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Winson_Paine posted:Yep, and by 4th you were a motherfuckin' HERO. I kind of perferred Veteran over Hero simply because it contains no baggage in terms of alignment but has implications that you bring a lot of experience and knowledge at level 1 instead of the hero blundering their way out of flammable village #37. I would also settle for professional. "We've rescued your village, ma'am. In exchange we'd like the village's magical heirloom." "But, but you're heros!" "No ma'am, we're professionals"
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Apr 2, 2013 19:10
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Barudak posted:I kind of perferred Veteran over Hero simply because it contains no baggage in terms of alignment Hey, there's heroes on both sides!
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Apr 2, 2013 19:14
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This is how I play DND (3.5 is what I normally play) with new people: Give each person a sheet. Ask them for a race (human elf dwarf (hobbit/halfling(I explain it's legal issues but they're the same thing) if they bring it up) I then make them roll for stats, STR,DEX,CON,INT,WIS,CHA and explain briefly what they are and what they're good for. Let them assign their stats. Let them pick between the 4 classes (fighter, wizard, rogue, cleric) (again briefly explain) Give them some basic equipment; (Ok you're a fighter, what do you fight with? A SWORD!!! An AXE!! TWO AXES!! Ask them for armor too) Very basic quest; e.g. deliver package of mcguffins to McWizard in small town. They got to pass through another little village first. They get ambushed by some peasants disguised as bandits. If they want to use a skill, or attack, just roll D20+stats. I explain to them that most classes don't have a lot of skills, except for rogues. Magic? Whenever they want to use magic if they're a wizard or cleric, let them come up with what they want. (e.g. they're sorcerers in a way). Explain to them they can only cast 3 spells today because it's exhausting, so I tell them to make them count. (I let them do minor tricks, e.g. 0 level spells, almost unlimited (e.g. magically light a candle so they can study at night or w/e). I explain that the cleric channels magic from his (let the player make up the) god, and therefore doesn't throw much in the way of magic fireballs, but more like buffs and heal/cleaning type magic. For their AC, if you are a DM, guiding new players through the game, you should know what AC a 1st level fighter in X armor approximately has. If they have a dexterity bonus, I'll tell them : the orc hacks at CHAR_NAME but since you are so agile, you jump out of the way. That's the 1st session, to give them an impression of how play works. (e.g. Basically, I the DM do all the math) 2nd session I'll break open the book and usually go from there, letting them switch characters as much as they want. I think I am not an rear end in a top hat/grognard DM.
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Apr 2, 2013 19:55
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Syphilis Fish posted:This is how I play DND (3.5 is what I normally play) with new people: cool story bro
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Apr 2, 2013 20:13
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Syphilis Fish posted:I think I am not an rear end in a top hat/grognard DM. I don't think you are either. I think you're a pretty reasonable person. If there's any disconnect, it's that I don't think new players always have problems with the math. Really, 'the problem' is going to vary from player to player. Some players instantly grasp D&D's (exceedingly simple) math but have trouble thinking in-character. For others its the opposite. One of the most common problems I've seen is what I like to call 'Red-Button Fever', a condition that afflicts a lot of new players. They RP fine. They know the rules fine. But they see everything in the world as a red button to be pushed, and they push them all as fast as possible. Sometimes this is a matter of not understanding there can be fictional consequences in the fictional world, and sometimes it's just a matter of them not caring about the fictional consequences, because hey, it isn't real. My point is that evaluating where the problem is, that's almost more important than trying to simplify the problem. If I had done what you just described for my wife, she would never have enjoyed 4e, because she doesn't like bog-standard classes. She picked an Avenger on her own, learned the class on her own, and now it's her favorite class AND edition. e: In essence, if Next tries to do what you just described, but basically for every player by virtue of the rules, they're going to lose people. Mendrian fucked around with this message at 20:43 on Apr 2, 2013 |
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Apr 2, 2013 20:13
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I'm surprised nobody has made the obvious "apprentice tier = shitfarmer phase" equation yet.
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Apr 2, 2013 20:41
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Why say it if it's so heavily implied?
