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  1. - Top - End - #31
    Barbarian in the Playground
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    Default Re: Is there a meaningful distinction to be made between the system and the content?

    Quote Originally Posted by PhoenixPhyre View Post
    Let's put some markers on that particular spectrum (the coupling between system and content). Some will have examples, others won't:
    I think it is an interesting way to break them down, but to be fair based on what you wrote I think D&D moved from 20 to 40 a while ago. Far too many mechanics designed to support their core settings in my opinion to fit 20 now. But yes, I am sure there will be those who disagree.
    *It isn't realism, it's verisimilitude... seeming to be true within the context of the game world.

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  2. - Top - End - #32
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    Default Re: Is there a meaningful distinction to be made between the system and the content?

    Quote Originally Posted by HidesHisEyes View Post
    This seems about right, although I think I’d put D&D higher up, at least 5E in particular. To me the character classes - the presence of warlocks, paladins, druids etc - really strongly implies setting. And the differences between the classes and the experience of playing them is pretty close to the mechanical core of the game imo. They are mechanical objects but they are very much content at the same time.

    Also, your mention of “conforming settings” is interesting. If I understand what you mean by that then I think it would probably be impossible to design a game at level 0 on your scale, as you described it. I suspect that if you set out to design a *completely* generic RPG, it will still lean towards certain genres, or not even genres but game feels, depending on your design choices. I might be wrong about this but my intuition is that even “roll a d20 and add a modifier” vs “roll a pool of d6 and add them up” is going to affect whether most groups want to use it for, say, light hearted anarchic games or more serious fare. I’m kind of out on a limb here, but I think Risus is a good example of game that aspires to level 0 and actually reaches level 4 or 5 on your scale.
    Yeah, I'd separate genre from feel. The endpoints (0 and 110, the latter chosen as "this one goes to 11") are intentionally "off the scale"--you really can't get there and still have a functional system[1]. I'd put "doesn't tell you a genre, but does tell you a feel" at roughly 10. Feel is a weaker constraint than genre, but it's still a constraint (so not a 0).

    I think so…? Or I think the level of concreteness with which setting, scenario and characters are defined will usually match. Like, most PbtA games tell you enough about their setting that your take on it is going to fall within pretty clear limits, but it’s still a setting that you make. And then the playbooks don’t amount to full-on pregenerated characters, but they do have a lot to say about what kind of person the character is and their role in the narrative, not just their abilities. I actually think I’d put most PbtA games pretty straightforwardly in about the 70s on your scale. Blades is the 80s, Lady Blackbird getting close to 100 (and I’d cap it there).

    EDIT: But a few seconds after posting that I’m already doubting most of what I said, lol. It’s an interesting way of thinking about games in any case.

    EDIT 2 and then I promise I’ll stop: I would add two more terms into your flow so it goes:
    System -> feel -> genre -> setting -> scenario -> characters.

    Feel is sort of tone, atmosphere, vibes. Genre is genre of stories the game tells, defined fairly broadly.
    I agree with this, mostly. Feel is definitely weaker than genre, but I think that feel and genre aren't necessarily weaker than setting. Because you can have the same setting where some stories/scenarios in it have very different feels/genres than others. I think they're parallel tracks, both feeding into scenarios. At least when you take the large-scale view of a setting (ie an entire world that could be real, even if you only use a piece of it for any given story/campaign/etc). They're not entirely independent--you can couple them together quite hard (as do a lot of games and settings), but they can also be more decoupled. For instance, Ravenloft (the setting) is tied very very heavily to one set of feel/genre/scenario. On the other hand, you could (although probably best not with D&D) run a romantic comedy game set in Waterdeep in the Forgotten Realms with no adventurers in sight.

    As for examples, I don't have first-hand experience with PbtA, Blades, or Lady Blackbird, so I'm going off of what I've read about them, mainly on the forums. Dungeon World, as I understand it, puts quite hard limits on the types of scenarios you can pull off--you're basically locked into "delving through dark dungeons, with the real threat of loss and logistic concerns being omnipresent and characters not being 0 to hero". It wouldn't work very well for, say, a swashbuckling pirate game with more comedy and witticisms than monsters or a high-flying "us against the gods" planar scenario.

    Quote Originally Posted by dafrca View Post
    I think it is an interesting way to break them down, but to be fair based on what you wrote I think D&D moved from 20 to 40 a while ago. Far too many mechanics designed to support their core settings in my opinion to fit 20 now. But yes, I am sure there will be those who disagree.
    For me, the big distinction between 5e D&D (for instance) and PF on this spectrum is the presence of a "hard" default setting in the core books. 3e had a bit of this as well--it's "default" made pretty strong assumptions about the settings. Not quite as tightly detailed as Golarion, however. PF, for better or worse, fair or not, is identified (maybe just in my mind) with Golarion, while D&D incorporates multiple "conforming" settings, each relatively different. Even Forgotten Realms differs from the presentation of the defaults outlined in the PHB/DMG/MM in many ways. For instance, default paladins don't need a god at all. FR paladins get their powers directly from specific gods and have alignment requirements. FR's cosmology is also slightly different (the World Tree, rather than the modified Great Wheel). Etc.

