Grognards.txt NEXT: Goodnight, Sweet Wince

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Grognards.txt NEXT: Goodnight, Sweet Wince

«‹›12 »

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

So what was that thing with Mearls today/yesterday?

# ¿ Feb 4, 2015 14:55

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 08:55

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Paladins used to have minimum stat requirements that was somewhere between impossible to very difficult to reach depending on which rolled stats variant your DM deigned to let you use.

In exchange, they were explicitly and deliberately better than Fighters.

As a counterpoint to that exchange, they had to obey a code of conduct, or else they'd be bumped down to being just Fighters.

The DM loving with the Paladin player is a proud tradition, because they were more or less encouraged to do that when Paladins were first introduced. Even after Paladins became just another class that was (supposedly) balanced to be on the same playing field as everyone else, nobody ever said "no you shouldn't really try to keep screwing the Paladins out of their abilities anymore", or if they ever did, it's not like grogs would consider that to be legit anyway.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2015 07:42

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Guilty Spork posted:

I still maintain that a fair number of gamers basically really badly want to play GURPS, but don't know it and wouldn't give it a chance if they did, solely because it's not D&D. D&D is not a physics simulation, and the game came from a guy who called realism "the last refuge of the scoundrel."

I don't think that would even happen for GURPS. You have a lumberjack skill that's somewhere between maybe 8 and 12, roll 3d6, and if it's less than or equal to the skill, you chop down the tree!

ProfessorCirno posted:

My favorite thing is when people talk up that fighters should be the BEST AT FIGHTING and can't do literally anything else at all, JUST FIGHTING ALL THE TIME, and then those same people whine about how fighters are overpowered anytime they actually are the best at fighting.

Yeah I mean if they actually are supposed to be really really good at fighting then I'm sure they wouldn't mind if the Fighter could literally explode the boss in a couple hits. What's that? They walked it all back during the Next playtest? Oh ok never mind then.

(yes I'm being just a little facetious; a class that explodes a boss in a round wouldn't be so cool in a game that's a lot about combat if he just dumps on everyone else, but sheesh)

Grog tax

quote:

It was out for six years. That's called a mass rejection. Face it, you got swindled by a lovely game.

I remember cracking open the new PHB for 4th and suddenly noticing that all of my favorite classes were just gone... No more Druids, No more Barbs, No more Sorcerors etc.

Then I remember the MM. No descriptions, barely a paragraph of detail and... nothing. Just pre-planned encounters.

Then I looked through the DMG. None of the advice, none of the worldbuilding ideas.... still sparse.

And then a year later they released DL- second release books. So, I walked away from the game for a while. I felt ripped off so I said gently caress it. Goodbye.

gently caress your lovely game and gently caress you for clinging to it.

# ¿ Feb 9, 2015 13:07

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

http://www.polygon.com/2015/2/9/8005145/why-one-of-d-ds-biggest-video-game-devs-thinks-that-tabletop-game-has

quote:

History, people, history. Rewind to 2005: WoW was KING of EVERYTHING. It dwarfed EverQuest. People quit playing D&D on Friday night to go raid somewhere in Azeroth. The development that went into 4th Edition was based on the assumption that pen-and-paper could claim new audience from on-line game players. That�s why it was such a huge break from 3.0/3.5 and the heritage that led there. It was seeking new audience and in doing so, it took for granted all of us who had been playing for ages.

I understand Mr. Urquhart�s cynicism, but it�s misplaced by blaming it on corporate behemoth-ism.

5th Edition rectifies the problem � and probably sucks a lot of life out of would-be future Pathfinder markets. Here�s what I see in 5th Edition: Reverence for where D&D came from and the tabletop experience. Not just, "Hey, let�s go back to that," but an honest effort to make something high-quality that is fun. I have loved the artwork, the layouts, everything about 5th Edition tells me that someone, somewhere in that big ol� company actually cares how D&D turns out. I don�t get the "corporatized" slimy feel when I look through the new books, and I honestly can�t wait to have a little more cash to throw at them.

# ¿ Feb 10, 2015 11:17

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

LuiCypher posted:

I like how blame is placed on 4e fracturing the base and not, uh, Pathfinder basically lifting 3.5e's rules for the low, low price of free and deliberately engaging in edition warring to drive their sales.

While I dislike how Pathfinder got their start, and the ruleset at a mechanical level, and PF Online, they seem to be doing a better job at expanding their market than the D&D team is.

Not really bad grog:

ProfessorCirno posted:

The comments overall are amazing, because almost every single one ignores what Urquhart says and goes "ACTUALLY I BET IT WAS 4e, IF HE PLAYED 5e HE'D KNOW HE'D KNOW."

quote:

I started playing Dungeons & Dragons with the red box, I started playing regularly in high school with AD&D (and the Unearthed Arcana rules). We didn�t even venture in to second edition. Our DM ruled that verbotten. The 5th edition is truer to the heart of D&D than anything in years and honestly far more true than 3.x was. This entire post smacks of some one who�s hooked up with a new lover and is now passive agressively dissing an ex. They clearly aren�t following how the game has developed and the fact that you can get the base rules for FREE with everything you need to play (so a DM can splash out on the books and let the players function with some simple free mechanics) is just further proof of how WotC are trying to adapt to a changing market. I have to say I�m very disappointed with Obsidian but really Bioware were the big D&D makers, Obsidian came along took their hard work and made expansions that were ALMOST completed and only really worked after the community patched it (ie. Knights of the old Repubic 2, Neverwinter Nights 2 and so on.)

quote:

Right. An open, two-year test program of near-half-a-million players is certainly no way to be community-driven. Like that big new post-release customer survey they just released. Lost it�s way, for sure. Such a shame!

Because the playtest feedback was so well structured

gradenko_2000 fucked around with this message at 04:26 on Feb 11, 2015

# ¿ Feb 11, 2015 04:22

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Libertad! posted:

This is a conjecture I've really only ever heard on Something Awful Trad Games. What is this statement based upon?

