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I think the important question is: what kind of steak did Exalted turn out to be?
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# ? Jun 15, 2024 09:47 |
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Zurui posted:I think the important question is: what kind of steak did Exalted turn out to be? *in Juicy J voice* Kobe beef on the steaker, now that's plater.
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Zurui posted:I think the important question is: what kind of steak did Exalted turn out to be? pittsburgh
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TheLovablePlutonis posted:emotional maturity Hm. I'm sorry, I'm going to have go lie down for a bit, I've got to come to terms with this level of irony.
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Ronwayne posted:So, what IS Gary Gygax's greatest legacy to Exalted design and the white wolf legacy? That it was a massive tantrum against what he had wrought
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Hm. same
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Hm. Yeah, sincerity can do that to you. Lightning Lord posted:That it was a massive tantrum against what he had wrought ?
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A lot of what White Wolf was trying to accomplish as well as the way they presented their games and the marketing for them were in reaction to D&D.
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He's saying its creation was a response to D&D.
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Lightning Lord posted:A lot of what White Wolf was trying to accomplish as well as the way they presented their games and the marketing for them were in reaction to D&D. 01011001 posted:He's saying its creation was a response to D&D. There's really only a handful of RPGs that aren't a response to D&D on some level, and Exalted's creation was fairly distant from being a response, since it was in development parallel with 3.0
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GRADUATE YOUR GAME
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Noice robots.txt
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Goddammit it was working a minute ago. e: Wikipedia posted:In March 2008, White Wolf Publishing unveiled a promotion that would allow 2,500 Dungeons & Dragons players to exchange their copy of their Edition 3.5 Player's Handbook for a copy of the Exalted Second Edition Core Rulebook. The promotion was called "Graduate your Game" and has received mixed reviews from fans of both games. The success of this promotion has yet to be revealed. Tulul fucked around with this message at 05:03 on Apr 7, 2015 |
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Exalted's development was explicitly based around not drawing from Tolkien or from Tolkien-derived fantasy and instead drawing on pre-Tolkien influence that Tolkien eclipsed and on the "weird fiction" genre. In some ways this led people to call it "the anti-D&D."
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Effectronica posted:There's really only a handful of RPGs that aren't a response to D&D on some level, and Exalted's creation was fairly distant from being a response, since it was in development parallel with 3.0 Yeah but early White Wolf was really all about telling D&D "gently caress you, granddad" and that feeling continued in various forms, even when they were making poo poo for it.
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Rand Brittain posted:Exalted's development was explicitly based around not drawing from Tolkien or from Tolkien-derived fantasy and instead drawing on pre-Tolkien influence that Tolkien eclipsed and on the "weird fiction" genre. Wasn't that the source of most of the influences from OD&D as well? I remember reading somewhere that the old monster manual had the alien monsters from Barsoom as possible desert encounters, dinosaurs off in the swamps and all sorts of other weird gonzo crap scattered through it. I'd always thought that the Elves and Hobbits were thrown in as a cynical cash-grab since the Lord of the Rings series had gotten incredibly popular in the 60's-70's.
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Then later exalted added dwarves back in anyways.
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Bob Quixote posted:Wasn't that the source of most of the influences from OD&D as well? I remember reading somewhere that the old monster manual had the alien monsters from Barsoom as possible desert encounters, dinosaurs off in the swamps and all sorts of other weird gonzo crap scattered through it. I'd always thought that the Elves and Hobbits were thrown in as a cynical cash-grab since the Lord of the Rings series had gotten incredibly popular in the 60's-70's. D&D was more based on pulp and sword & sorcery than Tolkien originally but his influence grew for sure.
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It sounds like Ferrinus is really enthusiastic about a new TTG from a franchise he likes but has some mechanical flaws; I also get the impression that he has met some groggy fear of change typical of the hobby. It's hard for me not to sympathize with this situation, even if he went somewhat overboard with it.
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he's quoting somebody else
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Trolling by proxy... a terrible illness.
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FactsAreUseless posted:Trolling by proxy... a terrible illness. but what is the cure?