    I run 5e D&D in a very non-standard world. And the mechanical changes I've had to make boil down to "you know, no creature has a default alignment. And anything that mechanically plays off of alignment...doesn't." Even though the planes themselves are pretty different and all the races have different lore (sometimes radically) and I've got a bunch of homebrew, you can use a stock race stat block just fine and all the core classes and 99.999% of the spells (there's one spell I don't allow for setting reasons, and that's from a much later splat) work fine.

    I very well could be wrong, but I know that Starfinder (for instance) is heavily tied to the setting in core mechanical ways. Another example is 13th Age, where even though you can swap out the setting, it has some fairly important things that have to be recreated (relationships with the Icons being the thing that comes to mind). May just be my bias, but that feels more tightly bound than "standard" D&D to me.

    [1] I mean, you can do pure free-form. But that's pushing the bounds for what counts as a system, just like the PF board game pushes the boundaries for what counts as a RPG on the other end.
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  3. - Top - End - #33
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    Default Re: Is there a meaningful distinction to be made between the system and the content?

    PheonixPhyre, yep good points.

    Although Dungeon World is not really like you describe. It’s wedded to the fantasy genre broadly, but it’s by no means a pure dungeon-crawler (despite the name). As it happens its mechanics actually suit swashbuckling and pulp adventure perfectly. I’d put it maybe just slightly higher up the scale than D&D.
    Last edited by HidesHisEyes; 2021-10-15 at 02:08 AM.

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    Default Re: Is there a meaningful distinction to be made between the system and the content?

    Quote Originally Posted by PhoenixPhyre View Post
    For me, the big distinction between 5e D&D (for instance) and PF on this spectrum is the presence of a "hard" default setting in the core books. 3e had a bit of this as well--it's "default" made pretty strong assumptions about the settings. Not quite as tightly detailed as Golarion, however. PF, for better or worse, fair or not, is identified (maybe just in my mind) with Golarion, while D&D incorporates multiple "conforming" settings, each relatively different. Even Forgotten Realms differs from the presentation of the defaults outlined in the PHB/DMG/MM in many ways. For instance, default paladins don't need a god at all. FR paladins get their powers directly from specific gods and have alignment requirements. FR's cosmology is also slightly different (the World Tree, rather than the modified Great Wheel). Etc.
    Yes, but you have paladins and they do get spells and you have clerics and they do get channel and so on. While D&D is not married to a single setting, all D&D settings are pretty similar.

    If you put D&D at 20, where is GURPS ? Or even GURPS with only the fantasy-appropriate books ?

    Also while Pathfinder only has one setting, it is not mechanically closer to it than D&D (what surprise, considering it is the same system at its core). It is not as if D&D doesn't have exactly as many setting specific rules even outside of setting books (Red Wizards, Suel Arcanamachs). I have to do exactly tthe same work to port a setting to Pathfinder as i have to do to port it to 3.5. I don't think it is particularly useful to put them at different points on the scale when you can effortlessly use Pathfinder for every D&D setting and D&D for Galorion.

    Generally my experience is that D&D does Fantasy settings that are not specifically made for it or inspired by it pretty poorly. I have found it way easer to apply other fantasy systems, even those that were not made to be universal. I mean, decades ago i have seen a group that found it easier to convert to Shadowrun of all things for some fantasy setting after having tried and failed to run it with AD&D2. (Nowaday with the internet, they would probably find something more fitting more easily)
    Last edited by Satinavian; 2021-10-15 at 02:28 AM.

  5. - Top - End - #35
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    Default Re: Is there a meaningful distinction to be made between the system and the content?

    Quote Originally Posted by PhoenixPhyre View Post
    Another example is 13th Age, where even though you can swap out the setting, it has some fairly important things that have to be recreated (relationships with the Icons being the thing that comes to mind). May just be my bias, but that feels more tightly bound than "standard" D&D to me.
    It's one of the things that appeals to me about 13th Age, the 'being attached to the setting' element of chargen. Sadly, our game didn't get very far before RL wrecked it (Scheduling has, once again, a DC of about 35).
    Empire of the Petal Throne (the first game I DM'd for an extended period) was similarly tied to its setting.
    My players loved that aspect of it.
    Last edited by KorvinStarmast; 2021-10-15 at 09:58 AM.
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  6. - Top - End - #36
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    Default Re: Is there a meaningful distinction to be made between the system and the content?