From Alien Rope Burn's F&F review of Pathfinder:

quote:

What you have to realize - in case you've just crawled out of a womb and haven't heard - is that Pathfinder is based directly on Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 and its tie-in system, d20. So that's what they're getting "more than 10 years" of development. Of course, they didn't develop it for ten years. Wizards of the Coast did.

But wait. Hang on. Hold up a second.

Dungeons and Dragons 3rd Edition was released in 2000. Pathfinder was released in 2009. So. They're counting development time before release, maybe? In 2003, it was revised as Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 . Now, one thing to understand is that Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 did develop many new ideas. None of which Pathfinder is legally allowed to use.

So yes, it was being developed, but very little of that development can ever be used in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game . Mostly, they're just revising 3.5, a game which was, if you count 1999-2003, roughly four years in development.

I realize this might sound a little nitpicky, but what I'm demonstrating from the outset is that Pathfinder is developing a mythology. Not a mythology of elves and dragons. It's about developing a mythology of being the true bastard heir to the Dungeons & Dragons empire, unjustly cast off of its throne.

quote:

They give a dedication to Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, even though Gygax expressed an emphatic distaste for Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 and the Open Gaming License that makes Pathfinder possible at all. In fact, Gary predicted that the OGL could be used to rob Dungeons & Dragons of its IP, rather prophetically.

But that's another part of the Pathfinder mythos: that it's a continuation of what Gygax started, that it owes everything to him. And perhaps it does. But pretending Pathfinder is a continuation of the old brown box is purest fabrication.

Monte Cook posted:

For almost three years, a team of us worked on developing a new rules set that built upon the foundation of the 25 years prior. Released in 2000, 3rd Edition started a new era. A few years later, a different set of designers made updates to the game in the form of 3.5.

...

Today, the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game carries on that same tradition as the next step in the progression. Now, that might seem inappropriate, controversial, or even a little blasphemous, but it's still true. The Pathfinder RPG uses the foundations of the game's long history to offer something new and fresh. It's loyal to its roots, even if those roots are, in a fashion, borrowed.

Monte Cook, again posted:

The game's designer, Jason Bulmahn, did an amazing job creating innovative new mechanics for the game, but he started with the premise that he already had a pretty good game to build upon. He didn't wipe the slate clean and start over. Jason had no desire to alienate the countless fans who had invested equally countless hours playing the game for the last 35 years.

Monte Cook, again posted:

The Pathfinder RPG offers cool new options for characters. Rogues have talents. Sorcerers have bloodline powers. It fixes a few areas that proved troublesome over the last few years. Spells that turn you into something else are restructured. Grappling is simplified and rebalanced. But it's also still the game that you love, and have loved for so long, even if it was called by a different name.

I trust the gang at Paizo to bear the game's torch well. They respect the game's past as much as its future. They understand its traditions.

All of this is very subtle - dogwhistling, even, and it's all very wink-wink-nudge-nudge that 4th Edition is such a massive departure from the truth of Dungeons and Dragons.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2015 16:58

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

quote:

"It doesn't matter what the house is made of. You're in the house. Everyone else is following a blood trail. Are you examining the panelling to determine what the makeup is?"

Part of the role of the DM is keeping players on task. Occasionally that means pinging a recalcitrant player upside the head.

quote:

I typically will allow the annoying questions and answer them in detail then when the annoying player attempts to comment on a conversation happening in the next room. "Sorry you're not there yet because you're still studying the wood in the previous room" and move on with the other payers for a few minutes before allowing the annoyance to intervene. This usually will keep them on task in the future.

quote:

The age old question: "You come upon a bridge over a stream." "HOW DEEP IS IT!??!?!?!?" "You are now at the bottom of a 15ft deep stream."

quote:

"what's the house made of?"

"Wood."

"What kind of wood?"

"Its a special kind of wood made from the wailing forest. Due to the strange nature of the wood it lets out a lengthy moaning sound when someone asks inane questions that add nothing to the situation...Oh wait what's that sound?"

quote:

"You place your hand on the wall to inspect the wood. It turns out it's made from the jackholevore tree, a tree that is possessed by an evil spirit that eats people that ask stupid questions. The spirit now possesses the entire house."

quote:

The wood is Annoyyew, the iron/steel alloy is Redundantine, The leather is donkey leather, and the rope is rear end-hair fiber from the town fool who asks too many pointless questions. You don't even know what's in that loving burrito you ate during the break and you're asking me about the Annoyyew? You're a dragonborn barbarian for godssake, are you wondering if it's EDIBLE??? If you eat the whole loving doorframe, I'll let it count as a pound of food. Who else in the party wants to eat this loving dungeon? You know what? Annoyyew is known to few carpenter-sages for occasionally being wraith-haunted. Roll for initiative. Roll low.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2015 07:38

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

quote:

I've GM'd different groups of people, and they keep deciding to stop halfway through a dungeon and set up camp wherever they are for a short or long rest. They break into a keep, kill the guards, and then decide it must be safe to rest in the guardroom for 8 hours.
Is it a side effect of video games? Where enemies only patrol the room they are in?

Analogy: Someone breaks in to my work place and kills the artists in their room (not that this has crossed my mind much recently) and then they decide to make beds and sit down and eat a meal. Do they assume that no one will notice? No one will enter and talk to them? There might be a change of shift? Their buddies wont visit them?

Sorry for the rant - but this drives me nuts. They've just done it again today and I can't seem to give enough subtle hints.

quote:

There's many ways to change the behavior of those players, sometimes creativity is the key.

A mysterious high-pitched noise making it impossible (and dangerous) to sleep (You even get to choose the reason, could be a ghost, could be the badguy torturing his prisonners or even something more sinister)?

