18s every time we play.

Except for the not being bitter part, you nailed it!
I'll be 48 next month and until recently the only D&D I played was Oe/Holmes/and 1e AD&D (and some other lame RPG's which I will spare naming.
After a long hiatus from the hobby I started again with 5e D&D. My reaction to point buy and standard array for stats? "Holy Molly, I can finally get to play the most awesome of all classes the Ranger! Hmm...OK...um...oh damn".

[quinron]

I've never gotten the hatred for rolling for stats; it's very easy for a DM to fix that kind of thing. All you have to do is compare the characters' scores to make sure no one is coming in well behind the others.

I haven't had to penalize anyone's scores yet - though I nearly nerfed our rogue before realizing he wasn't even ahead of the ranger in total ability bonuses - but I did recently toss a new player a bonus Ability Score Improvement because he was coming in 1 bonus behind the lowest bonus total in the group.

[Faily]

The new players, especially 2000 and on hate all that ''old stuff'' as they just want to video game roll play. And rolling of abilities is a great way to play, but sure it does not fit in with the modern ''build'' idea for the roll players. But it's great for a role player. You roll some dice, then create a character off the rolls. A rolled character is unique, and not a lame point buy copy that always have high stats in the wanted stats.

Well, that is simply just not true. If anything, I've found those who started post-2000 have been very immersive roleplayers.
And so are those who I game with who played since BECMI.

Which comes down to the fact that there is no "old vs new"-thing. It's all a matter of the individual player, and sometimes the individual group.

Heck, I didn't start playing tabletops until around 2004 myself, and I've never really ever been a "murder-hobo" in a game (then again, I started on the deep end with Kult and sorta just skipped the Murder-hobo phase all-together). And after having several different groups, been a part of a gaming club, and gamed with people online through play-by-posts since 2007, I've learned that some players are more interested in leaving fates to the dice and roll for stats (sometimes even for random race & class combo), and some are more interested in "making it even for everyone" by using point-buy.

[Fri]

Your three of encumbrance, food and water and rolling for abilities, is a lot more just old vs new. The new players, especially 2000 and on hate all that ''old stuff'' as they just want to video game roll play. And rolling of abilities is a great way to play, but sure it does not fit in with the modern ''build'' idea for the roll players. But it's great for a role player. You roll some dice, then create a character off the rolls. A rolled character is unique, and not a lame point buy copy that always have high stats in the wanted stats.

There is noting wrong with the older editions food/water rules or encumbrance rules, if you want to play that type of game.

Some you ''missed'':

Spell Components

Weapon/equipment breakage

Instant Character Death

Any negative effect on a character that can not be removed simply

I know, truly it was the golden age of roleplaying. Having a randomly created character, instead of one you spent a lot of time and effort creating, is so much better for roleplay!

Back in the day when you rolled Max Flubbo, the randomly generated jester with no stat above 10, you played him until the bitter end! Which was usually the first time encounter now that you mention it.

[TheIronGolem]

A rolled character is no more or less "unique" than one created from an array or a point-buy, because what makes a character "unique" is things like their personality and background that are independent of how their ability scores were generated.

[Tanarii]

Which comes down to the fact that there is no "old vs new"-thing. It's all a matter of the individual player, and sometimes the individual group.

Yeah. I started with RPG gaming in 1985. Everyone I knew roll-played the hell out of games, especially for new campaigns. Not that it's changed much. The only time I've ever seen anything approaching "immersive roleplaying", aka storytelling time, is in games I've run for 1-2 other people. It just doesn't happen as soon as the group gets to any decent size.

Which is fine. You can still Roleplay, ie make in-character decisions during gameplay, without storytelling time. And properly use mechanical resolution in conjunction with it. In fact, IMO that makes for much better games anyway.

[Mister Loorg]

But after doing a lot of historical reading on how the original designers ran their campaigns,

Unrelated, but could I have a link to some of this historical reading?