    Quote Originally Posted by HidesHisEyes View Post
    PheonixPhyre, yep good points.

    Although Dungeon World is not really like you describe. It’s wedded to the fantasy genre broadly, but it’s by no means a pure dungeon-crawler (despite the name). As it happens its mechanics actually suit swashbuckling and pulp adventure perfectly. I’d put it maybe just slightly higher up the scale than D&D.
    (Honest question, never really having delved into it): But would it work for a comedy game? One where the "action" component is basically background? Or a cosmic-level (like Exalted) game? From what I understand, it's fairly "grounded" and low power, and assumes that most of what you're doing is "adventuring".

    Quote Originally Posted by Satinavian View Post
    Yes, but you have paladins and they do get spells and you have clerics and they do get channel and so on. While D&D is not married to a single setting, all D&D settings are pretty similar.

    If you put D&D at 20, where is GURPS ? Or even GURPS with only the fantasy-appropriate books ?

    Also while Pathfinder only has one setting, it is not mechanically closer to it than D&D (what surprise, considering it is the same system at its core). It is not as if D&D doesn't have exactly as many setting specific rules even outside of setting books (Red Wizards, Suel Arcanamachs). I have to do exactly tthe same work to port a setting to Pathfinder as i have to do to port it to 3.5. I don't think it is particularly useful to put them at different points on the scale when you can effortlessly use Pathfinder for every D&D setting and D&D for Galorion.

    Generally my experience is that D&D does Fantasy settings that are not specifically made for it or inspired by it pretty poorly. I have found it way easer to apply other fantasy systems, even those that were not made to be universal. I mean, decades ago i have seen a group that found it easier to convert to Shadowrun of all things for some fantasy setting after having tried and failed to run it with AD&D2. (Nowaday with the internet, they would probably find something more fitting more easily)
    GURPS is one I only have the most passing familiarity with, but I'd probably put it down lower. Somewhere in the 10s or 20s. There are feel constraints (you'll always, from what I understand, end up somewhere on the grittier, death-is-easy end of the spectrum), but there are even fewer genre constraints than D&D. I'd also put the HERO-type systems down there and other "purely generic" games. Ones that are very explicitly "batteries very much not included".

    D&D isn't generic. D&D is constrained in genre (and that genre is not "all fantasy"). It explicitly does D&D worlds, not "any fantasy world"--it's not an emulator, nor is it trying to be one. Maybe to make the difference, D&D should get moved up the scale to the 30s, with PF being removed from 40 as an example and being lumped in with D&D. Maybe (?) replace it with Starfinder, which is more setting tied. I think.
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  7. - Top - End - #37
    Barbarian in the Playground
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    Default Re: Is there a meaningful distinction to be made between the system and the content?

    Quote Originally Posted by PhoenixPhyre View Post
    D&D isn't generic. D&D is constrained in genre (and that genre is not "all fantasy"). It explicitly does D&D worlds, not "any fantasy world"--it's not an emulator, nor is it trying to be one. Maybe to make the difference, D&D should get moved up the scale to the 30s, with PF being removed from 40 as an example and being lumped in with D&D. Maybe (?) replace it with Starfinder, which is more setting tied. I think.
    I agree 100% with this. I remember how hard me and one friend tried to port over so many things to D&D and failed to keep the feel we wanted. They all ended up feeling like Greyhawk or FR.

    I also do not understand the treating PF and D&D as different levels when PF is D&D with a different colored dress on.

    I know it is a very old niche game but Morrow Project's rule set was very tied to it's setting and it was very hard to split them apart. I wanted to use my Traveller rules to play in a Morrow Project game, it was super hard to do. The effort lasted a few months but died under its own weight.
    Last edited by dafrca; 2021-10-16 at 12:53 AM.
    *It isn't realism, it's verisimilitude... seeming to be true within the context of the game world.

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    Default Re: Is there a meaningful distinction to be made between the system and the content?

    Quote Originally Posted by PhoenixPhyre View Post
    GURPS is one I only have the most passing familiarity with, but I'd probably put it down lower. Somewhere in the 10s or 20s. There are feel constraints (you'll always, from what I understand, end up somewhere on the grittier, death-is-easy end of the spectrum), but there are even fewer genre constraints than D&D. I'd also put the HERO-type systems down there and other "purely generic" games. Ones that are very explicitly "batteries very much not included".
    It's worth noting that the 'death-is-easy' feel of GURPS is a product of the system that GURPS uses rather than any sort of tonal choice on the part of Steve Jackson games. It has to do with how the model system that is GURPS functions and unless you distort the numbers massively beyond all expectations it will always be that way. It is a solid example of how the mathematical model that 'the system' actually is constrain game options on a purely mechanical level.