Could be the celling slowly crumbling to pieces under the effects of a storm (for older/crappier/trash dungeons) making it dangerous to even stay in a room for too long maybe?

Something in the dungeon could also be a source of perpetual and horrific nightmares making it not only dangerous for their mental health to sleep as long as they are in the vicinity of the dungeon.

Make the place as inhospitable and as reasonably dangerous as you can

quote:

I find mechanic focused players try this more often. If you can get your group fully into character (which I admit can be extremely hard) then they would never try this. Mechanical players will look at their sheets, though, and see they blew half their slots or they have few health points or are out of rages, etc, and know the easiest remedy is sleep. Once they think about this they decide its the logical character choice too, as their character wouldn't charge into enemies at a disadvantage. It's flawed logic, but I think that's how it happens.

quote:

Your party took a rest in a hostile environment with patrolling baddies and didn't get attacked? Maybe it's time for a not-so-subtle hint

"We take a long rest"

"Alright, whoever's on guard duty roll a perception check"

DC 20 perception for the bad guy who looks through a crack in the door

DC 15 perception for the group of bad guys coming to ambush the party

"A group of enemies bursts into the room. None of you have any armor equipped, you need to take an action to pick up your weapons from the floor, and the effects of the long rest are negated. Roll initiative"

Thankfully, my party views me as some kind of evil genius despite not really throwing anything particularly hard at them yet, so they're smart enough not to try to rest in hostile territory.

quote:

I prefer to think of myself as a chaotic neutral genius... lol

Personally if my players locked themselves into what they think is a safe niche, they would find it barricaded from the other side by morning and then the smoke would start rolling in through the door to knock them out slowly and painfully... I am nice enough to give them a discovered path out of that room, cave, whatever, but they would not be able to progress from that spot. They'd either get captured, killed, or have to flee at that point, and the big bad guy would probably succeed with his plans or escape them.

# ¿ Feb 23, 2015 14:18

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

I personally think this entire "trying to make people feel included" is silly- and I know a bunch of gay people who think the same way.
I mean, if somebody came up to me and said "I don't feel like this RPG is for me because they don't explicitly say I'm allowed to be gay", it would seem to me that the person is being petty. After all: RPGs are fueled by imaginations!
Why would anybody think you need "authorization" by the game's writer to be whatever you want to be?
Did any of the classic RPGs outright say "You're NOT ALLOWED TO BE GAY\TRANS\DOLPHIN" ?

Ahhh, but, I digress. The game still sounds great to me, and I can't wait to get my hands on the final product. (I soooo hope you reach the 9K goal! The adversarial mode + extra character options is what I want to see!)

P.S: Can't wait to run a super-sexist game in Hyboria.

# ¿ Feb 25, 2015 19:51

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

quote:

If you want to be more of a tactical fighter. I would definitely go battlemaster. If you want to hit harder go champion

quote:

You want to hit stuff VERY hard? Go champion

you want to hit stuff and have it some additional effects? Go battlemaster

quote:

The Battlemaster picks from a bunch of manoeuvres to give himself extra options in a fight, things like tripping, disarming and just being more accurate. He uses these Superiority dice to deal extra damage and status effects or be more accurate.

The Champion is more of the standard fighter, but he's better than a standard fighter, he gets more passive improvements...like improved critical chance and healing.

quote:

It really comes down to how tactically you want to be in your combats. Champion is very simple and straight forward, like the fighters from older editions. You get up in someone's face and hit it until it dies.

Battlemaster is much more involved. There are spell-like abilities that require you to make choices both when leveling and in combat. Personally, I find it to be the more interesting of the two because I like some nuance in how I fight.

quote:

Champion: The less complex fighter. You crit twice as often (on a 19-20 instead of just 20, and on an 18-20 at high levels). You also get a boost to all strength checks, an extra fighting style, and regeneration as your capstone feature. This one works well mechanically with half-orcs (extra crit dice for dayz), and really starts to shine when you hit fifth level and get more attacks. Less choice, but it's "always on", and I personally like always having something "extra" that my character can do. I also really enjoy the simplicity at times - it just makes sense for some characters, like Brick Privy, the half-orc criminal fighter who's six-foot-ten and built like a brick privy.

quote:

Basically a battle master has limited resources he can spend Champion does not. Battle master can put down a beat down really good for a short period of time. Champion is consistent.

quote:

You like hitting things often and hard, while also getting a metric fuckton of passive bonuses? Champion.

Like having huge combat control and utility while also dealing damage, as well as letting other characters gain attacks on YOUR turn? Battlemaster.

# ¿ Feb 26, 2015 18:17

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

I've always thought that "Paladins as a package of mechanical abilities" and "Paladins as a prescription of in-game behavior" shouldn't be tied together if the player doesn't want them to be. It should be like if you played 4e and decided to reskin every Paladin ability to (narratively) use the Martial power source.

quote:

I'm really liking what I see here, apart from the blah *World-ism of calling things "Moves".

quote:

what's wrong with Moves?

quote:

It just feels like a bad fit. Moves are a thing you use in a 1-on-1 fighting game, not actions you take in a roleplaying game.

(I mean, unless you're playing the Street Fighter RPG, I guess...)

gradenko_2000 fucked around with this message at 07:39 on Apr 7, 2015

# ¿ Apr 6, 2015 15:14

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

FrostyPox posted:

I also like how he's like "at best they'd be grave-robbers and spies". Because, well.... 1.) those two things are very, very different, and 2.) a spy could probably be a super-useful thing to have as an adventuring party going into unknown and potentially dangerous territory, and 3.)In your typical bog-standard unimaginative murder-hobo simulation, which seem to be the thing grogs love, all the characters are basically loving graverobbers!

Spies also aren't an inherently amoral or immoral profession. Hasn't he ever heard of ~~the CIA~~ James Bond?