[Hyooz]

I'll admit to being a DM that prefers systems that abstract as much stuff out as possible. I run FATE almost exclusively these days because I am much more interested in the communal storytelling aspect of RPGs these days than the simulation aspect of them. That said, things like hunger/thirst and encumbrance definitely have their place in the right kinds of story. If you're following Legolas, Gimli and Aragorn, sure, ignore food and water, but Frodo and Sam kind of suck at staying alive. That lembas bread was all they had and now damn, it's gone and holy **** are tensions high.

That's the good stuff, man.

[Honest Tiefling]

If you're following Legolas, Gimli and Aragorn, sure, ignore food and water, but Frodo and Sam kind of suck at staying alive. That lembas bread was all they had and now damn, it's gone and holy **** are tensions high.

That's the good stuff, man.

Huh. So that's the origin of the Dark Sun halflings...

[Tanarii]

Unrelated, but could I have a link to some of this historical reading?

Start here: http://blogofholding.com/?series=mornard

There's some good stuff on dragonsfoot.org, and the old grognardia blog, as well.

[Bohandas]

So I've been reading some old threads in different forums and noticed that there seem to be some things that just don't work very well in gaming. I'm talking about those things that are in the rules but you either a) never played with or b) tried a few times, then all agreed to never talk about again. So let's talk about some of them:

- encumbrance rules: I'll defend encumbrance rules, but it's only when I want to be a bit of a troll. Basically, the GM never thinks about them and the players don't want to be bothered with any more arduous arithmetic than they are already burdened with. They only seem to come up when the GM wants to mess with his players for not bringing an army of manservants.

To be fair, this isn't limited to Tabletop.

I've written several missives to the creators of the game Dungeons of Dredmor asking them to retool their game's cumbersome and restrictive inventory system. By the halfway point of the game far more time is taken up by boring inventory management then by actual gameplay; double or triple that if you're playing a crafting character.

I've also modded carrying capacity out of my copies of Fallout: New Vegas and Elder Scrolls: Skyrim as with it enabled the games consist mostly of constantly trudging back to town to switch weapons or sell loot.

[goto124]

I've also modded carrying capacity out of my copies of Fallout: New Vegas and Elder Scrolls: Skyrim as with it enabled the games consist mostly of constantly trudging back to town to switch weapons or sell loot.

Spoiler: Awkward Zombies

Show

I suppose you've heard of people storing all their items in corpses that get kicked around the wasteland for storage?

[Nightcanon]

So I've been reading some old threads in different forums and noticed that there seem to be some things that just don't work very well in gaming. I'm talking about those things that are in the rules but you either a) never played with or b) tried a few times, then all agreed to never talk about again. So let's talk about some of them:

- encumbrance rules: I'll defend encumbrance rules, but it's only when I want to be a bit of a troll. Basically, the GM never thinks about them and the players don't want to be bothered with any more arduous arithmetic than they are already burdened with. They only seem to come up when the GM wants to mess with his players for not bringing an army of manservants.

- Rolling for stats: now I'm fully aware that old school players didn't even know what cheating was, and were never bitter about anyone outshining their characters, and that far from blaming the GM for their character's untimely demise, they simply thanked them for the privilege of being at their table, but us sub forty types have issues with having the dice tell us what we're supposed to play, and having Jeff roll so many 18s every time we play.

- food and water: yeah, we have a thread up on this one. It's painfully apparent that nobody enjoys bookkeeping as much as I do. Le sigh.

Is there a game that handles one of these well? Can you think of some I've missed? Have I inadvertently insulted your families honor? Let me know!