    A TTRPG system is ultimately a set of mathematical models (often bad ones), and the structure of those models constrains the possible permutations of the game, including through such things as the choice of dice to use, since different RNG setups produce different output curves. Ultimately any time you use any mathematical system at all this introduces constraints on the content of some kind.
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    Default Re: Is there a meaningful distinction to be made between the system and the content?

    Quote Originally Posted by Mechalich View Post
    It's worth noting that the 'death-is-easy' feel of GURPS is a product of the system that GURPS uses rather than any sort of tonal choice on the part of Steve Jackson games. It has to do with how the model system that is GURPS functions and unless you distort the numbers massively beyond all expectations it will always be that way. It is a solid example of how the mathematical model that 'the system' actually is constrain game options on a purely mechanical level.

    A TTRPG system is ultimately a set of mathematical models (often bad ones), and the structure of those models constrains the possible permutations of the game, including through such things as the choice of dice to use, since different RNG setups produce different output curves. Ultimately any time you use any mathematical system at all this introduces constraints on the content of some kind.
    Agreed. That's what I mean by a system-imposed constraint on content, and it's part of why you can't really get to 0 very easily at all. System and content are coupled at some level > 0 -- systems set tone and feel just by their basic action resolution system. In some ways, 1d20 + Mods >= TN imposes a different feel than 3d6 + Mods >= TN which is different than the feel a dice pool/counting successes system imposes. And most systems are more involved at this level than just that.

    At the other end, you always have some freedom--you can hack games to do things that would never have been expected or supported by their authors. Just like you can build very different games on the same video game engine (although some similarities will remain).

    The endpoints are "off the scale", but serve to define the extremes.

    Edit: I wouldn't say that the models are bad. All models are wrong. Some models are useful. And some models are useful in certain circumstances but not others and for certain purposes but not others. Fit-for-purpose gives a lot of leeway, especially when the purpose involved is really broad.
    Last edited by PhoenixPhyre; 2021-10-15 at 09:18 PM.
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    Default Re: Is there a meaningful distinction to be made between the system and the content?

    Quote Originally Posted by PhoenixPhyre View Post
    (Honest question, never really having delved into it): But would it work for a comedy game? One where the "action" component is basically background? Or a cosmic-level (like Exalted) game? From what I understand, it's fairly "grounded" and low power, and assumes that most of what you're doing is "adventuring".
    It’s not necessarily low power - a wizard in Dungeon World can do literally anything with magic, if they fulfil some stipulations from the GM. Druids turn into animals, fighters can guarantee someone lives or dies in a fight. But it does assume adventures on the scale of mortals, yes. And it can certainly be comedic but the action is going to be front and centre and pretty relentless if you play it as intended.

    So you’re mostly right about it, I just wanted to get across that it’s not at all some sort of gritty, OSR-style survival dungeon crawler. It can spin out in all sorts of directions.

    Quote Originally Posted by PhoenixPhyre View Post


    D&D isn't generic. D&D is constrained in genre (and that genre is not "all fantasy"). It explicitly does D&D worlds, not "any fantasy world"--it's not an emulator, nor is it trying to be one. Maybe to make the difference, D&D should get moved up the scale to the 30s, with PF being removed from 40 as an example and being lumped in with D&D. Maybe (?) replace it with Starfinder, which is more setting tied. I think.
    Agree D&D should be higher. It really isn’t generic.

    Quote Originally Posted by Mechalich View Post
    It's worth noting that the 'death-is-easy' feel of GURPS is a product of the system that GURPS uses rather than any sort of tonal choice on the part of Steve Jackson games. It has to do with how the model system that is GURPS functions and unless you distort the numbers massively beyond all expectations it will always be that way. It is a solid example of how the mathematical model that 'the system' actually is constrain game options on a purely mechanical level.

    A TTRPG system is ultimately a set of mathematical models (often bad ones), and the structure of those models constrains the possible permutations of the game, including through such things as the choice of dice to use, since different RNG setups produce different output curves. Ultimately any time you use any mathematical system at all this introduces constraints on the content of some kind.
    You’re right but it can still be a deliberate tonal choice. No idea if it was or wasn’t with GURPS but it certainly can be. RPG designers don’t just pick a dice mechanic that they think models reality, physics and so on and hope for the best. They have other concerns in mind too, and that might include things like tone, appropriateness to setting etc. PbtA uses 2d6 and makes the 7-9 range, the most likely range, “success with complications” because that’s what we see most often in action packed and dramatic fiction: characters get what they want but in complicated ways.

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    Default Re: Is there a meaningful distinction to be made between the system and the content?

    Death isn't that easy in GURPS.