# ¿ Apr 15, 2015 06:05

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

What is THAC0? What does a saving throw even mean? How are the different schools of magic differentiated from each other?

And yes, you could conceivably find out all this by reading the book, but that's no different from reading DW and inculcating their definitions of Keywords from reading the book.

TheLovablePlutonis posted:

AC means armor class. It is easy enough for a retard to understand, if that is what you mean by retarded. Meanwhile, Forward has no connection with end of next turn.

Forward has no connection with EONT because Forward lasts until your next roll, because DW has no turns per se.

# ¿ Apr 17, 2015 05:00

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

GrizzlyCow posted:

Wait, what's wrong with fail forward?

The grog misinterpretation of what fail forward means* makes them think that it renders the game irrelevant: "why roll for stuff, why play at all if it means you're going to go forwards regardless?"

_{* to be charitable, it should probably have been called "fail sideways" or maybe "fail interestingly", but grogs being grogs that wouldn't stop them from decrying it as bad.}

# ¿ Apr 17, 2015 08:30

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Sage Genesis posted:

The fact that people looked at Blades in the Dark and saw a Dishonored-ripoff instead of a Thief-homage is sad and ironic. I think it might be a meaningful piece of performance art or something.

John Harper himself calls out Dishonored as a "media touchstone" to Blades, though, and the Duskwall/Dunwall thing is very deliberate, so seeing that first over Thief isn't really all that out there.

It's the fact that the Den thinks this is something that could ever conceivably be worth a lawsuit over that's groggy.

# ¿ Apr 17, 2015 12:34

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

quote:

D&D 5e Does "Old School" Better Than Many OSR Games

So, there was a little bit of an debate started in the comments of +Stan Shinn's posts about 5e. He basically asks the question "Is D&D 5e old school?"

Of course, that started the typical "Yes, it is - No, it isn't - Just what is Old School?" debate.

In one of my comments I noted that I believe 5e is a better at the old school play style than many old school systems, but didn't have the time or space to elaborate on that thought. So, I wanted to follow that up with what will likely be a controversial post...

Ah, memories...

But before you get your nerd rage up in my grill and pull out the flamethrowers, listen for a moment an consider my hypothesis. Also, this is a bit of a long article, so bear with me and please read to the end before setting fire to the comments.

First, I need to define what "old school" means to me. It may not always fit everyone else's definition (and it appears there are dozens of them), but it is important for me to define so one can understand my hypothesis and I believe my definition generally conforms to the OSR community as a whole:

1) Rulings over rules - DM interpretation and application of common sense trumps Rules As Written.
2) Role playing is encouraged by emergent play, not explicit game mechanics.
3) Mechanics stay out of the way (as much as possible) of the story (closely related to #2).

For me, the "old school" play style is not tied to specific game mechanics (such as save-or-die, descending AC, THAC0, lack of defined skill list, etc).

Others believe it may also encompasses these aspects (although this varies from game to game and I disagree that a game requires these to be considered "old school"):

4) Player skill over PC skill (this really requires a whole new blog post).
5) Emphasis on resource management (including but not limited to slow healing, spell slots, equipment, etc).

As a side note, if you enjoy an given OSR game, I want to make it clear I am NOT saying you are having BadWrongFun. This post is just to educate to people who have an incorrect assumption that 5th Edition doesn't do "old school". Continue to play whatever version you love; just don't tell me 5e isn't old school. It most definitely is.

So let me address why I think 5e addresses each of these of the above points, sometimes better than even some of the original D&D rule sets. While Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson were both incredible visionaries, it's clear from the rules that neither of them were outstanding game designers. AD&D was a hot mess of mismatched and inconsistent rules. Whether that was more due to Gary's influence than Dave's is a topic for another day. So let's get back to the philosophical points that make a game "old school".

#1 - Rulings over rules.

I'm not sure I need to go into detail on this one. It's pretty abundantly clear in the writing of the new system that the designers are emphasizing that the DM is the arbiter and that the rules are meant to provide a standard framework. However, each DM may implement them in slightly differing ways. I believe the 5e books communicate that pretty well, so I'm not sure I have much else to say on this point.

#2 - Role playing is encouraged by emergent play, not explicit game mechanics.

This one is a bit more tricky to define. There a very gray area where one must ask "How much mechanical detail is too much?" AD&D appears to stomp all over this. AD&D has charts, tables, systems and subsystems for all kinds of minutia and appears to violate the OSR "rules light" philosophy, while at the same time is the model for many OSR games (alongside the Basic / Expert sets).

I also believe this philosophical goal of the OSR is more dependent upon the DM than the rule set. The DM has the ability to encourage role playing from his group by the way he runs the game regardless of the mechanics themselves.

From my perspective, 5th Edition appears to strike a good balance. The rules provide a good framework with a fair amount of detail, but tries not to get into minutia.

Some OSR advocates might say that the Inspiration mechanic is antithetical to the philosophy of point 2, but I would disagree. Encouraging role playing with a mechanic is the not same as replacing role playing with mechanics (I'll also get into this more in point #4).

D&D 5e also tries to emphasize the "3 pillars" of the game - exploration, social interaction and combat. By re-emphasizing the exploration and social interaction in the rule set, the design goals of the new edition appear to be in line with the emergent play philosophy.

#3 - Mechanics stay out of the way of the story.

I believe this is where D&D 5e shines. By simplifying mechanics and streamlining the rules, 5th Edition keeps the fiddly-ness of the rules at a minimum.

Side note: As I was writing this post, +Shane Harsch totally made much of this article superfluous with the following quotes:

"Creating specialized subsystems to handle a specific class of abilities seems unnecessarily inefficient and inconsistent."

And... "That doesn't make it wrong, but that has prevented me from enjoying much of the OSR movement because it seems grounded in replicating the past without consideration for the progress that has been made in game mechanics." (emphasis added by me)

Arg. I hate when people say something better than I have in a shorter, neater package!