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Apr 2, 2013 20:46
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01011001 posted:Why say it if it's so heavily implied? I dunno, I loves me some buzzwords? Shitfarmer is like 4e grogwhistle 
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Apr 2, 2013 20:48
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Winson_Paine posted:cool story bro Thanks. I'm saying, a mechanical level 0 is bullshit; the problem comes from the great number of rules a roleplaying game usually has, in addition to the weird gameplay element called 'roleplaying' which you don't do in Monopoly, or Risk or Catan, or any other boardgame new roleplayers might have experienced. Its much easier to get a player to play DND or Shadowrun or WHFRPG if they've already played another RPG and are thus familiar with the whole storygame concept. It's easier to seperate these two (system mechanics/roleplaying game) at first for new roleplayers. I think attaching mechanics to that is counterproductive to what they are trying to achieve (easing someone into the game)
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Apr 2, 2013 21:02
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I'm not convinced that 'easing people into the game' is even required. Virtually all of us started out by playing a game despite inordinate complexity. We saw something cool at a book store or heard about it from friends, studied the book just enough to play the game, and learned as we went. We also had the benefit of being 15, but we did the coherent thing - we learned about something we liked, and then we did that thing. Making the game less inordinately complex is good because oD&D is full of unnecessary and half-redundant complexity (using increment-of-5 percentiles in a system in which d20's exist, for instance). But new players don't need special training wheels, honest. If we stop treating new players as a species of deer that can be scared off by strange dice and loud noises, we'll be able to approach the whole problem from a new angle. Which is getting people to want to try a new past-time. Not treating the past-time as a wild animal full of teeth but shhh I'll help you tame it, it's not so scary, let me make it safer for you. What I'm saying is: Next needs some sweet art design. And I can honestly say I actually dig some of the art. Because that's part of their marketing and they need lots of marketing, and it needs to be wicked sweet. Marketing a game to new players is equal parts selling people on the whole idea of roleplaying, as well as your game in particular.
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Apr 2, 2013 21:11
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Mendrian posted:If there's any disconnect, it's that I don't think new players always have problems with the math. Really, 'the problem' is going to vary from player to player. Some players instantly grasp D&D's (exceedingly simple) math but have trouble thinking in-character. For others its the opposite. One of the most common problems I've seen is what I like to call 'Red-Button Fever', a condition that afflicts a lot of new players. MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 21:38 on Apr 2, 2013 |
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Apr 2, 2013 21:36
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MadScientistWorking posted:Which edition's math would you call exceedingly simple? I'm constantly running into problems in 3.5E/Pathfinder where I'm accidentally creating characters that are overoptimized in rather bizarre and strange ways because the math is so well hidden that its really hard to tell when you break the game. Its kind of weird too because the point where you really start becoming effective in Pathfinder is around level 3. We're conflating uses of the word Math, I think. I was referring to a need to guide new players through a bunch of hoops like, "Here's how you make an attack roll" and "here's what a Saving Throw is" as though these were difficult problems. They aren't. If we're talking about the rabbit hole of 20 levels of optimization, then yes, that is complex, but it isn't necessary to guide a new player through that just to play the game. 3e is one of those games where it's possible to lose the optimization game the moment you write the wrong thing in the class field. The game is fundamentally flawed in this way. But really, a group of new players doesn't even need to know about Fighter inferiority out of the gate. They don't even care about it yet. e: In other words: Long-haul feat optimization is not the sort of math we're discussing when I'm talking about new players.
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Apr 2, 2013 21:39
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Mendrian posted:
MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 21:56 on Apr 2, 2013 |
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Apr 2, 2013 21:42
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MadScientistWorking posted:My point still stands because the unfamiliarity with the attack rules is how I broke my one Pathfinder character at level 3. You were clearly able to play the game up to level 3. And I'm not sure in what way you "broke" your character, exactly. Weird fiddly bits in 3e/Pathfinder can be trap choices or suddenly make you skyrocket into the next tier of play, yes. We agree on that. I'm not arguing the point. What I'm saying is that we treat new players like they need a separate, smaller game to train up their familiarity with things like dice and addition. People are going to make mistakes with rules. That is a fundamental constant of rules. The more rules there are, the more mistakes you will make, and reducing redundant complexity helps smooth that out. Reducing complexity to zero and assuming that this is required to attract new places is trap thinking though. There's a meme that floats around in RPG circles that new players just can't grasp a game on their own and get to be overly condescending about the whole affair. The mistakes people are going to make are going to be highly personalized, and we can't really avoid those mistakes. We learned from our mistakes, so will new players. Being a nice guy GM and helping new players through those early hiccups is good. It's great, even. Suggesting a game needs a near-zero baseline to attract new players doesn't really solve the problem because it just means the mistakes will happen when you add the new level of complexity on. TL;DR- I would love a simpler game. I would love an elegant game. A super-simple-mega-basic game is not required to enamor new players, and doesn't actually solve any problems.