    With regular/primitive attacks, it's not really that easy at all, death can only come at -HT HP (probably -ST in 4e, it's been a bit). If you're using hit locations, most hit locations have a maximum damage that can be done that kind of prevents that. It's fairly easy to get knocked out, but dying is a touch more rare.

    If you're using high tech weapons, that's a different story, especially if you get a head shot, though.
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    Default Re: Is there a meaningful distinction to be made between the system and the content?

    Quote Originally Posted by PhoenixPhyre View Post
    Edit: I wouldn't say that the models are bad. All models are wrong. Some models are useful. And some models are useful in certain circumstances but not others and for certain purposes but not others. Fit-for-purpose gives a lot of leeway, especially when the purpose involved is really broad.
    TCP-IP has 7 layers. Doubtless, a look at how this *really* works would be… complex. But, as an abstraction, that admits it's an abstraction rather than pretending it's Truth, this seems pretty good.

    Measuring how tightly coupled the two are, however… may be more difficult.

    In part, as we've seen, because we're running into the fact that it *is* an abstraction, rather than formal and complete definition. So that complexity needs to slowly be imported to accommodate an adequate definition.

    The other issue is a bit more subjective: who says? Who says X is or isn't suited to Y?

    While I doubt we'll get completely accurate measurements for this abstraction… being an abstraction, perfect precision probably wasn't the point in the first place. Knowing to the micron where spherical cows in space will be isn't terribly useful here on the ground with real cattle.

    Quote Originally Posted by kyoryu View Post
    Death isn't that easy in GURPS.

    With regular/primitive attacks, it's not really that easy at all, death can only come at -HT HP (probably -ST in 4e, it's been a bit). If you're using hit locations, most hit locations have a maximum damage that can be done that kind of prevents that. It's fairly easy to get knocked out, but dying is a touch more rare.

    If you're using high tech weapons, that's a different story, especially if you get a head shot, though.
    Really? If I stab someone in the kidneys, or throw a sharpened cream cheese spreader and hit someone in the head, I can't kill them in GURPS?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Quertus View Post
    Really? If I stab someone in the kidneys, or throw a sharpened cream cheese spreader and hit someone in the head, I can't kill them in GURPS?
    Kidney stabbing is possible, for sure. These things are just all fairly low probabilities. GURPS has a reputation of being deadlier than it is.

    Again, some of the high tech stuff changes that, especially on a lucky roll. At high tech levels, GURPS starts to get pretty binary - you're either fine or a thin red paste.
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    Default Re: Is there a meaningful distinction to be made between the system and the content?

    Quote Originally Posted by kyoryu View Post
    Kidney stabbing is possible, for sure. These things are just all fairly low probabilities. GURPS has a reputation of being deadlier than it is.

    Again, some of the high tech stuff changes that, especially on a lucky roll. At high tech levels, GURPS starts to get pretty binary - you're either fine or a thin red paste.
    Interested in what you think the design philosophy of GURPS is, while we’re on the subject. I’m really not familiar with it but from what I understand it has a reputation for extreme, exacting simulationism. Do you think that’s deserved?

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    Default Re: Is there a meaningful distinction to be made between the system and the content?

    Quote Originally Posted by Quertus View Post
    Really? If I stab someone in the kidneys, or throw a sharpened cream cheese spreader and hit someone in the head, I can't kill them in GURPS?
    It's more that you can't easily kill them instantly.
    Knocking them down or critically injuring them is pretty easy, but they'll probably survive with medical attention.

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    Default Re: Is there a meaningful distinction to be made between the system and the content?

    Quote Originally Posted by HidesHisEyes View Post
    Interested in what you think the design philosophy of GURPS is, while we’re on the subject. I’m really not familiar with it but from what I understand it has a reputation for extreme, exacting simulationism. Do you think that’s deserved?
    GURPS 4e has three separate books for what kind of tech level you can set your campaign in, a fourth purely for biotech, a fifth purely for spaceships. You all sorts of guns to choose from, but if you want to do any tricky fancy shooting from the movies, you got to purchase yet another book called "Gun-Fu" to do them which is 50 pages long, this is the low end for a GURPs book.

    you get general some general superpowers in the corebook, but if you want the full thing you have to purchase another book to get the superhero genre rules. this doesn't include martial arts or magic both of which are two separate books and are longer than the superhero book. for even more powers you have to purchase yet another book.

    but keep in mind, the magic book is not the book on the fantasy genre, which is a separate book.

    oh and spaceships don't cover actual space CAMPAIGNS which is again its own book.

    now sure you can run a lot using the corebook only. but if you want to really go into more detail, you have to be very thorough and exacting about which books you want and how much your willing to include.

    TLDR: the answer is yes. a resounding yes.
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  17. - Top - End - #47
    Barbarian in the Playground
     
    DwarfFighterGuy

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    Default Re: Is there a meaningful distinction to be made between the system and the content?

