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Rasamune posted:Do the ORE books actually say this or is this just his broken interpretation of a more reasonable point? It's a TGD poster so probably the second. By the way, WoW babbies. Frank Trollman posted:If you want your players to do your loving balance work for you because you are a lazy and lovely designer, then you'd better make an easily comprehensible and predictable mechanic so that they can loving do that.
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| # ? Mar 6, 2012 15:53 |
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| # ? May 24, 2013 19:30 |
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The supers game - Wild Talents? - has a fairly free power design system, which could be abused for something like ultimate invincibility. The design notes are basically "don't be a dick with it," because locking everything down to be unabusable would take out a lot of perfectly good power concepts. Even HERO and GURPS have "check this poo poo with your GM" advice.
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| # ? Mar 6, 2012 15:53 |
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chrisoya posted:The supers game - Wild Talents? - has a fairly free power design system, which could be abused for something like ultimate invincibility. The design notes are basically "don't be a dick with it," because locking everything down to be unabusable would take out a lot of perfectly good power concepts. Even HERO and GURPS have "check this poo poo with your GM" advice. So the advice is to speak with your GM/player like a decent human being, a feat that is herculean for anyone who posts regularly at the Gaming Den. Got it.
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| # ? Mar 6, 2012 16:11 |
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Rasamune posted:So the advice is to speak with your GM/player like a decent human being, a feat that is herculean for anyone who posts regularly at the Gaming Den. Got it. Never allow your DM to speak without an ironclad contract limiting them from abusing their terrible power.
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| # ? Mar 6, 2012 16:17 |
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How did racial level limits work in AD&D? All I have is the rules cyclopedia. In the RC, Men went to 36, Elves went to 10, Dwarves to 12 and halflings to 8. It looks really harsh, but isn't really that big of a deal. The reason for this is because you still gained attack rank increases, special abilities and even weapon mastery slots  after you reached your max level. All the level cap really amounted to was a bit less hp (Normal classes got 1 or 2 hp every level after 9 instead of HD, demihumans don't get any). You even get the benefit of getting low saves ALOT faster. By this I mean that a level 7 Halfling at 64k experience is going to have saving throws similar to a 22nd level thief at 1,720k experience. Also I think all the demihumans got the fighter combat options (which are really good). Mornacale posted:I was under the impression that all the weird racial limits were just because Gygax hated non-human races, so he passive-aggressively tried to make them less attractive. Not passive-aggresively, he directly stated that humanocentric games are best in one of the DMGs, or at least I think he did.
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| # ? Mar 6, 2012 16:43 |
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Benagain posted:Swear to god next game I run in anything resembling fantasy I'm importing the Dwarf Fortress elves that think you should only eat what you personally kill, and only kill what you're prepared to eat. Let me know how your Dark Sun game goes
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| # ? Mar 6, 2012 16:44 |
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Ettin posted:It's a TGD poster so probably the second.  Dammit, I just calmed down.Forgive my ignorance, but is Frank autistic or something? Is that what I'm seeing here?
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| # ? Mar 6, 2012 17:21 |
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Evil Mastermind posted:
No, he's more likely just the brand of rear end in a top hat that is so desperate to prove you wrong that he makes a fool of himself in the process nearly every time.
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| # ? Mar 6, 2012 17:27 |
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Dedhed posted:How did racial level limits work in AD&D? Humans could be any class and had no level limits. They alone could be monks or paladins. Dwarves could be fighters (level 7, 9 if they had 18 strength), thieves (unlimited), assassins (9), or clerics (8, npc only). Elves could be fighters (level 6, 7 if 17 strength), magic-users (9, 11 if they had 18 int), thieves (unlimited), assassins (10), or clerics (7, npc only) Gnomes could be fighters (level 5, 6 if 18 strength), illusionists (5, 7 if they have 18 int and 18 dex), thieves (unlimited), assassins (8), or clerics (7, npc only). Half-elves could be clerics (level 5), druids (unlimited), fighters (6, 8 if 18 strength), rangers (same as fighters), magic users (9, 11 if 18 int), thieves (unlimited), or assassins (11). Halflings could be fighters (level 4/5/6 depending on what family of halfling they come from and their strength), thieves (unlimited), or druids (6, npc only) Half-orcs could be fighters (level 10), thieves (level 6, 8 if dex 18), assassins (unlimited), or clerics (4) Perfectly clear, right? Nothing stupid and arbitrary here, is there?