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Apr 2, 2013 21:55
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Wait, so this wasn't an april fools gag? Chrissake. The idea that PCs being mechanically weak and incompetent equates to "gritty" needs to be taken out back and shot.
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Apr 2, 2013 21:58
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Der Waffle Mous posted:The idea that PCs being mechanically weak and incompetent equates to "gritty" needs to be taken out back and shot. This is where 4th (and the D&D boardgames) did really well. At level 1, you have a handful of interesting things you can do, and you get a few more as you go along, and they get more complex. None of this "earning your fun" bullshit It also got rid of the initiative-based rocket tag (which we're seeming creep back in with Next) by making 1st level characters not one-shot kills.
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Apr 2, 2013 22:09
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P.d0t posted:This is where 4th (and the D&D boardgames) did really well. Anyone who thinks you need to spend levels without your class' primary gimmick is a stone-cold brain-dead full-on idiot. Every single game that makes this mistake gets complained about that it handholds you, prevents you from having fun, or in the case of TT just gets skipped because thats stupid. Its perfectly fine to say "You get your core gimmick and not much else" but it is not ok to have to earn the reason you're playing your character. quote:It also got rid of the initiative-based rocket tag (which we're seeming creep back in with Next) by making 1st level characters not one-shot kills. Well you could make a rocket tag team by going nothing but Strikers but even then its not true rocket tag since you could probably tank 1 or 2 good hits before going down.
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Apr 2, 2013 22:17
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Mendrian posted:You were clearly able to play the game up to level 3. And I'm not sure in what way you "broke" your character, exactly. EDIT: Literally two levels of alchemist will allow a shield and sword fighter to upgrade their damage by being able to RAW weild an two handed weapon and shield at once with the Extra Arm discovery. MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 22:47 on Apr 2, 2013 |
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Apr 2, 2013 22:21
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Barudak posted:you could probably tank 1 or 2 good hits before going down. This is what I'm getting at  Ignoring the "building characters mechanically is hard and time-consuming" problem with rocket tag and/or adversarial DM and/or old skool "Constant Death" D&D, it kills roleplay by destroying any sense of character ownership, characterization and character growth. I think this is part of the "3.X causes brain damage" thing, because I know players who refuse to flesh out their characters, since they think as soon as they do they will die; for some people it is literally seen as a jinx to have a backstory.
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Apr 2, 2013 22:37
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MadScientistWorking posted:As someone pointed out on RPG.net I really have a feeling that this mechanic is a stealthy way to fix multiclassing because like the Alchemist if you really want to get the full effect you have to take at least multiple levels in another class to gain access to all their abilities. A lot of PF classes do this. I'm fairly sure it's less to offset multiclassing and more so to give you a thing you pick on the levels you don't have feats (feats are on the odds, class features you pick that are basically feats are on the evens).
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Apr 2, 2013 22:44
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The idea of Pathfinder intentionally fixing anything is laughable, so I won't even deign to think of that one. One of the things that gets talked about on a lot of forums is complexity, and there's largely three camps: that new players need a simple dumb fighter to start with and graduate up to wizards, that ALL classes need to be (roughly) simplistic and fit on a one-two page character sheet, and that new players are gonna becoming from already far more complex video games. I'm actually in the middle group. I get the latter group and agree to an extent - Most new players ARE approaching the hobby from a position of having already played video games, and already know a fair amount about fantasy poo poo. The big difference is that, in a video game, the machine handles the complexity. Most people are not number crunching folk. They either go down and take what sounds cool, or they grab a build from the internet. The big difference between video games and tabletop games as far as complexity goes is that video games can get away with a lot more of it. The math is already handled for you. In D&D, you have to handle all the math and all the complexity, which means complexity or math in tabletop games are far, far more difficult to deal with. You don't have a literal machine crunching stuff for you. As much as I like 4e, it's one of WotC D&D's problems - 4e and 3e both have a fair amount of complexity, and I'm pretty thankful I play both primarily online where I have dicebots and chargen programs. If I had to deal with the dice and counting and math bullshit in 3e, or calculating all of the 4e stuff by hand, I dunno if I'd last as long as I have in the hobby, to be completely honest.
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Apr 3, 2013 00:43
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I've done epic/higher level 4e by hand before, it's not *that* bad. Epic/Paragon 3.x was pretty "exciting" though. There were times were just for fun we'd roll out the dice instead of just taking the average and would very often roll stupid insane things like 40d6s and such nonsense. I actually remember rolling say 4 dice and multiplying that number by 5 or whatever being a really common thing in that Edition.