    I'm going to chip in and say that D&D 4e was a great system marred by poor content. (As I understand it, and I might have heard wrong, the person who designed the core system left WotC during development, and much of the classes/powers/feats were written without his input.)

    Good System:
    --One resolution mechanic: Roll when you do something, try to roll high.
    --One resource model: Every class has At-Will/Encounter/Daily powers. Every class gets feats at the same levels.
    --Streamlined level scaling: Add half your level to most d20 rolls (no more BAB and saves scaling differently by class).
    --Ritual magic: Lots of magic not useful in combat became rituals that anyone could learn with a feat.

    Bad Content:
    --Classes felt very same-y, because there was no variation in when they got At-Will/Encounter/Daily powers, or how many, until PHB3. Also, each class had its own selection of powers, except that many of them tended to be replicated with minimal changes for several classes (i.e. there were Fireball-like spells for several arcane classes).
    --Classes got pigeon-holed into a specific role with no freedom to branch out (except maybe by multiclassing). That simplified balancing, but seriously limited character creation options.
    --Powers felt very game-y, as if the designers started from the mechanics and worked backwards to come up with flavor.
    --Relatedly, a lot of powers could be summarized as "I deal damage and cause some other effect." Complex and/or non-damaging powers were rare.
    --Monsters' attacks, hit points, defenses, and damage scaled faster than PCs could usually keep up with, and especially at high levels, fights turned into slugfests. Attempts to fix it in later books created must-have feats that most characters couldn't do without.
    --Ritual magic was too expensive and time-consuming to use regularly.

    My ideal system looks a lot like "4e but with better content," and I'll add that I'm writing something in that niche...might make it into public playtesting via Foundry VTT once I finish my dissertation.

  18. - Top - End - #48
    Barbarian in the Playground
     
    Devil

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    Default Re: Is there a meaningful distinction to be made between the system and the content?

    Quote Originally Posted by Quertus View Post
    Really? If I stab someone in the kidneys, or throw a sharpened cream cheese spreader and hit someone in the head, I can't kill them in GURPS?
    In my experience death quia death is not that easy in GURPS: even at -HP there is only a chance of death, you need to go down to -5*HP to have "just dead, no roll" result ( -HP here means currentHP = -maxHP, -10 if you started with 10, -15 if you started with 15 etc).

    Two factors can account for perceived lethality. First, it's easy to become incapacitated (you don't even need to be down to 0 HP to suffer some hefty penalties, and usually you are not going to have a lot of HP anyway) and whole party incapacitated can mean TPK as we all know. Second, the recovery from injuries due to "natural healing" is looong, and sometimes you still unable to recover fully (that limit on HP damage for hit locations? Kicks in when your arm or leg is mangled beyond use). Advanced medical technology or magic solves the second problem, but not every setting has them.

    Finally with (un)lucky rolls there is a probability to do humongous amount of damage with something that's relatively weak. Cheese spreader is probably useless you are rules-lawyering but chuck a heavy glass at someone's head (or a roof tile - ask king Pyrrhus) and you probably have a 1/1000 chance to kill the target if it's human (even multiplied many times over it's far from unlimited - what kills the human wouldn't necessary kill a horse; and depending on how ridiculous you go your mighty-thewed heroes may end up closer in strength and vitality to horses than humans)
    Last edited by Saint-Just; 2021-10-18 at 05:56 PM.

  19. - Top - End - #49
    Titan in the Playground
     
    Daemon

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    Default Re: Is there a meaningful distinction to be made between the system and the content?

    Quote Originally Posted by Saint-Just View Post
    In my experience death quia death is not that easy in GURPS even at -HP there is only a chance of death, you need to go down to -5*HP to have "just dead, no roll" result ( -HP here means currentHP = -maxHP, -10 if you started with 10, -15 if you started with 15 etc).

    Two factors can account for perceived lethality. First, it's easy to become incapacitated (you don't even need to be down to 0 HP to suffer some hefty penalties, and usually you are not going to have a lot of HP anyway) and whole party incapacitated can mean TPK as we all know. Second, the recovery from injuries due to "natural healing" is looong, and sometimes you still unable to recover fully (that limit on HP damage for hit locations? Kicks in when your arm or leg is mangled beyond use). Advanced medical technology or magic solves the second problem, but not every setting has them.