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Bob Quixote posted:Wasn't that the source of most of the influences from OD&D as well? I remember reading somewhere that the old monster manual had the alien monsters from Barsoom as possible desert encounters, dinosaurs off in the swamps and all sorts of other weird gonzo crap scattered through it. I'd always thought that the Elves and Hobbits were thrown in as a cynical cash-grab since the Lord of the Rings series had gotten incredibly popular in the 60's-70's. Elves, hobbits, dwarves, ringwraiths, ents, and balrogs were all important parts of the early development of Chainmail and of Greyhawk. However, the lawsuit from Saul Zaentz Enterprises forced an obscuring of these influences and so the other influences became more prominent. But remember that one of Gygax's first publications was a Lord of the Rings wargame. Exalted's stated influences are also not particularly pulpy, seeing as they include Glen Cook, Tanith Lee, Dunsany, Ninja Scroll, and a bunch of classical stories. The pulpiest influences are Hawkmoon and I guess Glorantha somewhat.
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Nuns with Guns posted:but what is the cure? ![]()
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Ronwayne posted:Then later exalted added dwarves back in anyways. Tolkien didn't invent dwarves, the word dwarf or the condition known as dwarvism.
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Tollymain posted:he's quoting somebody else My point stands. Just swap "Ferrinus" with the bame of whoever wrote this.
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TheLovablePlutonis posted:Tolkien didn't invent dwarves, the word dwarf or the condition known as dwarvism. This is strictly true but basically irrelevant to a discussion of RPGs that includes D&D.
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Bob Quixote posted:Wasn't that the source of most of the influences from OD&D as well? I remember reading somewhere that the old monster manual had the alien monsters from Barsoom as possible desert encounters, dinosaurs off in the swamps and all sorts of other weird gonzo crap scattered through it. I'd always thought that the Elves and Hobbits were thrown in as a cynical cash-grab since the Lord of the Rings series had gotten incredibly popular in the 60's-70's. I never thought it was a cynical cash-grab--just more that OD&D was a mix and match of various fantasy influences that Gygax liked, tossed together like a kid with all the toys in the box.
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occamsnailfile posted:I never thought it was a cynical cash-grab--just more that OD&D was a mix and match of various fantasy influences that Gygax liked, tossed together like a kid with all the toys in the box. gygax's D&D wasn't really about money at all, so yes you're pretty much right
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occamsnailfile posted:I never thought it was a cynical cash-grab--just more that OD&D was a mix and match of various fantasy influences that Gygax liked, tossed together like a kid with all the toys in the box. Yeah but some people think that Gygax hated Tolkien and was pressured into using those influences to make that sweet Hildebrandt bank.
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TheLovablePlutonis posted:Tolkien didn't invent dwarves, the word dwarf or the condition known as dwarvism. The ones that live underground and mine poo poo and get into fights with subterranean horrors are pretty Tolkien and also what Exalted added to their game.
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Lightning Lord posted:Yeah but some people think that Gygax hated Tolkien and was pressured into using those influences to make that sweet Hildebrandt bank. Less 'pressured into using' and more 'included them because his players were fans, even if he wasn't', which mostly just suggests "Gygax the GM" and "Gygax the guy giving GM advice" were at times very different people.
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LuiCypher posted:I did want to go back and answer this. Carepost incoming! I would say that while I understand your point of view, I disagree with it completely. For me, dice pool or probability curve systems work a lot better than d% or d20 because it makes the stats of the character far more important than the result of the roll. In d20 or d%, there's gently caress all you can do about a bad roll - every result on the die is equally likely. If a guy with Strength 20 and a guy with Strength 5 get into an arm wrestle, there's actually a decent chance the Strength 5 guy will win in an opposed strength check because what they roll is far more important than the stats. Dice pool and d%/d20 systems have roughly comparable difficulties in working out your probability of success, I reckon. Every +1 on a d20 is 5% more chance of success, every 3 dice in WoD or Shadowrun is roughly another success. Probability curves are a bit harder, since if you're not good with statistics it's not necessarily intuitive. However I feel that once you understand the shape of the curve, like, even being shown it once on anydice is enough to give you a good grasp of what the expected results are like. In GURPS 3d6 one look at the graph lets you know you basically need to get to 10 in a skill to be any good, and once you get to 14 you can probably stop. Knowing that 7 is the most likely result on 2d6 tells you pretty much everything you need to know about PBtA's dice system. If you get +3 in a stat, you are more likely than not to get a 10+, if you're rolling at +0 you have about a 60% chance to pass. Probability curves have the advantage that the expected results of a roll are known by the designers and can be worked around. PBtA relies heavily on the dice curve. It wouldn't work at all if the majority of rolls didn't end up in the middle. Aiming pass/fail values at varying points on the curve lets you fine-tune the power level of your game very easily.