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| # ? Mar 6, 2012 17:27 |
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Drox posted:No, he's more likely just the brand of rear end in a top hat that is so desperate to prove you wrong that he makes a fool of himself in the process nearly every time. He makes a fool of himself even before then. Frank thinks any system he doesn't understand is "poorly designed"; and he never re-evaluates his initial interpretation even when people tell him to his face that he's wrong complete with a 20-minute PowerPoint presentation on how he misread things. Remember him trying to wrap his head around Fate? Frank Trollman posted:The question of should you use FATE is a separate one. Characters in FATE behave basically like characters in Game of Thrones. Characters bumble through the plot being held back at every turn by their prejudices and limitations to win or lose in a sudden and often unexpected turn of events. It's a harm reduction system, in which players basically get to state what happens as a result of any action, and the actual rolls determine how often the player is expected to mandate good or bad results for their own character. Have I mentioned that I loving hate Frank Trollman?
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| # ? Mar 6, 2012 17:32 |
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I like how his conclusion is "FATE does a great job of creating stories with characters that have strengths and flaws. Therefore, it is terrible."
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| # ? Mar 6, 2012 17:34 |
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Whenever I read this I spend a few minutes trying to figure out how what he is saying, if true, would be bad.
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| # ? Mar 6, 2012 17:35 |
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I'm dead inside when it comes to grognards but Frank Trollman calling Greg Stolze a bad game designer made me feel mad again Actually Frank Trollman in general, that guy is basically everything that's wrong with this hobby and the fact he has a cult of followers is also everything that's wrong with this hobby Seriously why does te rpg community not only accept but idolize and cater to the most toxic, awful people?
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| # ? Mar 6, 2012 17:37 |
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I like how I could take his second paragraph and use it to convince someone to play FATE.
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| # ? Mar 6, 2012 17:37 |
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Mikan posted:Seriously why does te rpg community not only accept but idolize and cater to the most toxic, awful people?
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| # ? Mar 6, 2012 17:43 |
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As a member of so many hobbies that reward mastery of trivial skills ( ) the RPG industry is the worst
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| # ? Mar 6, 2012 17:46 |
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(Trying this post for a third time as a reply to Khorax... for some reason it's not posting there) One of the first lessons of game design is that symmetry makes for a game that doesn't last long. Take Rock Paper Scissors: how long can you play it before you get bored? While the timeframe will be lengthed for a tabletop game of any complexity, the issue still remains. Hell, I would argue that trying to make Wizard symmetric helped make it overpowered: for instance, to make Wizard less squishy later on, we got Tenser's Transformation, which makes the wizard just as good as the Fighter class in most situations. Abilities like this is why Wizard has the reputation of being the best at everything. To me, the core concept of a wizard is that he's a puzzle solver: most of my wizard characters only take token damaging spells, prefering to let the other characters to damage. Instead, he's in the back or on the sidelines, letting the front liners feel heroic while dramatically changing the battlefield to help his allies. That's something that really can't be done with a fighter without making him feel like a gish. In exchange, a fighter has his own strengths: he's an interceptor. Even if he's not a tank, he's limiting enemy movement to keep them away from his allies. If he's a tank, that's what he's specialized in. To some, that's the best feeling in the world. The point is, when the numbers are balanced, every skillset feels heroic. You can have the wizard flying, teleporting, and travelling the planes because it's his job to provide on- and off-battlefield utility to the party. He hopefully doesn't have insta kill abilities anymore (unless it's specifically against weak or "minion" monsters), and his damaging spells are limited in power unless he take a kit that sacrifices utility for it. Hell, name that kit "sorcerer" or "warlock." Hopefully you see where I'm going with that.
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| # ? Mar 6, 2012 17:56 |
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Dedhed posted:Not passive-aggresively, he directly stated that humanocentric games are best in one of the DMGs, or at least I think he did. (1) D&D was never a great game for in-depth role-playing, especially in the 70s. (2) Giving players some background and basis for role-playing unusual characters? That sounds like a job for... the game designer! Of course, Ken St. Andre's solution to the problem was to just make a game called Monsters! Monsters! where you have like 50 different monster types with a couple sentences of description for each and just go at it, because why the hell shouldn't you have a werecat, skeleton mage, and flumph adventuring together eating humans and capturing princesses?
