Legendary Actions and More of Talakeal's Gaming Horror Stories

[zinycor]

I am confused by that last paragraph - why do you expect Bob to consult the group before attacking?

Isn't standard practice to ask your fellow players before doing something unexpected?

[patchyman]

True, difficulty level is mostly a matter of personal preference. But I do find it interesting that the system is intended as an introductory-level game, yet in play an optimizer and professional tester considers it high difficulty.

I agree with you 100%, to the point that I suspect Talakeal of epically trolling the members of this forum.

Go back to the original post in this thread where Bob is complaining about the use of Legendary actions by bosses. If you read it bearing in mind that (1) they are playing a home brew game; (2) based on 3.5, which doesn’t have Legendary Actions; and (3) Bob is a professional game tester; the post reads very differently.

Talakeal’s tendency to omit relevant information in most of the posts concerning his games (like the fact that it took him 800 posts to mention that the game is homebrew) suggests that none of this really happened.

[Cluedrew]

Talakeal’s tendency to omit relevant information in most of the posts concerning his games (like the fact that it took him 800 posts to mention that the game is homebrew) suggests that none of this really happened.

I thought we all knew that already? I'd actually be surprised if this was the first time in the thread it has been mention but it has been mentioned in other help threads about this same problem group.

Actually I never asked but I always thought it was Heart of Darkness, the system you can find in his signature. I proof read that once but it was so long ago actually confirming whether that was the system in question was irrelevant because I had forgotten most of it.

To Talakeal: I would still like to hear about when Bob has contributed to the experience. Also if that is too much could I at least get the last couple epic moments, those times you are reminded "this is why I role-play", in this campaign that would be good as well.

[zinycor]

Talakeal’s tendency to omit relevant information in most of the posts concerning his games (like the fact that it took him 800 posts to mention that the game is homebrew) suggests that none of this really happened.

Personally I knew before the thread even started that this game is homebrew, That's why I always talk about "DnD and DnDlike" games.

[Koo Rehtorb]

Isn't standard practice to ask your fellow players before doing something unexpected?

Not really no.

[zinycor]

Not really no.

Wow, that's very weird... No wonder so many people have so many problems...

[NichG]

Wow, that's very weird... No wonder so many people have so many problems...

To be fair, I've seen this go the other way into decision paralysis. The right balance IMO is for players to do surprising things but to be considerate of eachother in doing so - that is, to recognize when others at the table have momentum or investment in a direction of play and not disrupt that.

Groups where every nontrivial action goes to committee can produce a lot of problems too (indecision, risk averseness, the group quashing the opinions of less assertive players, the group convincing themselves to not try things that in fact would have worked).

A healthy group needs at least one person who says 'I'm bored, I'm going to go get into a bar fight while the rest of you debate' or 'yes, I will push the big red button that says Do Not Push'. And that person needs to be socially savvy enough to not do it when it would trample on another player.

Edit:

Skimmed Heart of Darkness. If that's the system, I think it's necessary to drop D&D terminology almost entirely from this discussion. Its vaguely d20-ish, but some aspects seem more like they're on a World of Darkness scale than a D&D scale (e.g. as far as I can tell, it looks like the HP equivalent only goes up to 10, but it has M&M style damage saves to determine if you move down the track). Readying also works differently enough that it's unobvious how to read it in their situation, though I think its weaker than D&D readying (it's an initiative modifier)

[zinycor]

To be fair, I've seen this go the other way into decision paralysis. The right balance IMO is for players to do surprising things but to be considerate of eachother in doing so - that is, to recognize when others at the table have momentum or investment in a direction of play and not disrupt that.

Groups where every nontrivial action goes to committee can produce a lot of problems too (indecision, risk averseness, the group quashing the opinions of less assertive players, the group convincing themselves to not try things that in fact would have worked).

A healthy group needs at least one person who says 'I'm bored, I'm going to go get into a bar fight while the rest of you debate' or 'yes, I will push the big red button that says Do Not Push'. And that person needs to be socially savvy enough to not do it when it would trample on another player.

Edit:

Skimmed Heart of Darkness. If that's the system, I think it's necessary to drop D&D terminology almost entirely from this discussion. Its vaguely d20-ish, but some aspects seem more like they're on a World of Darkness scale than a D&D scale (e.g. as far as I can tell, it looks like the HP equivalent only goes up to 10, but it has M&M style damage saves to determine if you move down the track). Readying also works differently enough that it's unobvious how to read it in their situation, though I think its weaker than D&D readying (it's an initiative modifier)

Am not saying that every action should go to a comittee... am saying the edge cases where someone attacks an NPC out of the blue, or suddenly betrays a god because is fun, or whatever sudden weird thing. Telling the party before it happens, is common courtesy for murderhobboing...

[NichG]

(If it's Heart of Darkness then) this segment of the rules seems germane to what happened with the Illithids/Rogue/Party:

Defection

If a player wishes to switch sides during an action scene,they must declare their desire to do so at the start of their current team's turn instead of taking any actions.The defector's former allies then make a reflexive social test opposed by the defector's initiative. Those who succeed see the betrayal coming and may act accordingly, those who fail must consider the defector an ally until their following turn.If the character is defecting to another team, they will act during that teams turn. If they are instead setting out on their own, they will take a turn immediately after the team they defected from.

There are various ways it could have been run, I suppose, but one way to (meta-game) better ensure non-explosive negotiations would be to enter an action scene, declare all participants to be on the same side, and that way everyone is guaranteed that any attempt at betrayal at least grants a mechanical defense. So if run that way, the rogue could enter the scene 'on the party's side' in which case they couldn't take aggressive actions against the party, but also would have at least some warning if the party was going to take aggressive actions against them. Or alternately, they could enter the scene on a separate side, allowing them to take aggressive actions but also clearly signalling that taking aggressive actions against them was appropriate.

It also lets the Illithids remain on the party's side even if things break out with the rogue, so one could literally say that Bob's action of including them in friendly fire without explicitly initiating betrayal was against the rules of the system (because in that case, Bob is required to consider them an ally until the following turn).

[Koo Rehtorb]

People just need to be more willing to immediately nuke a wayward teammate and apologize to the NPCs he offended after he's dead.