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Apr 3, 2013 00:54
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ProfessorCirno posted:I get the latter group and agree to an extent - Most new players ARE approaching the hobby from a position of having already played video games, and already know a fair amount about fantasy poo poo. The big difference is that, in a video game, the machine handles the complexity. (...) And then you look at something like, say, Feats and Multiclassing in D&D, and you can see this development mindset hasn't yet been realized there.
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Apr 3, 2013 00:59
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So someone suggested a game of D&D Next, making me get the latest packet and look at it... Not really sure what it is that they think they are doing. Its like Gygax installed a grill in his back yard and stumbled on the idea of grilling up a patty of beef and putting it between two slices of bread, and then invited his friends over and they all loved the new creation and spent many an afternoon out in the back grilling burgers. Then someone had the bright idea to sell a mass produced a patty between two buns with a squirt of mustard a squirt of ketchup, pickles and onions, because nobody else was selling bugers. People spent their childhood eating those (except for the pickles because those were icky). Even though the burgers were not the kind of burgers made in Gygax's back yard grill fests. One day the original chain said: We've had this original burger for a while, but burger technology has advanced. We are the original chain, we'll make an artisan burger like no other. Then half their customers went: what the gently caress is this? Why is there STUFF on my burger? Those pickles are icky enough as it is. Then they threw a giant temper tantrum. The other half said: Wow, this is a tasty burger, I never really thought about all the different ways you could make a burger tasty before, yet now I have and I've got a taste for tasty burgers. Then along came a new chain called: "Pickles R Dum". They sell nothing but a seedless bun, a patty, mustard, ketchup, onions, and NO loving PICKLES, (because holy poo poo how can someone be expected to touch those creepy things to pull them off). Then along comes other chains who start saying: you know what? I bet we could make a Guacamole and Swiss burger, or a Jim Beam Bourbon burger, or as many other burgers as we can dream up. Then some pickle haters got hired to save the original chain because they had been eating more burgers than anyone. Since while they had the best artisan burger menu on the market, all the pickle haters refused to eat there anymore and were stuffing their faces at Pickles R Dum. Which led to rollout of the beta menu where the pickle haters were sitting there making yuk faces while letting everyone see them eating burgers with pickles on them saying "mmmmm*gag*mmmmmmm*spit*mmmmm this is so tasty. We've even got the option to order it with lettuce and tomato, but don't worry, not so much lettuce and tomato that you can't pick this nasty poo poo off in a heartbeat". To which all the pickle haters are going: I told you to stop putting nasty poo poo on my burgers Not even a little bit! Also the people who like an interesting burger are going: uh... I'm not sure this really counts as an interesting burger. Then there is the great middle who say: 'even a bad burger is edible, and an amazing burger won't change my life, so I'll eat wherever we stop, but I get the feeling that no one with a strong opinion on the matter wants to stop here'.
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Apr 3, 2013 03:50
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Cyclomatic posted:words  Well, thats one way to describe it.I'm not sure why the low level/super fragile character needs to be so painful. Can't the xp requirement be set to a very low amount, just enough that you play through one session of gameplay and your ready to level? Seems like this would solve the problem of keeping it simple for new players (maybe change mechanics to only be functional at 2nd level or splitting the class features between 1st and 2nd level), with the 1 hit kill thing being reduced to your one or two combats for the level (though I don't know why you cant just increase the base starting hp for a PC and ignore this problem), its so low its inconsequential to bypass it and start without it and rig the scaling level mechanics so the correct scaling begins at level 2. Am I just missing something obvious or? kingcom fucked around with this message at 05:05 on Apr 3, 2013 |
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Apr 3, 2013 05:03
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kingcom posted:
This is what 4th edition did.
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Apr 3, 2013 05:37
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kingcom posted:Am I just missing something obvious or? Yea. In every edition that wasn't 4E low level characters could be one-shot by house cats. It is tradition that the game works like that.
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Apr 3, 2013 05:39
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But it's so loving stupid! "Guys, new players are finding it hard to learn the game, so here's what we're going to do - we'll make them learn in an environment where they can't do anything interesting and they have to be ridiculously careful otherwise they will die in a mundane and suitably unheroic manner. Just make sure to keep explaining, 'no dude, its cool, the game isn't really like this'. That's right, we're going to teach them how to play a game that isn't actually the game they are learning to play."
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Apr 3, 2013 11:24
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goldjas posted:This is what 4th edition did. Oh its because 3.5 was better then!  Cyclomatic posted:Yea. Fighting off the unyielding horrors of the common household seems like a pretty sweet introduction for fantasy roleplaying.