Well, food, water and encumbrance (and things like torches/lamp oil and ammunition) are book-keeping things that D&D basically does away with as soon as possible with the introduction of extra-dimensional storage and magical sources of food, water and light, or makes it possible to hand-wave away and get on with the more exciting parts of the story. Ditto transport, money (yes, we're really toting 2000lbs of gold round with us everywhere we go) and living expenses. If you want to document every item the party has and where it is stashed in the cart, you can. Even at low levels, in most circumstances it's fine to have heavy items in sacks that you simply drop or throw in the corner when combat starts.
Rolling for stats: my recollection from playing 1st Edition is that stats didn't matter quite so much. I got lucky with my first character (Halfling thief) and had a 19 dex, but that didn't get me anything like the +4/ +20% across to hit, AC, and abilities that it would in later editions. If you had a fighter with 18/00 strength, you got +3 to hit and +6 to damage, if I recall correctly, and if you started out as a fighter with 12 strength then finding Gauntlets of Ogre Power would take your strength up to 18/00 just as effectively as if you started with a 17. In 3.X, you are always catching up if you have a suboptimal score in an important ability, because a 12 plus a +6 item and two level up bonuses isn't as good as a 20 and the same increases.

[Mastikator]

To be fair, this isn't limited to Tabletop.

I've written several missives to the creators of the game Dungeons of Dredmor asking them to retool their game's cumbersome and restrictive inventory system. By the halfway point of the game far more time is taken up by boring inventory management then by actual gameplay; double or triple that if you're playing a crafting character.

I've also modded carrying capacity out of my copies of Fallout: New Vegas and Elder Scrolls: Skyrim as with it enabled the games consist mostly of constantly trudging back to town to switch weapons or sell loot.

It always seemed silly to me that you can't just get a wheel barrow or pack mule in those games to help you carry more loot.

[Kami2awa]

Moving away from the encumbrance / rations/randomness problem, another thing that turn based rpgs don't do well is formation combat. This can be fixed eg by having a single movement phase in the initiative order where everyone in the formation moves, but the RAW usually has everyone move individually which removes the advantages of a close formation eg that the enemy can't get inside it.

[Earthwalker]

I think someone has pointed to The One Ring as a game that has an interesting handle on encumbrance. It’s not fiddly but makes choices on what you carry on a journey important. It also is built into the games theme (going on journeys)

I think each of the things mentioned, encumbrance, tracking supplies, randomly generated stats need a reason to be in a game.
Adding it into a game because you like it seems odd. Its more what are these things trying to achieve in the system and is there a better way of doing it then how has currently being done.

It certainly seems that in DnD many versions it’s just an inconvenience you have to put up with till you reach a level when you can be rewarded with extra dimensional space to hold all you need. It might fall into Grods Law, you are being punished for being low level. (It kind of seems like that to me)

To be fair, this isn't limited to Tabletop.
[snip]
I've also modded carrying capacity out of my copies of Fallout: New Vegas and Elder Scrolls: Skyrim as with it enabled the games consist mostly of constantly trudging back to town to switch weapons or sell loot.

I find it odd that I have in fact added on a mod to Skyrim that made encumbrance more of a factor and turned off fast travel. This was to make the game about traveling and survival and not just the questing side of things.
It’s amazing what different people want out of games.

I fall into the +40 age group of players but I generally prefer point buy over rolled stats. I will play randomly generation games it all depends on why we are randomly generating stats. One of my favourite games to make a character in is Squadron UK a super hero game. All your powers are randomly generated on a table; once you have the powers then you come up with justification of how your power set works it’s a fun experience.

[nedz]

Rolling for stats: my recollection from playing 1st Edition is that stats didn't matter quite so much. I got lucky with my first character (Halfling thief) and had a 19 dex, but that didn't get me anything like the +4/ +20% across to hit, AC, and abilities that it would in later editions. If you had a fighter with 18/00 strength, you got +3 to hit and +6 to damage, if I recall correctly, and if you started out as a fighter with 12 strength then finding Gauntlets of Ogre Power would take your strength up to 18/00 just as effectively as if you started with a 17. In 3.X, you are always catching up if you have a suboptimal score in an important ability, because a 12 plus a +6 item and two level up bonuses isn't as good as a 20 and the same increases.

Well the numbers were smaller and so these mattered more; e.g. Orcus had 66 HP.
The numbers have seen rampant inflation across, and even within, editions.