[The Insanity]

To Talakeal: I would still like to hear about when Bob has contributed to the experience.

Talakeal stated that Bob basically created their group by recruiting the players (which he's good at, while Tal isn't). If Bob leaves, Tal is afraid his other players will leave too.

[Great Dragon]

Isn't standard practice to ask your fellow players before doing something unexpected?

Not really no.

Wow, that's very weird... No wonder so many people have so many problems...

To be fair, I've seen this go the other way into decision paralysis. The right balance IMO is for players to do surprising things but to be considerate of each other in doing so - that is, to recognize when others at the table have momentum or investment in a direction of play and not disrupt that.

Groups where every nontrivial action goes to committee can produce a lot of problems too (indecision, risk averseness, the group quashing the opinions of less assertive players, the group convincing themselves to not try things that in fact would have worked).

A healthy group needs at least one person who says 'I'm bored, I'm going to go get into a bar fight while the rest of you debate' or 'yes, I will push the big red button that says Do Not Push'. And that person needs to be socially savvy enough to not do it when it would trample on another player.

Teamwork is very Group Style (and Game Genre) dependant.

While as the GM, I can strongly encourage Teamwork, I shouldn't force it on the Players.

I'm going to have to re evaluate my opinions of both Bob and Brian.

Skimmed Heart of Darkness. If that's the system, I think it's necessary to drop D&D terminology almost entirely from this discussion. Its vaguely d20-ish, but some aspects seem more like they're on a World of Darkness scale than a D&D scale (e.g. as far as I can tell, it looks like the HP equivalent only goes up to 10, but it has M&M style damage saves to determine if you move down the track).

I tried to read through this, but I constantly Run Out of Time trying to actually figure it out. Those other tRPG references will actually help, thanks NichG

To Talakeal: I would still like to hear about when Bob has contributed to the experience. Also if that is too much could I at least get the last couple epic moments, those times you are reminded "this is why I role-play", in this campaign that would be good as well.

Talakeal stated that Bob basically created their group by recruiting the players (which he's good at, while Tal isn't). If Bob leaves, Tal is afraid his other players will leave too.

I'd also like some positive feedback on all the Group Members.

But, honestly IiRC, while all of them want to play, none of the others want to GM.
So, Ii UC only Talakeal's burning desire to both appease the group and play at any cost is keeping this thread alive.

[Quertus]

There are various ways it could have been run, I suppose, but one way to (meta-game) better ensure non-explosive negotiations would be to enter an action scene, declare all participants to be on the same side, and that way everyone is guaranteed that any attempt at betrayal at least grants a mechanical defense. So if run that way, the rogue could enter the scene 'on the party's side' in which case they couldn't take aggressive actions against the party, but also would have at least some warning if the party was going to take aggressive actions against them. Or alternately, they could enter the scene on a separate side, allowing them to take aggressive actions but also clearly signalling that taking aggressive actions against them was appropriate.

It also lets the Illithids remain on the party's side even if things break out with the rogue, so one could literally say that Bob's action of including them in friendly fire without explicitly initiating betrayal was against the rules of the system (because in that case, Bob is required to consider them an ally until the following turn).

Wow. Yeah, that definitely paints some different pictures.

I'm trying to decide how I feel about that.

Is it nice that, from a metagame perspective, you can use the system to manipulate the outcome? Does the system represent the "Sense Motive" rolls people should be making anyway (which Bob arguably did by dent of the Illithids not attacking the Rogue)? In which case, why does it produce seemingly different results? Has our - or, well, my - gaming experience clouded my judgement regarding how scenarios "should" play out?

Senility willing, I'll ponder this for a bit.

[Talakeal]

Sorry for the lack of updates over the weekend, I was sick and this thread was getting a bit headed, so I decided to take a break from the internet for a few days.

So, we played again. Everything went good, the players actually did really well, used great tactics, worked as a team, and kicked a lot of butt. Two sessions left until the climax!

I still definitely need to work on my communication, there were several times when I noticed I was being needlessly obtuse about stuff, and am making a definite effort to work on it.

There was also a situation that was the inverse of last week, where there was a standoff and the player's sent their new rogue to sneak up behind their enemies and pickpocket their weapons out of their holsters.

I agree with you 100%, to the point that I suspect Talakeal of epically trolling the members of this forum.

Go back to the original post in this thread where Bob is complaining about the use of Legendary actions by bosses. If you read it bearing in mind that (1) they are playing a home brew game; (2) based on 3.5, which doesn’t have Legendary Actions; and (3) Bob is a professional game tester; the post reads very differently.

Talakeal’s tendency to omit relevant information in most of the posts concerning his games (like the fact that it took him 800 posts to mention that the game is homebrew) suggests that none of this really happened.

If none of this really happened I am going to a lot of work for a troll; I am currently actually publishing a campaign diary of the game on this and several other forums, and would have written 150k words detailing a game that is all in my head.

The system in question is a home-brewed d20 fantasy game. It is not based on 3.5. It is similar to my Heart of Darkness system, and set in the campaign world, but it does not use the Heart of Darkness rules.

Bob was not the one described in the OP, it was Brian. I am keeping it fairly system agnostic, because it is something that comes up in any game where a lone boss monster has a mechanic to counteract the action economy of a group; be it legendary actions or lair actions in 5E, solo monsters in 4E, brutal power attacks in Lord of the Rings, Thunder Stomp in Warhammer, etc. Brain hates them all equally, and gets mad in any of the games we play, and I didn't think it was worth splitting hairs saying "not actually legendary actions in 5E but a functionally identical system which allows large monsters to take additional attacks when outnumbered by small creatures in the nameless home brew d20 fantasy game we are currently playing".


Honestly this thread has drifted far afield, and I am not quite sure why; I have made several more recent threads which died quickly, while this one keeps getting pumped to the top, and at this point I have just decided to go with it and use it as a general help thread for my games.

I am a little confused:
A) On the one hand, Bob is a very good mechanical optimizer and a professional game tester in real life;
B) The party is also generally very cautious, to the point that you complain about them going back to town after every fight to recover;

However, in this campaign, the party has had multiple TPKs, and several near TPKs. In a separate thread, you have also raised the concern that unless the players spend all of their gold upgrading their equipment, they will be killed by the BBEG.