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Apr 3, 2013 13:26
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kingcom posted:Fighting off the unyielding horrors of the common household seems like a pretty sweet introduction for fantasy roleplaying. Closet of Horrors and Moving Truck on the Borderlands were both perrenial favorites with my players.
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Apr 3, 2013 15:14
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Asimo posted:There's also the matter that even most video games these days have been moving away from "fake complexity" in order to streamline things and make them more accessible. Since Blizzard is often given as a bad example, you can just look at how they've handled talent trees in WoW, builds in D3, and so on, where they moved away from the sprawling talent tree-style formats that gave lots of options but only a handful of genuinely viable builds (and a lot of unintentional traps) for a smaller number of significant, mutually-exclusive choices that even then you can change with relatively little penalty if you're having issues. It's very elegant and even if it doesn't result in a larger number of useful builds, it's a lot easier to see the discrete actual choices. I think the one problem with that is that it's much easier in a tabletop game to fudge things, party seem underpowered? knock some damage off the monster's attack values or it's health. Party seem Overpowered and too optimized? Make it a smidge stronger etc. A character doesn't have to be particularly viable compared to the super optimized one that you can make, so long as the power gap in a party isn't too huge, giving people lots and lots of options to make their characters unique or interesting from a mechanical sense as well as the story side is probably more important. That said, streamlining how some of that is handled is great, you just can't streamline too many options out of existence or all you do is make a less interesting game.
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Apr 3, 2013 15:50
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Brinty posted:A character doesn't have to be particularly viable compared to the super optimized one that you can make, so long as the power gap in a party isn't too huge, giving people lots and lots of options to make their characters unique or interesting from a mechanical sense as well as the story side is probably more important. That said, streamlining how some of that is handled is great, you just can't streamline too many options out of existence or all you do is make a less interesting game. I think the problem is more that, not only has D&D failed to realize how to separate discrete choices, but it's failed to make those choices identifiable and unique. Let me explain further. Want to make a holy knight who can heal in 3.5? How about a Paladin? How about a Fighter/Cleric? Templar? etc etc. Want to be giant weapons guy? There's a bunch of ways to do that. Etc, etc. I would love to say the same number of available options with a smaller number of individual, minor choices. Big Weapon Guy should be one discrete choice, and should come with all of the available bonuses to Big Weapons. I shouldn't have to mine six books worth of feats to put Big Weapon Guy together myself. There should be a huge number of available build options but they shouldn't be make-your-own builds. Some people like that stuff but I don't really think its healthy for a long running game.
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Apr 3, 2013 15:58
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kingcom posted:Fighting off the unyielding horrors of the common household seems like a pretty sweet introduction for fantasy roleplaying. You step on a Lego: roll a new character.
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Apr 3, 2013 20:42
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Legos are basically plastic caltrops.
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Apr 3, 2013 20:51
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Holy gently caress, the dude doing Q&A mentioned 4e in a vaguely positive light what is going on?! http://community.wizards.com/dndnext/blog/2013/04/04/dd_next_qa:_sub-classes,_spells_and_the_bard
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Apr 4, 2013 22:31
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This actually does sorta answer at least some of why D&D Next has it's problems. http://amazingstoriesmag.com/2013/03/interview-with-a-wizard-mike-mearls/ Basically, Mearls isn't actually interested in the rules of the game. He wants to tell the D&D story or share the "D&D experience." So you get gems like "People complained that fights were boring, but we're ok with that because they're fast and can move on to other stuff." Also, note how he's very positive about every edition other then 4th. Can we put the nail in the coffin that Mearls was ever the "4e guy" already?
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Apr 5, 2013 00:46
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thespaceinvader posted:http://community.wizards.com/dndnext/blog/2013/04/04/dd_next_qa:_sub-classes,_spells_and_the_bard He can't think of the potential drawbacks of a spell that can set everything in a 20 ft radius on fire?
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Apr 5, 2013 03:01
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No, I aimed the Fireball it so it would only all the orcs. What, did you want to see that on a battlemat? Sorry, we ROLEplay at this table. \ 
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Apr 5, 2013 03:10
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moths posted:No, I aimed the Fireball it so it would only all the orcs. What, did you want to see that on a battlemat? Sorry, we ROLEplay at this table. How did we go this long without this smiley existing
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Apr 5, 2013 03:13
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I mean, they released an adventure three days ago which has an combat encounter where you can cause a nonmagical explosion that damages the enemies for you. But the drawback for doing this is that it is likely to consume a plot important piece of parchment.
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Apr 5, 2013 03:33
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