I know that not all OSR games ignore advances in game design, but many of them are hung up on replication mechanics that appear in AD&D or Holmes/Moldvay editions which seems antithetical to me given that part of the OSR philosophy is that mechanics should get out of the way of role playing. The best way to achieve that goal would appear to be streamlining and improving those mechanics... which is what many OSR games avoid in order to be considered "OSR" by the community... A bit of a Catch-22.

I think this is also why some people really like some OSR games like or Adventurer, Conqueror, King or Lamentation of the Flame Princess both of which build a very simple encumbrance system by throwing out the math. That, to me, is good OSR design. It ejects what was bad about the old and attempts to improve upon it with new mechanics.

I think 5th Edition also does this well. The designers looked at the whole span of D&D over its life and tried to keep what was best in terms of game mechanics, including adding new mechanics, while maintaining what was good about the way D&D was played in the past. While the mechanics may be considered "new school" design, the philosophy is definitely "old school" and I don't believe you can disqualify a game as "old school" simply because it does some things differently in the game mechanics.

#4 - Player Skill over PC Skill

A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming has a description about finding a pit trap "illustrating" (and I use that term loosely) the difference between old school and modern game design. The problem with the pit trap example is that is it all bullshit. Basic D&D and AD&D have always had skill checks for things like he describes. Thieves had the "Find/Remove Traps" skill. Elves had a 2 in 6 chance of detecting a secret door just by walking by it.

The inference in the Old School Primer is that if your game has character skills that give a chance toward success at a task, it's not "old school" because that's not role playing. I say again: Bullshit.

D&D has always had attribute or skill checks. Want to persuade a guard to let you in to see the Lord Mayor? That's a Charisma check in an old school game. Want to do it in 5e? That's a Persuasion (Cha) check. There's no difference.

The only difference lies in how the DM handles the scene. Yes, a good DM would make you talk in character to the guard to encourage role playing at the table. If he thinks you have a justification to see the Lord Mayor and you role-play that justification, then he doesn't need to make you roll the dice. You just get to go in based on the role-play at the table.

On the other hand, if you're just trying to bullshit your way in and your argument is not convincing? Well, then perhaps you'd better try to make a good Charisma check. This is always how the game has played out whether using old school or new school mechanics.

For as long as there has been a Dragon Magazine, there have been articles discussing this topic about role playing a scene out versus rolling against a skill check for these kinds of tasks. This is nothing new and the same debate occurred all the way back in 1st edition and Basic D&D... so to say that this is an artifact of "new school" game design is a bogus straw man.

Just because a game system has skill checks, doesn't mean it's not old school. How those skill checks are best used as adjunct to role playing at the table is very much part of the DM's skill and play style.

#5 - Resource Management (and Lethality)

I personally don't agree that resource management is one of the required pillars of old school play, but I will at least address the point for those that do. While 5th edition doesn't emphasize resource management, it's extremely easy to play a 5e game that does.

Don't like that casters have damage dealing cantrips? Get rid of 'em! (or limit their use to X times per day like other spell slots). Don't like 3 death saves? Make it one. Or none. Make death occur at 0 hit point. Don't like overnight HP recovery? Throw it out. Get rid of second wind or spending hit dice during short rests.

I don't know anyone who played Basic D&D or AD&D "by the book". That person doesn't exist. The fact of the matter is that we've always been house ruling D&D. That's also part of the DIY philosophy of the old school movement. So why is it that 5e isn't considered old school simply because one must house rule a few of the mechanics? That's a double standard. No OSR game is played 100% RAW. That's part in parcel of the nature of the DIY home brew game.

In Summary

In my opinion, D&D 5th Edition supports the "old school" play style even better than some of the original D&D rule sets and a number of OSR titles. It unshackles the players and DM from the inconsistent and inefficient rules of earlier editions while maintaining the feel and play style of the earliest incarnations of the game. Just because it uses improvements to game design that have come over the last 30 year does not disqualify it as "old school". By that definition, only retro-clones would truly qualify as "old school". On the contrary, those modern design improvements help put the focus back on exploration and role playing by getting out of the player's way.

# ¿ Apr 19, 2015 06:08

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

LORD OF BUTT posted:

Isn't Dark Dungeons/Darker Dungeons an AD&D retroclone with a decent amount of support?

Dark Dungeons is based on the Rules Compendium. OSRIC is the most popular retroclone based on AD&D 1e. There's also at least one AD&D 2e-based retroclone that I know of, For Gold and Glory, but Libertad is correct that the vast majority of the OSR revolves around OD&D and BECMI.

# ¿ Apr 23, 2015 04:39

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

quote:

Is there any relief charity operation for Nepal on Drivethrurpg?

# ¿ Apr 26, 2015 13:47

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

It struck me as "I cannot view charity except through the lens of this hobby"

# ¿ Apr 26, 2015 14:36

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

quote:

Exactly. They are guidelines for a starting point, and additional criteria such as knowledge of players, their characters and intuition by the DM part are still required as usual.
A "Deadly encounter" ideally aims to be in that way, but it doesn't need to be so in practice: the stat blocks, specially when it's about published adventures can't address the many factors and variables of an RPG.
Removing such things for the shake of people without the time for making adjustments prior to the game session, or on the fly, would result in already existing options such as boardgames or computer based "RPGs".

This is not, shall we say, purestrain grog, but the last part is interesting because it implies

1. that you couldn't (or deliberately didn't) design an RPG with predictable enough factors and variables that encounter building guidelines (not rules!) would always produce a difficulty level that you wanted

2. that even if you did, it wouldn't be an RPG anymore.

# ¿ May 6, 2015 13:28

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

quote:

quote:
"the time Dungeon World came along as their big move to try to subvert old-school."

How do you reckon that took place exactly?