The only way I can reconcile all of these statements is that the encounters you are throwing at the party are far too challenging. Is this the case?

Not really no.

Bob has a very different style of gaming than I do. I consider a 95% success rate to be sufficient, Bob wants it to be 100%. Likewise he likes to win by grinding until the encounters are trivial, something which doesn't really work in tabletop games.

Basically, I am adhering to what would be "average difficulty" if you were running later editions D&D by the books, 4-6 encounters per adventuring day each of which are each designed to use up ~15-20% of the party's resources in a white room scenario. But sometimes bad lucks or bad planning happen and things go south.

You might consider that too difficult, I don't, but I guess its ultimately subjective.

In a separate thread, you have also raised the concern that unless the players spend all of their gold upgrading their equipment, they will be killed by the BBEG.

I don't think it like that.

I said I don't want them to go into the final battle below full strength. I don't think it is at all likely that they will lose because they don't have level appropriate equipment, but it is a possibility that I want to avuid.

True, difficulty level is mostly a matter of personal preference. But I do find it interesting that the system is intended as an introductory-level game, yet in play an optimizer and professional tester considers it high difficulty. Were I building a system intended as an introduction to RPGs, that would be disturbing feedback, worthy of at least a second professional opinion. I am dismayed that, as an introduction, it leaves players decidedly - deceptively - unprepared for D&D ("look, it's Illithids - we should bunch up and fight defensively"). And I am concerned that, should Talakeal attempt to publish this system, D&D will defend its intellectual property (Talakeal, you might want to remove all references to Illithids, beholders, and whatever else the Dragon of the Dungeon jealously guards).

Difficulty and simplicity are not the same thing.

Bob prefers something like playing Pun-Pun in 3.5, very complex but allowing him to utterly ignore any challenge; while he would consider something like a fair fight between two first level fighters in 4e to be both too hard and too simple for his play style.

I am not trying to train players to play D&D specifically, I think the odds of me running a D&D group are pretty small at this point as I much prefer either Heart of Darkness or Mage: The Ascension, although I suppose I might run 5E if I can't find anyone interested in anything else.

Also, don't worry, nothing I publish has any D&D trademarks in it.

Skimmed Heart of Darkness. If that's the system, I think it's necessary to drop D&D terminology almost entirely from this discussion. Its vaguely d20-ish, but some aspects seem more like they're on a World of Darkness scale than a D&D scale (e.g. as far as I can tell, it looks like the HP equivalent only goes up to 10, but it has M&M style damage saves to determine if you move down the track). Readying also works differently enough that it's unobvious how to read it in their situation, though I think its weaker than D&D readying (it's an initiative modifier)

I really appreciate you taking the time to look at my system! If you have any questions of comments about it, I would love to hear them.

(If it's Heart of Darkness then) this segment of the rules seems germane to what happened with the Illithids/Rogue/Party:

There are various ways it could have been run, I suppose, but one way to (meta-game) better ensure non-explosive negotiations would be to enter an action scene, declare all participants to be on the same side, and that way everyone is guaranteed that any attempt at betrayal at least grants a mechanical defense. So if run that way, the rogue could enter the scene 'on the party's side' in which case they couldn't take aggressive actions against the party, but also would have at least some warning if the party was going to take aggressive actions against them. Or alternately, they could enter the scene on a separate side, allowing them to take aggressive actions but also clearly signalling that taking aggressive actions against them was appropriate.

It also lets the Illithids remain on the party's side even if things break out with the rogue, so one could literally say that Bob's action of including them in friendly fire without explicitly initiating betrayal was against the rules of the system (because in that case, Bob is required to consider them an ally until the following turn).

Yeah, the defection rules are a bit of a complex edge case, I am trying to keep things simple for new players, and the rules are really meant for in combat betrayal rather a team where side's are unclear to begin with.

[kyoryu]

Honestly, if "failure" equals "TPK", then 5% failure rate is too high.

The fix for this is to have failure modes (retreat, casting spells to escape, whatever) that are not TPKs.

[NichG]

I really appreciate you taking the time to look at my system! If you have any questions of comments about it, I would love to hear them.

First the good stuff:

- I like the quirks, flaws, etc system, and it looks like you've been pretty confident in making those potentially transformative for how a character plays. Things like being able to be totally immune to magic (both good and bad) as a character gen option jumps out at me as a good thing - it paints characters in bold, bright colors and really lets the style of play be transformed by a player's choices.

- The skills seem very detailed and have lots of use-cases, which I think helps players get an idea of what they can do with them. However, there's so much content there that I can't comment in detail based on the length of my read (about 30 minutes paging through the doc). With the short read I did, my initial impression at least was that the skills are more 'empower a character to do X' rather than 'check if a character passes X externally imposed challenge', which I appreciate.

- I generally like the idea of stats which contribute pools of special actions (e.g. Charisma -> Destiny, and the like). It makes them feel more impactful than just being another numerical modifier.

- The magical artifact system (including tonics, etc) seemed interesting. A lot will live and die on the specific mechanics, which I didn't have time to go into in depth, but it certainly caught my eye and would make me do a deeper read if I were making a character.

As far as criticisms, there are a few things that jumped out at me, but I might see more/differently on a deeper reading. In order of impression as I read:

- The actual document is organized in a way that makes it difficult to quickly get up to speed or use it as reference. Specifically, there's a lot of intricate setting detail up front. What I'd generally expect is for the most universally relevant things to be said first, then have the level of detail grow the further into the document I get. So that might mean doing something like establishing enough setting detail to make broad themes and moods clear, enough mechanical detail so that people know basically how the game works (barring character-specific options), etc, then going into the details that may not be relevant to every reader later on (either coupling it with setting and mood information as is usually done in World of Darkness books, or just making them separate sections).

