Dr Nick posted:

Where do these guys get this poo poo? No fighter in any edition did this. I assume he's trying to critique the 4e fighter but gently caress, all of the 4e fighters powers are all basically: "Really, really good with at melee fighting with a weapon".

Dr Nick posted:

Mikan posted:

*Waves off

Yes, I didn't quote a real power. Although, I do remember a fire-ish attacks from 4e lite aka ToB: Bo9S...

Anyway, the point was the Fighter having Vanician Powers.

BryanChavez posted:

Go play Glorxalted if you want that, munchkin. Here in D&D, Beowulf is a demigod, and only Wizards can try to tear off a giant's arm before 30th level. The only magic in this world of magic and wonder is written on scrolls and in books, and you better be a scrawny nerd if you want to learn it.

Yeah, I'm the guy on the other side of that discussion, and I really just tried to step away from it as soon as possible. I think it was a wise decision, because I really didn't want to peel back the onion any more, even if there could have been yet more groggy wonders to behold.

Dr Nick posted:

Ahahahahahahahahahahaha that's disengenuous as gently caress. He's not even trying.

Mystic Mongol posted:

Tell you what. You chant magic words, and I'll wave a sword about like a lunatic, and we'll see which one of us creates a ball of fire first. Hint: It might take a while.

(Why does Beowulf need to be a demigod when wizards don't? The two archtypical wizards, Merlin and Gandalf, were a cambion and an angel respectively. Cú Chulainn was just an unusually talented lad with a few extra fingers. But now normal scholars can have the powers of heaven and hell, but a good Irish lad can't go Super Sayjin? Shenanigans.)

Mikan posted:

And what is the problem with that? If someone proposes something to change the Fighter, people are allowed to shoot it down if it seems too out there/complicated/stupid. Hell, I do that. But that doesn't mean we want Fighters to suck, it just means we don't want to play as sword-reskinned Wizards.

BryanChavez posted:

The one thing I can never quite understand is, if you can only get to Beowulf and Achilles at epic levels, while Wizards can throw around fireballs by fifth level, why not just have the martial classes start at 'I learned the Heroic Salmon Leap from Scathach after years of apprenticeship' whereas the arcane classes start at their regular 'studied for several years at the premier academy of all the lands'.

If the martial classes only start getting interesting and comparable to wizards at epic levels, just start them there.

Mystic Mongol posted:

Pst, Heroic Salmon Leap may be an epic level ability, but the Jump spell is level 1.

Mystic Mongol posted:

Why can't we do that for wizards?



Here's Shishio, he's an anime but he's the only example I can think of using fire swords off the top of my head. He's a villain, trying to turn Japan into a meritocracy from hell where the right of the strong to butcher the weak is celebrated by all. His sword has a series of grooves in it that collect oils from the skins of people he cuts--and when he's in combat with dangerous people, he can ignite these oils, creating small explosions as he attacks.

This wouldn't actually work, because the oils in people's skins aren't incendiary explosives, but so what? It's a creepy power obsessed with death, the fact that slaughtering random dudes plays a role in his strength dovetails nicely with his, 'strong predate upon the weak,' philosophy, and it's stylish and flashy. And it's all tied back to the fact he's covered head to toes in horrible burns, and when he's fighting the heroes it's atop his enormous iron foundry which is belching smoke and embers everywhere.

A wizard casting fireball also would not work, because magic isn't real. Also the fact he can throw balls of fire has nothing to with the wizard in question, and it's just a power they picked up possibly on a whim. There's no theme to it, it has nothing to do with the core concept of a generic wizard, and it's just one power among dozens of powers that have absolutely nothing to do with one another.

But if I were to say that a wizard shouldn't get fireball because it's too out there/complicated/stupid for some grey bearded old scholar to turn bat poop into a concussive blast of heat by talking to it? Wow, that's much more plausible than the fireball sword!


Wizard apologists insisting that wizards get to have literally any power they want, while other non-wizard characters are restricted to what people can do in the real world, sicken me.

Chaltab posted:

It really doesn't even remotely cover all the posibilities, of course, or the fact that styles aren't singular austere units that can't mix. The longest-running campaign I was ever in was sandbox in town, but with specific discrete missions the heroes were hired for or dragged into by plot.