Dungeon world was marketed in such a way as to make it seem like it was an old-school game, to the point that some people bought it under those false pretenses. It was also a major shift-moment for the storygames movement, where instead of collectively thumbing their noses at the type of games the 'great unwashed' play in order to keep promoting their games about sexually-frustrated victorian professors or girls smoking outside a mcdonalds or whatever, they started to try to hitch onto the OSR's success in pushing for more mainstream games with a very different tone and style than the ones they previously promoted. In one sense, it was a tactic, in another, a tacit admission of the collapse of their movement.

# ¿ May 7, 2015 09:47

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Kai Tave posted:

Really, it's perfect that he brings up oldschool point-and-click adventure games as a counterexample for why fail-forward is for social justice whinetards or whatever because adventure games are more or less the literal opposite of fail-forward gaming. If you don't know the one specific puzzle solution involving making a moustache out of cat hair in order to progress then the game just grinds to a halt until you brute force your way through it. There's a reason adventure games are a mostly dead genre these days and it's because people largely got tired of poo poo like that.

Wasn't "pixelbitching" a TRPG term as much as a computer adventure game one, even?

# ¿ May 7, 2015 16:28

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Plague of Hats posted:

"5etards" huh?

There, that's better!

Yeah, I bet Frank was all "Beep boop, that's not optimal, end of statement" like he always is and his ban was 100% capricious.

who can even stand to read that? Half of it is made-up nerd epithets and the other half is forums drama

# ¿ May 7, 2015 21:10

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

quote:

The Forge claimed that D&D was supposed to be "Gamist" (which style was also obviously not their preferred style, and barely a step removed from an insult). They suggested that anything in D&D that wasn't just about the 'gamist' style was a sign of "incoherence" and made the game worse.
Some idiots believed them, believed the lies that this was all D&D could possibly be or do, and went on to (for the first time ever) actually make D&D what only its detractors had ever claimed it actually was.

I predicted, when it became clear what 4e was, that it would cause a loss of at least two-thirds of its player base (the natural consequence of going from what the Forge absurdly labelled "incoherent" to just reflecting one style of the flawed "GNS" theory). Lo and behold, that's exactly what happened.

quote:

quote:
quote:
Except that D&D did appeal to "all tastes" ("all" in this case meaning all that would reasonably be inclined to play D&D in the first place) for most of its editions. It was only 4e that intentionally said "we're supposed to be 'gamist' because forge-theory says so and thus we are going to shut out those who don't want that type of game".

Witness the astounding success of 5e when it turned back toward a broad-spectrum of appeal.

I'm curious, do you have any source for this?

you just have to look at how they made 4e, what it looks like. And especially how much the forgist/storygame crowd approved of it (I won't say loved it or played it, but of course that was never the point: the storygamers didn't want to see a D&D they'd actually play, they just wanted a D&D they could say is 'gamist' and then nudge it off to some little corner to die). And likewise, how much they disapprove of 5e.

Anything else I could say is under NDA, and I suspect you know that.

# ¿ May 8, 2015 07:35

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

There's a certain Ur-Fascist vibe to "The Forge" both being influential enough to actually drive the development of an entire edition of Dungeons and Dragons into a certain direction, yet also incompetent enough that the direction caused 4e's "failure"

# ¿ May 8, 2015 08:07

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

GNS is a useful generalization, but it's not really anything to base entire swathes of game design around, either.

Also yeah people got weird about it and Edwards keeps perpetuating the whole Forgist vs RPGPundit slapfight as much as the other guy does. Its double down all the way down.

# ¿ May 9, 2015 09:58

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

I think it's better to approach it from the perspective of "what the players want out of the game", or "what's the tone of the game we're playing" and reconciling that with games that are more generally suited to appeal to one type or the other, rather than trying to box individual games into these three categories.

# ¿ May 11, 2015 01:16

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

30.5 Days posted:

Haha what.

Tome of Battle is better than 4e by the sole virtue of being a 3.5 splatbook.

# ¿ May 11, 2015 05:43

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

The Deleter posted:

Here's a clue - there's no difference. Games like Apocalypse World, Dog Eat Dog and Dread are as much RPGs as D20 stuff and "storygame" is a bullshit smokescreen used by grogs to define What They Like from Things That Are Bad And Wrong.

story-games.com deliberately call themselves that, much as I agree with you. Was "story games" a label that certain outfits (The Forge?) came up with themselves and then grogs adopted as a nerd epithet, or was it the other way around?

# ¿ May 12, 2015 16:40

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Serf posted:

I'll never understand how people can argue that RPGs aren't a device for telling stories. You literally make up characters and the story emerges from the interaction between those characters and the world set up by the GM. When you tell people about it later or reminisce, you're telling a story about what happened.

The most rational argument I've been able to pick out (because this is grogs we're talking about, so yeah) is the difference between a ruleset that has "simulationist" definitions for (almost) everything and the game is played completely straight, versus a ruleset and/or a GM mindset that handwaves results in the interest of whatever creates a more interesting story.

The former is like playing XCOM: the soldier just has a name and no real background, but over the course of several missions he pulls off some Hail Mary plays and even one completely miraculous shot and you get attached to the name and you have this narrative and history that congeals out of an otherwise completely straightforward series of events. Emergent gameplay and all that - the rules never tell you to create a good story, a good story just happens.

The latter is when both the soldier and the Muton Commander are both down to 1 HP, and the soldier takes a 50% accuracy shot ... and the GM rules by fiat that it hits because holy cow what a great ending to the story. The introduction of that deus ex machina is what people seem to have trouble with, because it's not "real" to them (if they were ever arguing in good faith, because again, grogs).