- It sort of feels like the way that damage actually works is a bit hidden. You've got one section explaining that Endurance determines Vitality and that Vitality=0 is a breakpoint that gets you in trouble. Then you have the thing about damage saves in the combat section under Damage. However, the consequence of failure is described as e.g. 'being wounded', 'being wounded really badly', etc. At first I thought this was actually just some fluff thing where the DM decides what happens (especially since the system has particular rules for broken limbs, etc, but its not obvious how the rules tell you that you have a broken limb), but then I noticed later on that 'being wounded' = '2 damage', and 'being wounded, but receiving treatment' = '1 damage'. I'd want to see that summed up in one or two sentences under the Damage section in combat, before going into the details. For example: "Characters have a vitality score based on Endurance, and a resilience score. When a character suffers potential harm, they roll against a DC set by the attack, using their resilience. If they fail, they are wounded, which immediately decreases their vitality by 2, and may suffer additional consequences. A fumble leads to a critical wound (4 damage) and further consequences.'

- Progression seems... odd to me. It might be okay, but my instinct is that a player who approaches the progression in a balanced way is going to be far behind a player who approaches it in a min-max fashion. That said, at the same time, progression seems to create much smaller changes in ability than something like declaring 'I use a tool for this task'. For example, the entire range of variation in casting ability due to changes in Essence over the lifetime of a character seems to be equal to 'I use a grimoire' (also, I'm not actually sure how Essence increases...). So my instinct (if I were playing in a campaign using this system, or DMing it) would be to read into that very carefully and look for what the arc of a character is going to be like. I sort of have the feeling that the character themselves might matter less than gear in the end, and progression might feel very underwhelming (especially if you spread points around rather than just maxing out your most relevant stats). It's not necessarily a bad thing, but it could end up being one of those places where there's a strong mismatch in expectations leading to the system feeling unsatisfying or boring. One contributing factor is the relatively larger number of stats (8).

- Similarly, the stats seem a little unbalanced to me. Getting more Vitality seems really good. Getting destiny via Charisma seems really good. Getting a +3 to +5 for each point of Intelligence seems reasonable. Beyond that, ones which add to rolls are going to be fighting against the large variance of a d20. If I invest in Charisma, I can basically double my expected value on one roll (perhaps the roll that matters for life or death), but I would need to invest 10 points in something else to achieve the same effect. I'm not entirely sure I'm reading it right though - maybe I'm mistaken in thinking that some stats act primarily through adding to d20 rolls, and they all have some sort of special mechanic?

- I'm not sure that having a sequence of +X weapons and armor makes sense with the sort of impression I get from the rest of the system. It's like, in one direction you can have a game of stacking modifiers, but in the other direction you can have a game of broadening versatility. The way that damage saves work feels to me like it would be a lot harder to really feel a +1 (see in D&D for example, where +1 damage is actually weaker than +1 to hit in almost all cases, but psychologically the direct damage scaling feels more real since you have to roll a lot of d20s to feel a 5% chance in probabilities). It probably still is quadratically effective, but it's hidden behind a second statistical check, so I'd guess it would feel very flat. If I were redesigning it, I'd maybe instead focus on the fact that the system has lots of rules for e.g. disabling limbs and the like, and make 'magic weapons' be more about how those extra consequences of the enemy failing a damage save play out. A good example for this is Black Company d20's masterwork crafting rules - every + you get gives you the option to add an extra feature to the weapon or armor. But again, caveat that I might have misread things since I was going very fast.

- The system has both initiative as well as simultaneous action per side. I don't think I understand this, but it feels like it would significantly decrease the relevance of initiative in most situations.

- The way that spell effects scale with difficulty seemed unclear to me. It might be listed somewhere in the rules, but it took a bit of digging to figure out how someone casts spells in the first place (it's discussed in one place in the Enlightened trait, but then another place where it's talking about schools of magic and in a third place where it's talking about the spellcasting skills). I probably just need to go over spells in detail to really get an idea here, at which point I'd be looking at how much of the cool stuff is front-loaded versus is delivered as a progression reward.

There's probably a lot more I could say if I dug into it in depth (it's what, 600 pages? so that would take quite a bit), but that's the result of a 30 minute or so read. I did not look for combos or rules interactions or anything like that on this pass - I feel like a lot of things will hinge on whether you can use a bonus to a roll to unlock more bonuses (e.g. 'by casting this spell, I can hit the DC of that spell'). Another thing I'd look for is if characters other than spellcasters have some way to form and advance a base of power and versatility (e.g. going through the skill uses in more detail).

[King of Nowhere]

Honestly, if "failure" equals "TPK", then 5% failure rate is too high.

The fix for this is to have failure modes (retreat, casting spells to escape, whatever) that are not TPKs.

+1
When my campaign reached high level and the party started to get involved with big stuff, the lethality of the fights became high. As in, a good half of the fights killed a pc. And more than 5% of the times they had to escape to avoid a tpk.
But i designed the campaign with this in mind. True Resurrection was easy to get, and i made sure they were well stocked in escape mechanism. Every single character could have teleported the whole party away, and most of them were also difficult to affect with dimensional anchors, or could easily get rid of them.
So it was absolutely normal that sometimes the bad guys managed to outmanuever them and the party had to gtfo. The villains also retreated from losing fights if possible.

But i never read anything of the sort here. The party seems to fight to the death, and in case of tpk it is handwaved that they escaped somehow.
Maybe i'm wrong and they did run sometimes that we were not told.

But certainly the actual difficulty depends a lot on dscape mechanics.

[Talakeal]

Honestly, if "failure" equals "TPK", then 5% failure rate is too high.

The fix for this is to have failure modes (retreat, casting spells to escape, whatever) that are not TPKs.

It does not. This means that the players are forced to retreat, give up, fail to accomplish their goal, or something goes wrong and they accomplish their goal at too great a price (for example, defeated the bad guys but got the hostages killed in the cross fire).

Also not that the 5% is per adventure, not per encounter.

TPKs are almost unheard of in my games, and in my current game actually impossible as HP represent morale rather than injury and running out of them causes retreat rather than death.

[King of Nowhere]

TPKs are in my current game actually impossible as HP represent morale rather than injury and running out of them causes retreat rather than death.

If the party gets defeated in combat, it's still a tpk. Especially because the enemies don't get the same treatment, they just die normally (and drop loot).
I actually consider your rule a tpk retconned by deus ex machina. Not to bash on it, it's a perfectly legitimate style, but it is a tpk regardless of how you protect the players from its consequence

[Talakeal]

If the party gets defeated in combat, it's still a tpk. Especially because the enemies don't get the same treatment, they just die normally (and drop loot).
I actually consider your rule a tpk retconned by deus ex machina. Not to bash on it, it's a perfectly legitimate style, but it is a tpk regardless of how you protect the players from its consequence

Not sure if I agree with you about the deus ex machina part.