    Finally with (un)lucky rolls there is a probability to do humongous amount of damage with something that's relatively weak. Cheese spreader is probably too far ulesss you are rules-lawyering but chuck a heavy glass at someone's head (or a roof tile - ask king Pyrrhus) and you probably have a 1/1000 chance to kill the target if it's human (even multiplied many times over it's far from unlimited - what kills the human wouldn't necessary kill a horse; and depending on how ridiculous you go your mighty-thewed heroes may end up closer in strength and vitality to horses than humans)
    My impression is that a combination of those two factors means you end up in death spirals pretty easily. Which gives the impression that you have to be much more careful and only engage when you know you can win cheaply. Which is a very different feel than, say, D&D where recovery is easy and you can keep fighting even when pretty banged up. Thus, the perceived lethality is much higher, because the major consequences kick in way earlier.
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  20. - Top - End - #50
    Barbarian in the Playground
     
    Devil

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    Default Re: Is there a meaningful distinction to be made between the system and the content?

    Quote Originally Posted by PhoenixPhyre View Post
    My impression is that a combination of those two factors means you end up in death spirals pretty easily. Which gives the impression that you have to be much more careful and only engage when you know you can win cheaply. Which is a very different feel than, say, D&D where recovery is easy and you can keep fighting even when pretty banged up. Thus, the perceived lethality is much higher, because the major consequences kick in way earlier.
    Probably. There is a possibility to fudge the rules juust right to encourage more D&D behavior on the system level (all those "cinematic violence" options) but I think they are not very popular. And in fantasy specifically high magic helps a lot as I said, but still not enough to be close to D&D.

    Which encourages engaging in violence either: a) in a socially approved manner where your "enemy" will not kill you on purpose and maybe will even help you not to die or b) in an all-out manner, doing everything to make sure odds are in your favor, no such thing as overkill etc.

    Oh, and about your classification - I definitely feel like D&D should not be 20, not because of D&D itself, but because to say that everything between roll for shoes and D&D is less than 1/5 of the spectrum is weird.
    Last edited by Saint-Just; 2021-10-18 at 06:39 PM.

  21. - Top - End - #51
    Titan in the Playground
     
    Daemon

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    Default Re: Is there a meaningful distinction to be made between the system and the content?

    Quote Originally Posted by Saint-Just View Post
    Probably. There is a possibility to fudge the rules juust right to encourage more D&D behavior on the system level (all those "cinematic violence" options) but I think they are not very popular. And in fantasy specifically high magic helps a lot as I said, but still not enough to be close to D&D.

    Which encourages engaging in violence either: a) in a socially approved manner where your "enemy" will not kill you and probably will even help you not to die or b) in an all-out manner, doing everything to make sure odds are in your favor, no such thing as overkill etc.

    Oh, and about your classification - I definitely feel like D&D should not be 20, not because of D&D itself, but because to say that everything between roll for shoes and D&D is less than 1/5 of the spectrum is weird.
    I decided later that I was going to bump up D&D to where Pathfinder is now (ie 40), but didn't edit the OP. I'm not sure it's really a linear scale anyway...maybe a logarithmic scale would work better? Dunno. It's less about the numbering than the ordering anyway.
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  22. - Top - End - #52
    Troll in the Playground
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    Default Re: Is there a meaningful distinction to be made between the system and the content?

    Is there a meaningful distinction? Yes there is, whatever you want to call it there is definitely a meaningful difference between describing the basic attributes and filling in the attributes for a character. Which leads into the first of the two... not quite counter points but things to keep in mind.

    First it isn't a hard divide. You have a scale based on systems, but a similar scale exists for content. Core rules are on one end, then we can pass through sub-system rules, guidelines and defaults and then individual pieces of content. And I'm not sure how character creation and character abilities fit into this so some would be hard to pin down, but there are different levels of "is pinned down throughout the system" rules can have.

    Second is I don't think discussing one in isolation is going to be very useful. For a simple example, talking about D20 variance in practice is actually really hard to do without knowing other things in the system, like the range of modifiers in the system, and although systems will tend towards different types of values they do depend on individual types of content.

  23. - Top - End - #53
    Barbarian in the Playground
     
    BardGuy

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    Default Re: Is there a meaningful distinction to be made between the system and the content?

    I'm going to say "Not in any meaningful sense". Some elements of any given game are tied more or less strongly to the genre, the setting or the fiction.
    Every time you choose a game (to buy or to run) you can benefit from considering how much of the published material you want to keep, what you want to change and how much you want to swap out.
    The more a game has in it, of course, the more you can run it without using all of it.

    For example take vampire
    You want to run Vampire in a high fantasy setting? Sure. Keep the rules but tweak the fiction. Change the clans if you want to. (I've played it and it was fun, though I died too quick because my character wasn't willing to keep her head down while working out this vampire thing.)
    Or you want to run a vampire game but don't want the clan politics - remove the clans and Vamp on
    Or you want Vamps to all be the same, so you say "all clans have access to the same power list" or "All clan powers are gone" and off you go with clans all equal as far as the rules go
    Or Vampire run using D20. Keep the fiction, make the clans into classes (ooo, would you allow multiclassing?) and off you go.