Doc Hawkins posted:

It gives me the impression of being an explanation of story now for people like the Pundit who are confused by common words. Maybe I'm being too charitable and biased?

Mystic Mongol posted:

Frank Trollman posted:

That is stupid. There is no way you can possibly polish that turd, it's still a turd. I know you think it's "neat" or some poo poo, but it's poo poo. You are talking about a resolution system that takes a relatively long time to complete, and which has a failure rate that rises and then falls as you go up in skill in a totally non-intuitive fashion.

There is absolutely nothing good about your proposed resolution system. It is one of the worst I've ever seen bandied about. And a jackass was literally suggesting a roll under system with degrees of success being calculated on the fly by dividing skill ratings by various different prime numbers just a few days ago. His system was laughably terrible, yours is in all ways inferior to that.

Have you looked at Framewerk? It is a lovely system with no redeeming features. Yours is very similar, but manages to be even worse in every imaginable way. At least with Framewerk dice you only have to count the matches instead of having to count both the matches and the unmatched separately.

-Frank

Frank Trollman posted:

It's no more than forty five comparison operations, you stupid twat!

Shittiest resolution system. Ever. You're seriously competing with FATAL for "worst system", and I think you might actually win. If you can't accept that this is an incredibly lovely idea without a single redeeming feature,there is no hope for you or anything you ever write at any point in the future.

-Frank

Dr Nick posted:

Where do these guys get this poo poo? No fighter in any edition did this. I assume he's trying to critique the 4e fighter but gently caress, all of the 4e fighters powers are all basically: "Really, really good with at melee fighting with a weapon".

Ettin posted:

Kemper posts about his game on TGD Frank Trollman offers suggestions throws temper tantrums and posts word salads.



That last one is literally complaining about up-to-10d10 dice matching.

Evil Mastermind posted:

Is Frank actually trying to say that looking at up to 10d10 and finding matching numbers takes a long time? It'd only be 45 operations if you're a computer and are looping through each die one at a time, comparing it to every other die one at a time.

Ettin posted:

Kemper is talking about dice mechanics he adapted from REIGN.

Pattern matching is hard man, do you know how long it takes to look for matching numbers when you're checking each die individually??

Evil Mastermind posted:

I realize it's a modified REIGN/ORE mechanic.

Frank Trollman posted:

So... you violated your own design "manifesto" in order to copy lovely mechanics from Greg Stolze? What the gently caress is wrong with you?

Frank Trollman posted:

Well, that resolution system isn't good. It's the worst resolution system anyone has ever made. It's slower than any other resolution system, the probabilities it outputs are inane, and figuring out whether a result is "likely" or not is ludicrously obtuse. Your particular flair on it - namely that of making unmatched dice go up against spell-specific critical failure charts is a work of failure that even Rolemaster never quite achieved.

It is garbage design. And if you think it's good or even "not incredibly lovely" then you suck as a designer. If you can't tell me - quickly - what the likely results for a five die test or a seven die test are - and you loving can't - then your resolution system is not something that you are qualified to design things for. If you're not qualified to design things for your own design, you're incompetent and unworthy of consideration.

But to add to the poo poo sandwich, your own stupid "manifesto", in the few times it was trying to tell me that rejecting the aesthetics of 1996 made it "new school" in two thousand and loving twelve told me that player empowerment and light hearted adventure were the things you were aspiring to. You know, exactly the loving opposite of telling players that they should be super careful when trying to use their abilities because each power was also a land mine where it would randomly trigger things off of secret magical mishaps charts that could kill their character.

So I think it's established: your design is stupid, you're stupid, and your game design manifesto is stupid. I think we're done with this thread. And with you.

-Frank

Ettin posted:

Trollman literally thinks pattern matching is not intuitive because a) you have to compare every die against every other die individually and b) he can't work out the probability spread.

This is what Frank Trollman actually believes.

Ettin posted:

This is what Frank Trollman actually believes.

Ettin posted:

Trollman literally thinks pattern matching is not intuitive because a) you have to compare every die against every other die individually and b) he can't work out the probability spread.

This is what Frank Trollman actually believes.