Having a system without rules for PC death is not a deus ex machina imo, a deus ex machina would be something like having Elminster teleport in and save the PCs bacon every time they were about to lose or something.

First the good stuff:

- I like the quirks, flaws, etc system, and it looks like you've been pretty confident in making those potentially transformative for how a character plays. Things like being able to be totally immune to magic (both good and bad) as a character gen option jumps out at me as a good thing - it paints characters in bold, bright colors and really lets the style of play be transformed by a player's choices.

- The skills seem very detailed and have lots of use-cases, which I think helps players get an idea of what they can do with them. However, there's so much content there that I can't comment in detail based on the length of my read (about 30 minutes paging through the doc). With the short read I did, my initial impression at least was that the skills are more 'empower a character to do X' rather than 'check if a character passes X externally imposed challenge', which I appreciate.

- I generally like the idea of stats which contribute pools of special actions (e.g. Charisma -> Destiny, and the like). It makes them feel more impactful than just being another numerical modifier.

- The magical artifact system (including tonics, etc) seemed interesting. A lot will live and die on the specific mechanics, which I didn't have time to go into in depth, but it certainly caught my eye and would make me do a deeper read if I were making a character.

As far as criticisms, there are a few things that jumped out at me, but I might see more/differently on a deeper reading. In order of impression as I read:

- The actual document is organized in a way that makes it difficult to quickly get up to speed or use it as reference. Specifically, there's a lot of intricate setting detail up front. What I'd generally expect is for the most universally relevant things to be said first, then have the level of detail grow the further into the document I get. So that might mean doing something like establishing enough setting detail to make broad themes and moods clear, enough mechanical detail so that people know basically how the game works (barring character-specific options), etc, then going into the details that may not be relevant to every reader later on (either coupling it with setting and mood information as is usually done in World of Darkness books, or just making them separate sections).

- It sort of feels like the way that damage actually works is a bit hidden. You've got one section explaining that Endurance determines Vitality and that Vitality=0 is a breakpoint that gets you in trouble. Then you have the thing about damage saves in the combat section under Damage. However, the consequence of failure is described as e.g. 'being wounded', 'being wounded really badly', etc. At first I thought this was actually just some fluff thing where the DM decides what happens (especially since the system has particular rules for broken limbs, etc, but its not obvious how the rules tell you that you have a broken limb), but then I noticed later on that 'being wounded' = '2 damage', and 'being wounded, but receiving treatment' = '1 damage'. I'd want to see that summed up in one or two sentences under the Damage section in combat, before going into the details. For example: "Characters have a vitality score based on Endurance, and a resilience score. When a character suffers potential harm, they roll against a DC set by the attack, using their resilience. If they fail, they are wounded, which immediately decreases their vitality by 2, and may suffer additional consequences. A fumble leads to a critical wound (4 damage) and further consequences.'

- Progression seems... odd to me. It might be okay, but my instinct is that a player who approaches the progression in a balanced way is going to be far behind a player who approaches it in a min-max fashion. That said, at the same time, progression seems to create much smaller changes in ability than something like declaring 'I use a tool for this task'. For example, the entire range of variation in casting ability due to changes in Essence over the lifetime of a character seems to be equal to 'I use a grimoire' (also, I'm not actually sure how Essence increases...). So my instinct (if I were playing in a campaign using this system, or DMing it) would be to read into that very carefully and look for what the arc of a character is going to be like. I sort of have the feeling that the character themselves might matter less than gear in the end, and progression might feel very underwhelming (especially if you spread points around rather than just maxing out your most relevant stats). It's not necessarily a bad thing, but it could end up being one of those places where there's a strong mismatch in expectations leading to the system feeling unsatisfying or boring. One contributing factor is the relatively larger number of stats (8).

- Similarly, the stats seem a little unbalanced to me. Getting more Vitality seems really good. Getting destiny via Charisma seems really good. Getting a +3 to +5 for each point of Intelligence seems reasonable. Beyond that, ones which add to rolls are going to be fighting against the large variance of a d20. If I invest in Charisma, I can basically double my expected value on one roll (perhaps the roll that matters for life or death), but I would need to invest 10 points in something else to achieve the same effect. I'm not entirely sure I'm reading it right though - maybe I'm mistaken in thinking that some stats act primarily through adding to d20 rolls, and they all have some sort of special mechanic?

- I'm not sure that having a sequence of +X weapons and armor makes sense with the sort of impression I get from the rest of the system. It's like, in one direction you can have a game of stacking modifiers, but in the other direction you can have a game of broadening versatility. The way that damage saves work feels to me like it would be a lot harder to really feel a +1 (see in D&D for example, where +1 damage is actually weaker than +1 to hit in almost all cases, but psychologically the direct damage scaling feels more real since you have to roll a lot of d20s to feel a 5% chance in probabilities). It probably still is quadratically effective, but it's hidden behind a second statistical check, so I'd guess it would feel very flat. If I were redesigning it, I'd maybe instead focus on the fact that the system has lots of rules for e.g. disabling limbs and the like, and make 'magic weapons' be more about how those extra consequences of the enemy failing a damage save play out. A good example for this is Black Company d20's masterwork crafting rules - every + you get gives you the option to add an extra feature to the weapon or armor. But again, caveat that I might have misread things since I was going very fast.

- The system has both initiative as well as simultaneous action per side. I don't think I understand this, but it feels like it would significantly decrease the relevance of initiative in most situations.

- The way that spell effects scale with difficulty seemed unclear to me. It might be listed somewhere in the rules, but it took a bit of digging to figure out how someone casts spells in the first place (it's discussed in one place in the Enlightened trait, but then another place where it's talking about schools of magic and in a third place where it's talking about the spellcasting skills). I probably just need to go over spells in detail to really get an idea here, at which point I'd be looking at how much of the cool stuff is front-loaded versus is delivered as a progression reward.