    It's all "bits of the game that you can use or not"
    I love playing in a party with a couple of power-gamers, it frees me up to be Elan!


  24. - Top - End - #54
    Titan in the Playground
     
    Daemon

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    Default Re: Is there a meaningful distinction to be made between the system and the content?

    Quote Originally Posted by Duff View Post
    I'm going to say "Not in any meaningful sense". Some elements of any given game are tied more or less strongly to the genre, the setting or the fiction.
    Every time you choose a game (to buy or to run) you can benefit from considering how much of the published material you want to keep, what you want to change and how much you want to swap out.
    The more a game has in it, of course, the more you can run it without using all of it.

    For example take vampire
    You want to run Vampire in a high fantasy setting? Sure. Keep the rules but tweak the fiction. Change the clans if you want to. (I've played it and it was fun, though I died too quick because my character wasn't willing to keep her head down while working out this vampire thing.)
    Or you want to run a vampire game but don't want the clan politics - remove the clans and Vamp on
    Or you want Vamps to all be the same, so you say "all clans have access to the same power list" or "All clan powers are gone" and off you go with clans all equal as far as the rules go
    Or Vampire run using D20. Keep the fiction, make the clans into classes (ooo, would you allow multiclassing?) and off you go.

    It's all "bits of the game that you can use or not"
    For some games, making those changes is easy and has few knock-on consequences. Those fall at the low end of the scale. GURPS is an example here--swap out modules and you can do lots of different things without too much pain. And you can mix-and-match modules. For others, making those changes involves massive rewrites of the entire content. From what I've heard, Lady Blackbird assumes in the core rules certain characters and a certain scenario. Sure, you can rewrite it all...but at that point you're rewriting the entire thing and have to make sure it still hangs together. You've violated the core assumption on which it was built. Others are in the middle (on that axis)--they have some tightly coupled bits (3e D&D and alignment, for instance) and some very less coupled bits (the specific class list or the names of kingdoms in 3e D&D).

    To me, that spectrum of "how hard is it to remove certain bits" naturally breaks down into two (loose, fuzzy, not entirely distinct) groups for many systems (away from the endpoints). Things within a group tend to be tightly coupled to each other, while coupling between those groups varies between games. As a modeler, that seems to indicate that the two groups are conceptually different "types" of things.
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  25. - Top - End - #55
    Ogre in the Playground
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    Default Re: Is there a meaningful distinction to be made between the system and the content?

    To use programmer speech for a moment, it seems to me you're measuring rigidity and fragility of game rule systems. To wit, "rigid" refers to tightly coupled rules where change in one impacts the other. "Fragile" refers to complexly coupled rules where change in one impacts another seemingly unrelated part.

    For any given system, you may be able to sort out which parts are rigid and which are not, or if you're making a new system, you can decide ahead of time to make it modular so it won't be very rigid or fragile. But on a general level, you're still talking a distinction between system and parts of the system. "Content" hence just becomes a name for the parts of the system you can swap out.

    You can compare it to older distinction between "crunch" versus "fluff". Practically, that distinction means one of two things: either it's "mathematically expressed rules versus rules expressed in a natural language" or it's "rules I care to enforce versus rules I don't". People often conflate the two because they find it easier to invent new natural language expressions than mathematical expressions, so it feels like it's easier to swap out natural language elements, and consequently, those elements feel less important, less set-in-stone. Actual system level analysis may prove such distinctions entirely arbitrary.

  26. - Top - End - #56
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    KorvinStarmast's Avatar

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    Default Re: Is there a meaningful distinction to be made between the system and the content?

    Quote Originally Posted by kieza View Post
    Bad Content: until PHB3.
    As an aside: one of the reasons I never tried 4e (when my nephew asked if I was going to get into the new edition) is that I was sick and tired of having to buy new books. (I had sold my 3.5 stuff to half priced books for some beer money).
    I finally overcame that in 2014 when I downloaded the Basic Rules for 5e when my brother called and promised that I could play, not DM. (Hmm, guess how that has since worked out?)
    --Ritual magic was too expensive and time-consuming to use regularly.
    Ritual Magic is something that I wish D&D did better, regardless of edition.
    I'll add that I'm writing something in that niche...might make it into public playtesting via Foundry VTT once I finish my dissertation.
    Might this be where I volunteer to be a play tester? You know where to find me.
    Quote Originally Posted by Saint-Just View Post
    I definitely feel like D&D should not be 20, not because of D&D itself, but because to say that everything between roll for shoes and D&D is less than 1/5 of the spectrum is weird.
    Roll For Shoes; on my list if I can get our group to try it.
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    Gosh, 2D8HP, you are so very correct!
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