# ¿ May 12, 2015 19:53

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Serf posted:

I mean as a GM I would totally let that happen because it would be awesome, but aren't most game systems (at least these days) designed to increase the chances of that cool moment happening anyway? Action points/Fate points, powers/abilities that let you re-roll, all sorts of things let you modify the "narrative" to suit you when you really want to. I mean we're talking about the same people who still believe in rolling 3d6 straight down for your ability scores, so maybe they prefer games where it's just "roll dice, process result" forever, I dunno. But in most games I've played it seems very friendly towards letting you get cool things when you invest resources in attaining them.

Without getting into the topic of when they started getting better (or if there was ever a significant tipping point at all, games have been telling players and GMs to go with whatever's cooler since forever), yes, I do agree with you that games have been getting better at encouraging agency and narrative control.

Like, friggin' GURPS has a metacurrency rule and the authors of GURPS for Dummies describes the game as being about shared storytelling, so we can come full circle and conclude that it's really more about how shittily someone decides to run their game regardless of what the rules actually do or don't encourage.

# ¿ May 12, 2015 20:29

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

quote:

Dat feel, when people react with disgust when you introduce slutty captors and guardians to "locked up" scenario.

Dat feel, when you realize that political-correctness raised pussies, coming from the oversexualized world, see nothing wrong in cold-blood killing, but have trouble with guardians suggesting some help for sexual favors.

Dat feel, when RPGs are not about trying new possibilities anymore. Especially disturbing, questionable, provocative ones.

Dat feel, when there's yet another game within the game - predicting whether something may or may not trigger a violent outburst of your players.

gently caress, I'm old.

quote:

Well, the thing is, that while I wouldn't want to introduce fuckie-fuckie to Pokemon tabletop, I see no reason to not add it to games telling much more darker or adult stories, which rely on the concept of doing, you know, adult, often dark and violent stuff. Like killing.

In addition, discussing things prior to play, might result in either people getting clues what they are about to face, or something along the lines of:

GM: "So, I'm planning to introduce elements of X and Y to upcoming adventure. Oh, and you know what? I came up with a peculiar idea just now. It's about Z. How about that guys?"

#1: "Uuuuuuhmmm, nope, I'm not interested in that."
#2: "Sounds fun".
#3: "I'm not sure whether it's kosher according to my paradigm, so no".

GM: "Hmmm, ok... Well... That makes my scenario impossible to run and I really wanted to run it. So... I don't know, what do you want to play?"

Players unisono: "Yet another boring, predictable, safe thing, yaaaaaaaay!"

GM: "I hate my life".

quote:

Puritanism is still alive and well in the US, only difference is these days it comes at you from the left.

# ¿ May 13, 2015 10:19

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Halloween Jack posted:

The weird thing about YDIS is that it's really juvenile itself, and if you aren't hip-deep in OSR goings-on, you won't get a lot of what they're talking about.

Yeah YDIS doesn't really come off like the adult in the room, either.

# ¿ May 14, 2015 21:12

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

quote:

Am I wrong for telling my group of players to re-roll in front of me when they show me stats with 18-18-17-17-17-15 and
18-18-17-19-16-17.
18-20-18-17-15-18. All at 4th Lv.

quote:

I have rolled stats similar to that and actually lowered my own stats before the dm saw them. I want the game to be fun and maxing them out isn't fun

quote:

Those are not rolled stats, that's for sure. It's very unlikely one player can roll that good. But three?
Also, before deciding what to do you may want to talk to them about the game and abusing your trust. Especially if they are new to tabletop and come from mmorpg. A few days ago I read someone here that was willing to get a healer, dps or tank character. I mean, they have no loving idea what they're doing.

quote:

The other thing they don't consider is that it's very hard to role play a character with 17 Int and 15 Cha unless you're a very experienced player and very good at it.

quote:

If they didn't roll the stats in front of you, there is absolutely nothing wrong with demanding that they reroll them in front of you

quote:

Let them play the stats just sup up the encounters they fudged the stats so fudge against the players. max strength on encounters and minimum rewards on items and treasure might want to show them the percentage chance on this graph http://www.had2know.com/.../normal-distribution... which is 0.00135 percent to roll those number and 0 % chance all the numbers will be 15 to 20

quote:

well then if you want them to not cheat, simply have them cite specifically where paragraph and page how they came by there various advantages and such. Additionally instituting a famine on items and treasure to stifle their increase in power might help. Luring them into delicious plot contrivances and traps using their greed for powerful items may be fun too. Cheaters are an odd breed and my personal recommendation here is to do TPK both in game and out.

quote:

If you live in a place where your potential circle isn't that large and rumors spread that only destroys all potential for games. if you feel they fudged their stats. Give them a free pass but Ramp up the AC of enemies by 2 give all those enemies shields and then give them DR have then fight a necromancer with skeletons and zombies depending if they are blunt or slashing. It may seemed forced but the quicker they reroll the faster you can watch them reroll. Or just learn from this and know to keep your eye on everyone next time.

quote:

You create the monsters your god. You aren't fudging you are balancing. Have then fight Rolled characters instead of generic monsters.

quote:

Its always fun for someone to find a cursed piece of equipment that makes it more difficult for them to hit stuff
A cursed longsword that gives a -2 str mod but the PC isn't aware but every time he swings with it. You adjust the stats until he notices it himself.

quote:

How I roll stats

4 rows of 7 reroll all 1s and drop the lowest bracket place where you want you can only select one row to use of course just incase j explained that poorly and I've never had anyone complain. Worst case. You roll for them if their results are bad.

# ¿ May 15, 2015 04:49

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

quote:

Why I Only Play 1e D&D, not other RPGs

I first saw Dungeons & Dragons in 1974. At the time my favorite game was Diplomacy, a seven player cutthroat diceless wargame. I said to myself at the time, �I hate dice games.� But of course it turned out that D&D was not a dice game, rather it was a microcosm of life where you do what you can to reduce the number of times when you have to rely on the dice to save your butt. Smart people do the same thing in life, trying to reduce the number of times when they have to get lucky.