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| # ? Mar 6, 2012 17:57 |
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Red_Mage posted:(Trying this post for a third time as a reply to Khorax... for some reason it's not posting there) Giving a caster niche-destruction abilities: Symmetry! Giving a non-caster the ability to do something better than poo poo-digging: Verisimilitude destruction!
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| # ? Mar 6, 2012 17:59 |
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some loving LIAR posted:Whenever I read this I spend a few minutes trying to figure out how what he is saying, if true, would be bad. Because you can't meta-game it. Fate is like Frank's worst nightmare because the math is pretty loose once you starting bringing in the Fate point mechanics into play. There's no hard "you have an X% chance to succeed" because success isn't just based on the dice, and of course Aspects are probably "Magical Tea Party bullshit" anyway.
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| # ? Mar 6, 2012 18:00 |
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how can Frank Trollman call people out for lovely game design when he made that 4e class
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| # ? Mar 6, 2012 18:00 |
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Guilty Spork posted:I remember the AD&D DMG had a full page article on why players shouldn't play "monsters," the rationale being that you couldn't properly role-play them because even for demihumans you barely had enough common ground with them. Which kind of ignores how:
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| # ? Mar 6, 2012 18:01 |
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Gary Gygax both created and destroyed the RPG industry
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| # ? Mar 6, 2012 18:03 |
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Mikan posted:how can Frank Trollman call people out for lovely game design when he made that 4e class No, no, no, the Bane Guard proved what terrible game 4e is because he put that class together in 2 hours, therefore Say with me, Mikan: Censeo Trollman esse delendam. Join me in my utter hate for a random dickhead on the Internet.
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| # ? Mar 6, 2012 18:03 |
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Mikan posted:Because the entire premise of Wizards is that they are supernatural, even if they are beginning apprentices that don't know which way is up on a wand, while Fighters are just that; men and women who fight, and are drat good at it. Now, demi-gods like Beowulf, Achilles, and Heracles are supernatural/divine in some fashion, even if they are only warriors to the billions degree. Beowulf isn't a demigod. Nor was Theseus, or a good few of the Argonauts, or Odysseus, or most of the dudes in the Illiad. I hate grognards so much, in part because they insist on belittling the incredible potential of human endeavor in favor of wizardry which DOES NOT EXIST IN REAL LIFE. I'm sure you know that im just pedantic as hell
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| # ? Mar 6, 2012 18:07 |
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Wizardry totally exists- I was told the secrets of magik when I was stuff into the locker for the forth time that day. Also: Hey liesmith, I've been interested in reading up on the "true" Arthurian Legend- what author / book should I look up that is written in the most accurate + bog-standard English understandable text?
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| # ? Mar 6, 2012 18:12 |
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Liesmith posted:pedantic I just cannot relate to this sentiment. Maybe it's my 3e entrance to the hobby, or all the LoL I've played, or all the games in general I bounce between, but this just feels so absurd to me. It seems the most obvious thing in the world that different classes should function differently. Why else would you have classes? Half the excitement is picking one, looking at the pieces it gave you to play with and then coming up with a cool way to put them together. Doing different things with your player inputs emphasizes the fictional differences between what various characters are doing. I frequently hear 4e fans talk about the difference in play between classes, and it's always using phrasing like, "I get to play a fighter who goes in there and smacks a guy down with his shield, whirls around and stabs an orc in the face, or a warlord who jumps to stand over his downed friend and beats back the guy about to stab him while screaming at the rogue to get up." Perhaps there's some fundamental difference about the relationship to the fiction and gameplay elements. All I see in both those cases is "uses encounter power." Without a difference in the gaming pieces I get to manipulate as the player, there isn't a meaningful sense of "I am doing this cool unique thing my guy does!" The closest thing to a mechanical element I can connect to in the way I'm used to are the marking mechanics, but then I start tapping into a whole other series of issues. I suppose it's ultimately one of those nebulous "feel" things everyone disagrees about. It seems perfectly natural to me that a fighter will use one method to chain together his combo attacks, the wizard another to unleash his specific spell effects and the rogue probing for an opening will use yet a third. Putting them all on the same track feels jarring. Hrm. I think I might be talking about what one of my favorite LoL designers refers to as "flow" or some tabletop appropriate equivalent. In the videogame context he's generally using it to refer to mechanics that manage, once you've developed sufficient mastery, to fade from conscious thought into a sort of zen state, where each next move follows from the last without the need for entirely conscious thought, or more precisely, the mechanics line up to reinforce the proper gameplay decisions, seeming to follow naturally from one into the other as you employ them, even while you're still rationally engaged with what choice of inputs you ought to make next. In a tabletop game, you're not looking for mechanics that slide perfectly into one another so much as you for mechanics that link you back to direct immersion in the shared fiction. There isn't that constant back and forth engagement between the system and the user, so when you do come to your decision points, you want the mechanics to have as direct a reflection of the fictional events as possible to keep the player's attention focused there. That's a bit rambly and vague, but hopefully helps clarify why I feel this is so important. Asymmetrical mechanics that have strong aesthetic ties to what they model in the fiction make the game more interesting by reducing the tension between in-character or in-world immersion and game-playing.