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To expand on the above post, while uniform distributions (ie, d20 or d%) may be intuitive for layman players to figure out, they're hell on the design side because of how probability works. See, any probability distribution has what's called a standard deviation. Actually producing such a number is somewhat arcane, but if you're not mathematically inclined just think of it as a measure of how dispersed the data is about the mean. For instance, choosing one of {0,10} at random intuitively would have more dispersion than choosing one of {4,6} at random, and indeed their respective standard deviations are 5 and 1. (Note that their means are still the same!) Where this comes into play in RPG design is that (barring exceptions) you want a task resolution probability distribution (it's a mouthful, sorry) to be both predictable (in the above sense) and receptive to pushing. So while a uniform distribution may be intuitive to discern a given probability, it's actually fairly unpredictable in the sense of dispersion/standard deviation. For reference, the standard deviation of a d20 is ~5.8, while that of 3d6 is ~3.0. Similarly, the standard deviations of d% and 10d10-5 (ie, a bell curve with endpoints 5 and 95) are respectively ~29 and ~9. So far as the designers having an idea of where the dice might fall, you can see that bell curves and similar distributions like binomial ones (ie, Shadowrun and White Wolf) are godsends. Also, because bell curves are weighted towards the middle, any given modifier is notably more likely to mean something at the middle-of-the-distribution scenarios players are likely to be involved in. In d20, a +2 is always going to be +10% to hit. But in 3d6, going from a 10-under to a 12-under is a 24% change in to-hit difference. I will note that a major failing of using some sort of bell curve is to not actually publish what the cumulative distribution function is for said curve (ie, your chances for success). The average player is probably going to be more like LuiCypher in their aptitudes and interests than like me, and that's not really their fault. Thus having the tools to intuit what this particular input for the distribution means is pretty invaluable; and I certainly commend those folks like Greg Stolze (in ORE), Crafty Games (in Mistborn), and Evil Hat (with Fate) for publishing the relevant charts for their games. But even if you're clueless, you can probably either hack something out at anydice.com or ask someone else with proficiency (like folks in this thread) to kindly do the work for you. (At least we're not getting into the relevant stuff from roll-and-keep, because so far as probability and statistics go the science of order statistics is still some batshit wizardry.) As an addendum, the important numbers for GURPS/3d6 are: pre:8 1/4 9 3/8 10 1/2 11 5/8 12 3/4
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The GURPS 3e Basic Set had a probability chart for 3d6. It's weird that they took it out for 4e.
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Zurui posted:The GURPS 3e Basic Set had a probability chart for 3d6. It's weird that they took it out for 4e. I could've sworn it's in there somewhere, maybe near the start of the Skills chapter.
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Normal distributions have less variation than uniform distributions but they also add another axis to any analysis comparing modifiers. A uniform distribution, you can look at one roll vs another with modifiers as: -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, etc. With a normal distribution you have to also add position relative to the normal state. For example, 2d10+1 vs 2d10-1 is a much greater difference in chance of success compared to 2d10+5 vs 2d10+3, though both rolls have the same 2 modifier difference. I don't think that's inherently better or worse. It just creates a more diverse distribution of results that should be intentionally designed for. By way of example, in Dungeon World the difference between a -1 and +1 modifier is much greater than a 0 and +2.
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Plague of Hats posted:I could've sworn it's in there somewhere, maybe near the start of the Skills chapter. Yes, in the beginning of skills chapter they have a chart of probabilities for skill levels.
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DocBubonic posted:Yes, in the beginning of skills chapter they have a chart of probabilities for skill levels. Oh, good on. Really, all you have to internalize for the GURPS task resolution is 8 or less is bad, 9-12 is okay, and 13+ is good.
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# ? Jun 15, 2024 09:47 |
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fosborb posted:I don't think that's inherently better or worse. It just creates a more diverse distribution of results that should be intentionally designed for. By way of example, in Dungeon World the difference between a -1 and +1 modifier is much greater than a 0 and +2. A 30% difference is "much greater" than a 25% difference? Guess I'm just nitpicking here, but it seems like "slightly greater" would be a better fit.
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