So in 1975 I started playing the game. I settled on Advanced Dungeons & Dragons as my game of choice and that has been true until this year. I have never seen a need to switch to a newer edition because the newer editions had a different zeitgeist that I did not approve of. I did play and even referee third edition and I played fourth edition.

I�ve read lots of RPG rules and seen various games being played, but I never saw a need to change from first edition because I could modify it to suit whatever I needed. I am not a lover of games, I am a lover of particular games, and I tend to stick to those particular games. I have never been susceptible to the �cult of the new.� Why bother to learn new rules and new ways of doing things when I�m fully satisfied with what I�ve got? 1e D&D is a simple game despite the great mass of standard rules when compared with games like Rolemaster, but it provides enough detail to treat the game as a wargame rather than as merely a story (FATE is largely story, for example). Typically I set up situations to challenge the players rather than guide them along a particular story; I want the players to write their own story within the context that I provided.

I usually create my own settings, but the one commercial setting I was most interested in is Spelljammer, despite its inconsistencies. I�ve partly devised an alternative set of rules for a Spelljammer-like game, and I have a couple of boardgames in mind related to the same kind of setting.

Because I�ve been satisfied with D&D, I have only once attempted to design a separate RPG. And that RPG is a very limited set of rules to be used in a boardgame. The idea was to substitute programmed instruction for a referee, but I�ve never got far enough to try doing that because I have great doubts that it can be done reasonably.

On the other hand I�ve written a great many supplements to D&D - at one time I was going to write a supplement for Games Workshop that fell through when they lost their distribution rights for D&D in the United Kingdom - among them a 23,000 word set of D&D Army rules that scaled from small groups (a few hundred) two armies of many tens of thousands. I use that a lot in my own campaign, and someday I�ll include it in a book with reprints of some of my many articles from Dungeon and White Dwarf magazines among others. There are unpublished character classes to include as well. So I wrote a lot of RPG stuff but as variants of D&D rather than separate games.

I have been extremely impressed with the professionalism and quality of rules writing and rules creation for the fifth edition of D&D. The ridiculously easy healing rules (a manifestation of 21st century reward-based gaming instead of 20th century consequence-based gaming) ruin the game as written, but it�s easy enough to remove the revivify spell and some of the easy healing rules. But I have to say I have not played fifth edition yet, I�m still working my way through the Monster Manual having read the other two. I tend to feel I ought to spend my time on my own board and card game designs rather than on playing D&D, but that can change.

Some of the excellent additions to the game are advantage and disadvantage, and attunement of magic items. The first is a great simplifier, and the second helps solve the problem of characters with huge bags of magic items. Even little things like the change so that no one has to keep track over long periods of how many charges there are in a magic item are an indication of the thought put into the game. Of course, the writers had 40 years of role-playing game experience to draw on.

# ¿ May 15, 2015 17:37

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

The first part that I bolded stood out to me not as grog but as the sort of thing I was alluding to when I made the XCOM/emergent gameplay analogy: you throw the players into a situation that's procedurally generated (or perhaps a set-piece scenario intended to evoke a particular approach), you run the game according to the rules as-is, and the experience and story that develops is based on the players' own emotional response to a series of deterministic events.

That second part I highlighted though was a complete subversion of how I expected the article to end.

# ¿ May 15, 2015 17:56

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

8 hours later and it's still going ...

quote:

I use 4d6 drop the lowest x7 then drop the lowest of those 7. once. no rerolling ones

quote:

For online games I tend to use the honor system, but you could have them film and post a series of rolls. The diehard cheats however could roll and film 30 sets till they got a really good one. haha

quote:

When I used to do rolling your stats, I would do 4d6, drop the low, if you have two or more ones, reroll the ones. So if you rolled, and got 6-1-1-1, you would just reroll the ones. If you now had 6-5-1-1, you would reroll the ones again. If you then got 6-5-4-1, you would drop the one and get 15 total.

quote:

My brother's group marks out a 6x6 grid and then rolls 4d6, drop the lowest, and fill in the grid column by column. When they're done, they pick any column or row. Sometimes they have to take the 8 in order to get the 16 and 17 that are there, but they always end up with something that makes them happy.

quote:

I roll 4d6 drop the lowest and reroll 1s. I usually get 1 or 2 18s 1 or 2 16-17 and 1-2 low to average stats. My last guy i rolled i got 18 18 17 16 16 14. I usually average 2 high 2 mid and 3 low to average stats.

quote:

I've never rerolled 1s. Just 4d6, drop the lowest. Do that 6 times, then shuffle the stats into any order you want. I believe that the average should be pretty close to 13 that way.

quote:

I did that ^ but seven times

quote:

I only reroll 1s one time. So if i reroll and get another 1 i dont reroll again. and i usually have really good rolls thru the whole campaign

# ¿ May 15, 2015 21:13

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

quote:

Easier healing just necessitates more severe consquences, and in my experience D&D5 has no problem dishing those out alongside its Mass Healing Words and Revivifys. I recommend seeing the whole game in action before you pass judgment on its components.

You may well decide to "nerf" healing, as the 21st-century reward-focused WoW players might say, but I can tell you with confidence that more characters have met their ends at my table since the beginning of the D&D Next playtest than had in the preceding 27 years

# ¿ May 16, 2015 04:54

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

DalaranJ posted:

21st-century isn't an insult, it's a fact.

You can't actually live in a different time period than it is now. That's not a thing that you can do.

All millenials are automatically ROLLplayers that are only ever in it for the loot and special-snowflake-nobody-ever-loses awards, because they were all raised on WoW and video gamez.

# ¿ May 16, 2015 17:46

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 08:55

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Are there edition wars for other games? Are there people out there calling each other '6tards' or 'Legendvengers' over RuneQuest?

# ¿ May 17, 2015 19:23

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Grognards.txt NEXT: Goodnight, Sweet Wince

«‹›12 »