There's probably a lot more I could say if I dug into it in depth (it's what, 600 pages? so that would take quite a bit), but that's the result of a 30 minute or so read. I did not look for combos or rules interactions or anything like that on this pass - I feel like a lot of things will hinge on whether you can use a bonus to a roll to unlock more bonuses (e.g. 'by casting this spell, I can hit the DC of that spell'). Another thing I'd look for is if characters other than spellcasters have some way to form and advance a base of power and versatility (e.g. going through the skill uses in more detail).

Thanks again! If you (are anyone else) ever want to give it a more in depth look, I always appreciate it and am happy to receive any feedback or answer any questions.

I agree with most everything you said, even the bad stuff. A few responses to specific points:

The heavy setting stuff at the beginning is actually a pretty common complaint, but it might be a bit late to do anything about now. Basically, when the book was first written, it was patterned off of early 2000s White Wolf Books, particularly Exalted 1E, which seemed to take pride in putting the setting before the rules, figuratively and literally, and I was aping that style.


Damage was actually one of the things that changed a lot in play testing, so I see how it might be poorly laid out. Basically, when you are hit by an attack you test to see if you take damage. If your damage total is less than your vitality, you are fine. If your damage total exceeds your vitality, you need to make a save every time you take damage or suffer worse effects up to and including death.


Progression does tend to be fairly flat, and this is intentional. Essence is a sort of soft pacing mechanism, and isn't used much, although some merits do scale based on essence (most relevant being Legendary Skill), and Essence automatically increases over time. There is obviously a sweet spot between specialist and generalist characters, but exactly where that lies often depends on the size and composition of the group as a whole.


Every stat modifies rolls and provides some sort of passive benefit. Obviously, some are more useful for some characters than others, but all of them are important for every character.


Gear with increasing quality is very important to the game; it has strong themes of colonialism in the backstory, and Atlantean metellurgy is what allows more or less human characters to stand up to magic and monsters. Note, however, that the bonuses on gear are all technological in nature, actual magic artifacts are both much rarer and more mechanically interesting.


All characters on the same side act simultaneously. Initiative is only used for determining who can, in D&D parlance, act in the surprise round and to resolve complex situations involving delayed actions or interrupting other characters.


Spells do not scale with difficulty as such. To cast a spell, a character must roll a d20 and add their occult skill, and the result must exceed the spell's difficulty. All spells have a base difficulty listed in their entry, but metamagics can be applied to modify the spell's difficulty and effects. The rules for spell casting are laid out in Chapter Three in the Occult Skills section, and are greatly elaborated on in Chapter Six.

[patchyman]

If none of this really happened I am going to a lot of work for a troll; I am currently actually publishing a campaign diary of the game on this and several other forums, and would have written 150k words detailing a game that is all in my head.

The system in question is a home-brewed d20 fantasy game. It is not based on 3.5. It is similar to my Heart of Darkness system, and set in the campaign world, but it does not use the Heart of Darkness rules.

Bob was not the one described in the OP, it was Brian. I am keeping it fairly system agnostic, because it is something that comes up in any game where a lone boss monster has a mechanic to counteract the action economy of a group; be it legendary actions or lair actions in 5E, solo monsters in 4E, brutal power attacks in Lord of the Rings, Thunder Stomp in Warhammer, etc. Brain hates them all equally, and gets mad in any of the games we play, and I didn't think it was worth splitting hairs saying "not actually legendary actions in 5E but a functionally identical system which allows large monsters to take additional attacks when outnumbered by small creatures in the nameless home brew d20 fantasy game we are currently playing".


Honestly this thread has drifted far afield, and I am not quite sure why; I have made several more recent threads which died quickly, while this one keeps getting pumped to the top, and at this point I have just decided to go with it and use it as a general help thread for my games.

Fair enough. I apologize for being overly suspicious.

[TexAvery]

Eh, I dunno. Most heroice fiction involves a large number of setbacks to the heroes.

I mean, look at Ep. 5.

Heroes may get captured, and they're not stupid. Sometimes they lose. Sometimes they have to retreat and cut their losses. The difference, to me, is that they don't let that stop them. They keep fighting and find a way.

Or even ROTJ (assuming I got the correct "ep5", and it still works if I didn't) - Luke hands over his lightsaber (!) and surrenders, to be taken to Palpatine's throne room in manacles. It was, of course, not true submission/ surrender, but a serious gambit to get himself face to face with the BBEG. It, of course, worked in a movie with a script, but is not the way most D&D players would expect to play (not leastwise because it split the party and created a three-way fork for the final act which would have been a nightmare to run).

So yeah, I literally read all thirty-two pages of this over the last several days, during my "kick around on the internet" time. Wow. And so many specific things I wanted to respond to from months ago, but will keep my comments to the more recent items.

Talakeal, one thing I haven't seen anyone note is how much you enjoy the WW system. In my experience, people who like WW will rub me the wrong way, quite badly, in D&D. Even when describing your setting doc (which I haven't looked at yet but hope to soon), you talk about putting the setting before the rules, in the spirit of WW. If Bob is like me in this respect (and if he's a crunchy game tester, I almost guarantee he is), he wants a world with a consistent set of rules he can interact with. You seem to want to story to be told, and want the players to share your vision for that story, and have no issues with the rules being shaped to fit that story.

To bounce from the Star Wars example above, I absolutely loathe Star Trek. It pretends (and claims) to be "serious SF instead of that Star Wars space opera nonsense", but the holodeck behaves differently from week to week based on how the writer wants it to. As does the transporter. As does... literally everything else. Every time it changes, I lose my suspension of disbelief. Clearly a lot of other people disagree, but I'd be curious how Bob feels.

For all that the rogue encounter was discussed, no one has commented on this: you had a framework for how you expected it to play out, which would have made an outstanding scene in a movie. At least one of your players did not see your vision for that scene, and it seems people here (including me) don't either, at a very high rate. For what it's worth, the rogue's comment as you wrote them sounded like the prelude to a fight (explaining his reasons for anger) rather than the prelude to a parlay. It only works with information they couldn't have had.

That sort of thing is how I felt every time I tried to play WW games, and it was worse the more enthusiastic other people were. Every action felt like it was "wrong", and that everyone else was reading from a script I didn't have, and it ended poorly (though nothing like what you describe). It was frustrating, and I went through the motions for the sake of my friends and having literally any form of social life, but it was miserable.