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| # ? Mar 6, 2012 18:16 |
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Mikan posted:Gary Gygax both created and destroyed the RPG industry this isn't a copy paste I genuinely believe this (it's still a grognard post though)
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| # ? Mar 6, 2012 18:16 |
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In my opinion this is more than just "feel." Symmetric design leads to what you could call a "design-first" approach to the game, where the impact of the design drives the in-game fiction. Asymmetric design is frequently not done for its own sake, or for "differentiation," but because it's part of a "fiction-first" approach. The Fighter and Wizard in 0e and 4e make the distinction pretty clearly. In 0e, the Fighting-Man was pretty much the default character, and just had a slightly better to-hit chance and hit points than any random guy. Magic-Users were pretty much a random guy with an additional mechanic, driven by the fact that they cast magic spells. That's fiction driving the design: Magic-Users have an asymmetrical set of rules because they do something different in the game fiction. By contrast, in 4e the Fighter uses the same basic mechanics - the AEDU power system - as the Wizard. Fighters have Daily and Encounter powers with a relatively flimsy in-universe justification for how these moves are so taxing that you can only do them once per day / per encounter. Wizards have Dailies and Encounters because that's how magic works. See the difference? This is one of the reasons why so many people acted like they were allergic to 4e, myself included. Its balance came at the expense of the fiction; fighter powers are not uninteresting, but the shoehorning of fighters into AEDU breaks the fiction for people in a way that magic doesn't. The reason is, the fighter in every previous edition of D&D is a baseline. Fighters, for all that they get more HP and better to-hit chances and more attacks and so on, remain basic (demi-)humans who get by on their training in combat. Making them work in a way that is symmetrical to wizards removes that baseline. It may be better for game balance but you're changing a part of the way people have thought about their games for decades. I'm not saying all this to bash 4e. People clearly have fun with 4e, and I'm sure there are people who really like playing a Fighter better in that edition than in previous editions. But this is a part of why I prefer older editions, and why 4e fans prefer their edition. There are different goals: you can prioritize design, or you can prioritize story, but one or the other has to win out when they don't agree.
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| # ? Mar 6, 2012 18:20 |
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Why is it, pray tell, that people who play a game about being imaginary elves fighting imaginary monsters in imaginary worlds have absolutely no imagination?
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| # ? Mar 6, 2012 18:25 |
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Evil Mastermind posted:Because you can't meta-game it. I'm still trying to find the posts where he champions Skill+1d100 over roll-under percentile.
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| # ? Mar 6, 2012 18:26 |
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Chaltab posted:Why is it, pray tell, that people who play a game about being imaginary elves fighting imaginary monsters in imaginary worlds have absolutely no imagination?
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| # ? Mar 6, 2012 18:26 |
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Ettin posted:That last one is literally complaining about up-to-10d10 dice matching. Evil Mastermind posted:Just remember, kits: Frank's in medical school. Jesus christ. Although I guess that does explain why he doesn't have time to have ever heard of any game with matching mechanics...wait a minute, how does he have time to complain about them?! Liesmith posted:I hate grognards so much, in part because they insist on belittling the incredible potential of human endeavor in favor of wizardry which DOES NOT EXIST IN REAL LIFE. You're a literature guy, so I guess you don't hear people compare computer programming to wizardry dozens of times a year on average? Here's the opening words of Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, one of the grandest oldest grand old books in the field, grog-thesis highlighted: quote:We are about to study the idea of a computational process. Computational processes are abstract beings that inhabit computers. As they evolve, processes manipulate other abstract things called data. The evolution of a process is directed by a pattern of rules called a program. People create programs to direct processes. In effect, we conjure the spirits of the computer with our spells.