Frank Trollman posted:

OK, I'll walk you through this. A single die cannot get a match, because it's a single die. The next die has a 9/10 chance of not coming up a match. The chances of getting at least one match are always 1-(chance of getting no matches). So on one die, you have 0% chance of getting a match, on two dice you have a 10% chance.

This continues, when you roll your third die, there are 8 possible numbers it could roll that don't match either of the other dice. With your fourth die, it's 7, with your fifth die it's 6, the sixth die has 5, and the seventh die has only 4 numbers it could possibly roll that don't produce a match. The chances of getting a match on 7 dice are thus:

1 - (10/10 * 9/10 * 8/10 * 7/10 * 6/10 * 5/10 * 4/10) = 93.952%

That is, by the way, absolutely nothing like 1:1.5, I don't even know what the gently caress you put into Wolfram Alpha to get that wholly incorrect number. That you couldn't look at that result and just eyeball that it was totally out of the ballpark means that you don't even have a minimal feel for the kinds of numbers your system outputs. That makes you completely unqualified to write for it.

And that's well before we get into any of the stuff you are intending to do with the matched numbers or the unmatched dice or whatever the gently caress. Just the first part of "what are the odds of getting a match?" you were unable to get even to the most generous tolerances when you had unlimited time and access to the internet and a calculator.

Are you beginning to understand why your proposal for a system is garbage?

Evil Mastermind posted:

There is honestly not a big enough for me right now.

ALL FRANK DOES IS COPY OTHER PEOPLE'S MECHANICS! He couldn't have an original idea if his loving life depended on it!

And he is the last loving person on Earth to say that Greg Stolze is a bad game designer. Frank is barely qualified to write a loving die notation and he's going to accuse someone of bad design?

And why is it bad design? Because you have to look at your dice for two seconds?

Seriously, someone go in that thread and ask him how long he needs to look at eight dice and find the matches. I want to know his loving time fame. Oh, and that the ORE die probabilities are in the REIGN book, even though most people don't give that much of a gently caress about exact probabilities because they're not going to game the goddamn system. Or that all Frank does is copy other people's systems.

Dammit, why does Frank make me this loving angry?

quote:

It also seems deeply weird to me that designing RPGs could be a recreational hobby.

Halloween Jack posted:

Remember, Frank also said that Skill+1d100 was a revolutionary idea that was mechanically identical to rolling under on percentile dice, but better in every way. Because it's easier to add 41+67 on the fly than to just know that one is lower or higher than the other.

quote:

Old-School Gaming Boxes
with Erol Otus & Pete Mullen Art!

You asked for it!

YOU NEED TWO OF THESE – one to put you favorite OSR material in (or your precious stuff from back-in-the-day) and another to leave in the shrink wrap to admire setting on your gaming shelf.

This product is a 9" wide x 12" long x 2 3/4" deep, sturdy box (aqueous protective coating) featuring a brand-new, full-color covers by Erol Otus and Pete Mullen! That's plenty of room for 2-3 retro-clone hard covers, soft covers or a few dozen modules.

Today's major rpg publishers don't like to offer boxed sets anymore because they cost too much and are too much trouble to put together. When they do, they are often very cheap paper boxes made in China. Hard work doesn't scare this halfling and we are proud to make our game boxes in the USA!

Evil Mastermind posted:

ALL FRANK DOES IS COPY OTHER PEOPLE'S MECHANICS! He couldn't have an original idea if his loving life depended on it!

Rasamune posted:

Generally speaking a game setting that's not going to just be 'Humans of Various Vaguely familiar Though Rather Innoffensivly Generic Cultures' needs some combinations of-

Rasamune posted:

Generally speaking a game setting that's not going to just be 'Humans of Various Vaguely familiar Though Rather Innoffensivly Generic Cultures' needs some combinations of-

quote:

Oh poo poo, I have played some One-Roll Engine games before to my dismay. If I recall in the very opener of the book it outright notes that the system is broken and that it is upon the players to not abuse it (a friend bought the book and read it aloud thinking it was a great insight by the designer... rather than a shameful admission of failure). Unfortunately not abusing it is a tall order since some of the math is so obfuscated you might not realize you are destined to fail or auto-succeed. One-roll engine is not a system that you ever want to emulate.

Rasamune posted:

Do the ORE books actually say this or is this just his broken interpretation of a more reasonable point?