I used to live in Boulder; if I still did I would love to be able to sit in on a session. Not that I believe you're lying or deliberately misrepresenting the situation, but it would be interesting to see the whole situation from another perspective.

Since this thread has become quite large in scope, I also want to address "gotcha" monsters. Off the top, they're terrible. They're terrible in a technical, game-design perspective, in that they force the player to take the hit up front and only learn for the next encounter (possibly as a new character). To GG, that was the intent, and players were expected to churn through huge numbers of low-level characters before "earning" the right to survive more than a few sessions (which is terrible and abusive on its own). It also caused a disconnect with future versions, in which players are encouraged to become invested in their characters and put effort into developing and expressing their personalities. In a system in which that character might die for no good reason other than the DM "teaching the player not to reach into a log", why bother? Just stab things in the face until you need to roll up a new one. If I ever write out the system in my head, characters will be very durable against death for exactly that reason.

This affects video games as well. Back in Doom, the monster closets pissed me off to no end, until I started walking backwards over every major powerup or key. That worked, but it was still terrible design for playing through the first time; it was from an arcade perspective where the player was expected to replay and restart levels and episodes until they learned all the gotchas. I hated it (but there were fewer options, and especially fewer options that had anything like the rest of the experience Doom brought). In Halo, more aliens are certainly placed onto the level in various circumstances, but to my memory it was never "pick up powerup, get shot in the back with no warning". That was a game expected to be played through more-or-less linearly.

D&D would be much better off with the "gotcha" monsters eliminated or reworked. The rust monster is cool if there's a warning, ditto for the slimes and oozes that eat weapons or split when hit with a blade (as long as it's not a tool to take away the fighter's favorite or best weapon, and the party has a way to deal with it). The mimic... maybe as a once-a-year surprise, if the party can deal with it fairly easily. The "ogre" with the "big nose" that lets it sneeze a Gust of Wind? I would have never made that connection, especially as lots of monsters are described as having large noses. On the other hand, your sick/ infected dragon sounds awesome, and from the description you've given I'd actually be surprised if it did breathe fire as normal. I certainly wouldn't describe that one as a "gotcha".

I don't know if that was even everything I wanted to say, but that seems like plenty enough for now.

[Great Dragon]

Or even ROTJ (assuming I got the correct "ep5", and it still works if I didn't)

SW =TPM is ep1, TCW is ep2, RotS is ep3, ANH is ep4, ESB is ep5, ROTJ is ep6, TFA is ep7, TLJ is ep 8 and RoS is ep9. Don't feel too bad, I have to type it out to remember the names of these as well.

But, I did see and understand the point that while surrender (or even a TPK) isn't necessarily Death, it is a setback to the PC/s.

So yeah, I literally read all thirty-two pages of this over the last several days, during my "kick around on the internet" time.

My hat is off to ya.

Talakeal, one thing I haven't seen anyone note is how much you enjoy the WW system.
In my experience, people who like WW will rub me the wrong way, quite badly, in D&D.

I also have problems with WW - in that even though they use the same Mechanics, very few of the "Creature" Books are compatible with each other. The Fluff being super focused on that one Creature isn't my problem, it's that both the Fluff and the Crunch are designed to have that Creature overshadow all the others that's the problem. Or, in the case of MAGE, how much of a 'struggle' it is to be one.

To bounce from the Star Wars example above, I absolutely loathe Star Trek.

The S.T. tRPG is a little more consistent then the Shows, but that fact doesn't help because the Players expect the GM to just technobabble (or Deus ex Machina RP) their way out of the corner they painted themselves into.

For all that the rogue encounter was discussed, no one has commented on this: you had a framework for how you expected it to play out, which would have made an outstanding scene in a movie. {snip} It only works with information they couldn't have had.

My main point was that tRPGs aren't supposed to be scripted, and Players shouldn't be expected to just sit and let bad things happen to their Characters like they are members of the Audience.

That sort of thing is how I felt every time I tried to play WW games, and it was worse the more enthusiastic other people were. Every action felt like it was "wrong", and that everyone else was reading from a script I didn't have, and it ended poorly (though nothing like what you describe). It was frustrating, and I went through the motions for the sake of my friends and having literally any form of social life, but it was miserable.

These kind of situations can happen in any game - from Monopoly (against the Financial Expert) to MGT (where the Player spend $5k on building their deck to perfection) to M&M/V&V where you were content being Iron Fist for power level, and everyone else is on Magneto's Level.

D&D would be much better off with the "gotcha" monsters eliminated or reworked. The rust monster is cool if there's a warning, ditto for the slimes and oozes that eat weapons or split when hit with a blade (as long as it's not a tool to take away the fighter's favorite or best weapon, and the party has a way to deal with it). The mimic... maybe as a once-a-year surprise, if the party can deal with it fairly easily. The "ogre" with the "big nose" that lets it sneeze a Gust of Wind? I would have never made that connection, especially as lots of monsters are described as having large noses. On the other hand, your sick/ infected dragon sounds awesome, and from the description you've given I'd actually be surprised if it did breathe fire as normal. I certainly wouldn't describe that one as a "gotcha".

I hated EGG, in the fact that everything he did required expertise level understanding of the Rules and a ton of Meta. But, while DA cared more about the PC's "Personality" and 'Development', even he had a lot of situations where the player not knowing what was going on could kill the PC.
Not everyone (IC or - especially - OoC) is on Batman's level as a Fighting Detective.

I agree that there should be more context and Environmental cues to a lot of the Gotcha monsters.
The lone chest in the last room of the hallway? = should always be suspected of being a Mimic.
Or at least some kind of Trap or Ambush.

Why are there no trails everywhere when encountering slimes and oozes? These things are literally mindless eating machines, and they should be in constant motion looking for food. I strongly dislike the Video Game Logic where everything is Suspended in Time until the PC/s arrive. Sure, I can't always plan these things out, like when I hit a Random Monster Generator to get what the next Encounter is, but I still at least try to describe what is encountered in as believable a manner as possible.

And the Cursed/Diseased Dragon wouldn't have been a Gotcha, especially if there were NPCs nearby that gave any comments about it. But, the options that people gave for giving descriptions for being discovered without those NPCs - dying vegetation, animals covered in rotting slime, etc - would have been enough to Clues to the Players to have their PCs prepare for an unusual encounter.