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| # ? Mar 6, 2012 18:27 |
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Benagain posted:I like how I could take his second paragraph and use it to convince someone to play FATE. You probably shouldn't, though, because like so many other things he's got it wrong. You can't retroactively give yourself a FATE point when you get a good roll.
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| # ? Mar 6, 2012 18:33 |
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Doc Hawkins posted:Jesus christ. "You have a high temperature, cough, runny nose and feel stiff and sore? Wow how exactly do you expect me to diagnose all of those symptoms? Yeah didn't think of that did you kid."
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| # ? Mar 6, 2012 18:33 |
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Doc Hawkins posted:
See, I'm actually OK with that. he's got delusions of grandeur but that's fine. What would irritate me is if he had said "while so-called winners are bagging our groceries, we are getting real work done with programs that make us wizards irl"
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| # ? Mar 6, 2012 18:37 |
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Halloween Jack posted:I think Frank was saying something about Fate being really breakable because you could essentially force (or lure the GM into making) compels in situations where it wouldn't really hurt you, thus stocking up on Fate Points, and couldn't understand why that's not how it works. Anyone know what I'm talking about? I get what you're saying, but like most of Frank's "solutions" to bad systems, it starts with the default assumption that the players and GMs are assholes who game the system at every opportunity and constantly try to screw each other over. Frank thinks that, in Fate: 1) the player decides the outcome of his roll ("But Peter Parker's player has already determined that he will barely catch himself on the other end and dramatically pull himself up"). 2) If you succeed, you can bring in negative Aspects to get Fate points, regardless of if the Aspects are relevant or not. ("If the roll comes up very well, he can activate negative traits like "is a teenager" or "written by JMS" to gain FATE Points."). 3) You can spend Fate points to skip scenes you don't want to do, or something ("In that case, the player can skip the bit where he gets harassed by triple-J (which would otherwise refill his Fate Points)."). The parts after that are right, except that getting chewed out by JJJ wouldn't be a Compel on an Aspect ("Freelancer for JJJ" or whatever) because it doesn't actually complicate Parker's life, it's just him being at work. Now, if JJJ told Parker to go cover some news event that would make him miss something important with MJ, then that would be a compel.
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| # ? Mar 6, 2012 18:37 |
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Doc Hawkins posted:Jesus christ. You know, I work in a similar field to Frank (I'm a software tester for clinical trial software for a pharmaceutics company). The amount of regulation and rules I'm under is nuts, and I don't even go anywhere near a drug or a patient. We have rules about what kinds of pens we can use on official documents, for example. I can't imagine what'll happen to Frank the first time he runs into some FDA regulation or audit that he "interpreted" wrong. Especially if he acts the same way he does online when he bumps into a mechanic he doesn't get.
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| # ? Mar 6, 2012 18:43 |
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Gerund posted:Wizardry totally exists- I was told the secrets of magik when I was stuff into the locker for the forth time that day. That's kind of a tough one. If you want the straight dope you could get a translation of Malory's Morte Darthur, but most translations of that poo poo are super boring. I recommend Steinbeck's Acts of King Arthur, T.H. White's Once and Future King, and Twain's Connecticut Yankee. none are that concerned with accuracy since they have their own agenda but that's cool, so did Malory. And all three are loving awesome. of course, if you are hardcore you will read this: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/cme/Mal...1;view=fulltext I recommend reading it out loud!
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| # ? Mar 6, 2012 18:50 |
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| # ? May 24, 2013 19:30 |
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Liesmith posted:That's kind of a tough one. If you want the straight dope you could get a translation of Malory's Morte Darthur, but most translations of that poo poo are super boring. I recommend Steinbeck's Acts of King Arthur, T.H. White's Once and Future King, and Twain's Connecticut Yankee. none are that concerned with accuracy since they have their own agenda but that's cool, so did Malory. And all three are loving awesome. For some reason I thought you had a real down on The Once and Future King.
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| # ? Mar 6, 2012 18:54 |
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