[GrayDeath]

Checking in on the "WW/D&D" Axis: I like both Systems.

But I would NOT like going to a story focus adverrtized Vampire Game and experience everybody playing "Murdermachines of Doom" and the Setting consisting of "you are Sabbat Elites, go destroy this city".

As little as I would like a D&D (like) advertized Game where, aside from one or 2 setting specific things, the rules were placed "after" the story.

So yeah, hawking in on the Play Style disconnect. But you have received a lot of recommendations on ho to approach that problem already. :)

[TexAvery]

SW =TPM is ep1, TCW is ep2, RotS is ep3, ANH is ep4, ESB is ep5, ROTJ is ep6, TFA is ep7, TLJ is ep 8 and RoS is ep9. Don't feel too bad, I have to type it out to remember the names of these as well.

Oh, I knew which was which, but "ep5" alone could mean a bunch of different series.

My main point was that tRPGs aren't supposed to be scripted, and Players shouldn't be expected to just sit and let bad things happen to their Characters like they are members of the Audience.

These kind of situations can happen in any game - from Monopoly (against the Financial Expert) to MGT (where the Player spend $5k on building their deck to perfection) to M&M/V&V where you were content being Iron Fist for power level, and everyone else is on Magneto's Level.

I'm lumping these together because to me, they're sort of the same thing and possibly me not communicating well enough. The issues I had with WW weren't about system mastery, it was not getting the overall thrust of the game. In WW, everyone (else) seemed to be flowing through a story, while I was looking for an engine to interact with and always seemed to run counter to the goals of the party.

I hated EGG, in the fact that everything he did required expertise level understanding of the Rules and a ton of Meta. But, while DA cared more about the PC's "Personality" and 'Development', even he had a lot of situations where the player not knowing what was going on could kill the PC.
Not everyone (IC or - especially - OoC) is on Batman's level as a Fighting Detective.

I agree that there should be more context and Environmental cues to a lot of the Gotcha monsters.
The lone chest in the last room of the hallway? = should always be suspected of being a Mimic.
Or at least some kind of Trap or Ambush.

Why are there no trails everywhere when encountering slimes and oozes? These things are literally mindless eating machines, and they should be in constant motion looking for food. I strongly dislike the Video Game Logic where everything is Suspended in Time until the PC/s arrive. Sure, I can't always plan these things out, like when I hit a Random Monster Generator to get what the next Encounter is, but I still at least try to describe what is encountered in as believable a manner as possible.

And the Cursed/Diseased Dragon wouldn't have been a Gotcha, especially if there were NPCs nearby that gave any comments about it. But, the options that people gave for giving descriptions for being discovered without those NPCs - dying vegetation, animals covered in rotting slime, etc - would have been enough to Clues to the Players to have their PCs prepare for an unusual encounter.

Yes, overall the various assumptions of "classic" D&D do a poor job of serving the goals of most modern players. And the Batman-level of detective skills require a script, either to ensure that he succeeds in finding the answer or that missing the answer is non-fatal. With a script, needing to research (or just search) everything to barely be able to squeak out a victory is great. In a game, it can mean spending an hour searching an empty room, driving everyone batty with frustration, then walking into the next room and dying because that was the room to search. It is profoundly unsatisfying unless everyone is perfectly in-tune, and it can all still fall apart in a moment if someone gets off-track.

[Great Dragon]

Thanks for responding to me!! Very appreciated.

Oh, I knew which was which, but "ep5" alone could mean a bunch of different series.

Which is what prompted me to put "SW" at the beginning of that info
Otherwise there would be 10k posts of "which ep5"?

I'm lumping these together because to me, they're sort of the same thing and possibly me not communicating well enough. The issues I had with WW weren't about system mastery, it was not getting the overall thrust of the game. In WW, everyone (else) seemed to be flowing through a story, while I was looking for an engine to interact with and always seemed to run counter to the goals of the party.

I found that WW was even more "GM decides" than 5e.
If the GM wants mechanics to be used to get though a Challenge, there's like the smallest motor to get your boat across the lake - assuming you brought enough 2-stage oil to run it.
But, if the GM wants to just use description and TotM to accomplish goals - that's actually easier.

Yes, overall the various assumptions of "classic" D&D do a poor job of serving the goals of most modern players. And the Batman-level of detective skills require a script, either to ensure that he succeeds in finding the answer or that missing the answer is non-fatal. With a script, needing to research (or just search) everything to barely be able to squeak out a victory is great. In a game, it can mean spending an hour searching an empty room, driving everyone batty with frustration, then walking into the next room and dying because that was the room to search. It is profoundly unsatisfying unless everyone is perfectly in-tune, and it can all still fall apart in a moment if someone gets off-track.

For me, I didn't sit down at the table to be handed a script.
Piecing Clues on how to unlock the Door to the next Level is about as far as I go.
And if I failed the blasted Investigate/Search DC and failed to find a piece, I'm not interested in scouring the entire level looking for it. The Rule of Three Clues should be enforced, even if I have to play House with the Hag's Kids or something.

[Max_Killjoy]

For me, I didn't sit down at the table to be handed a script.

Indeed -- or to write a script "collaboratively", for that matter.

[Cluedrew]

To Max_Killjoy: I think I know you well enough to know why you say you don't want to write a script, but why the quotes around "collaboratively"?

[Satinavian]

To Max_Killjoy: I think I know you well enough to know why you say you don't want to write a script, but why the quotes around "collaboratively"?

It is a snarky side comment against narrative game design where all the players has metapowers to significantly add to the story, but where drama and storytelling still is the main focus instead of e.g. events flowing naturally from what is already established and likely to happen.

[Great Dragon]

More replies to me!
Thanks, folks.

It is a snarky side comment against narrative game design where all the players has metapowers to significantly add to the story, but where drama and storytelling still is the main focus instead of e.g. events flowing naturally from what is already established and likely to happen.

If "Metapowers" was the intent for game play from Day One, I can tolerate it.
Like "Fate" or "Masks" or M&M.

But, yeah D&D wasn't designed around that; and I really dislike "Retconning" Metapowers.
Only the DM should have these, and still only use them to keep "events flowing naturally from what is already established and likely to happen."