FATAL & Friends 2014-15: The Neverending Storygame

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neonchameleon: Nov 14, 2012

Cyphoderus posted:

The Challenge of the Bandeirantes: Adventures in the Land of Santa Cruz

O Desafio dos Bandeirantes (The Challenge of the Bandeirantes) is a Brazilian pen-and-paper RPG. Published in 1992, its biggest claim to fame was being the very first RPG presenting a fantasy based completely and unashamedly on Brazilian history, folklore, and culture. It wasn't very successful in its time, because you know how nerds are: people were still mostly interested in playing Germanic �bermenschen slaying kobolds in medieval castles. The average Brazilian has a very low self-esteem regarding their own country, and a habit of not believing something made in Brazil is better than a foreign version (this right here is why football is such a big deal). In 1996, the publisher closed its doors.

Desafio dos Bandeirantes, however, was game-changing. Today it is spoken of as an anthological chapter in the history of Brazilian RPGs, which is longer and more elaborate than you'd think � a few years ago, I read that Brazil has the second largest RPG-playing population, behind only the United States itself. Anyway, back around 2000 or so, we had our own Satanic RPG scare, after a homicide (in S�o Paulo, if I recall correctly) was associated with people who played Vampire. The scare never got too big, because for every group of misguided goth teens with a copy of the Book of Nod there was a teacher in a school somewhere using either Desafio dos Bandeirantes (or the licensed national line GURPS Discovery of Brazil) to teach children about history and culture.

In all seriousness, can you prove much of that? We lost Desafio dos Bandirantes from Wikipedia literally three days ago because no one involved in the discussion had ever heard of it and the Portugese Wiki article was, at the time, a waste of space.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2014 12:31

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 03:22

neonchameleon: Nov 14, 2012

Cyphoderus posted:

The Portuguese wikipedia article for Desafio dos Bandeirantes is not a waste of space because it offers a couple of nice references.

I'd point out that both those references were added less than a week ago - I said at the time.

quote:

It has a couple of news articles from back in 1992 about the game, if you can read Portuguese, as long as a photo of it being played at one of last year's Dungeon Carioca, one of Rio de Janeiro's two biggest monthly RPG meet-ups.

The news articles should be enough, thanks. (No I can't read Portugese - but have the translate option on Chrome).

quote:

The part about "second largest RPG-playing population" I totally cannot prove and just remember having read many years ago in Drag�o Brasil, which was for a long time the only published magazine about RPGs. Back before internet, it's where we got our RPG news from.

Thanks

quote:

The part about the Satanic scare I was around for and remember. I can try to dig up the news articles from back there if you guys are interested, and post it in the chat thread or something.

And thanks

# ¿ Feb 3, 2014 14:06

neonchameleon: Nov 14, 2012

InfiniteJesters posted:

Those crit charts are like Dark Heresy's, except with all the fun and sucked out of them.

Bear in mind that they used an only slightly tweaked version of them for Middle Earth Roleplaying. It's one of the two biggest game/setting mismatches I'm aware of (the other being GURPS Discworld).

# ¿ Feb 14, 2014 10:58

neonchameleon: Nov 14, 2012

Alien Rope Burn posted:

Well, this is the guy who came up with the "darksaber", which you'd think is some kind of saber, or dark, but it's not really either, it's a giant beam cannon that sort of looks like a lightsaber hilt.

That's the level of braining going on there.

Oh, the Darksaber's worse than that. It's a Hutt-built giant beam canon that has a main battery as powerful as the first Death Star but it has literally nothing else; no defences and can't do anything except occasionally shoot at planets. The bad guys spend chapters on chapters building this thing and it's set up to be at least the B Plot threat.

How effective is it? They subcontracted to the lowest bidder. So all it does is blow a fuse when they attempt to fire it.

Now I'm not saying that the idea isn't entertaining. But brevity is the soul of wit. You don't need a quarter of the book to tell that joke.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2014 17:45

neonchameleon: Nov 14, 2012

kaynorr posted:

Color me extremely disappointed, though, by the suggestions that the Growing Up stuff isn't as mechanically solid as what came before.

In my experience, when taken on benevolent characters, the growing up move is one of the most amazing RP things I've had. I'm in particular thinking of my Queen who was trying to be a good person (most of the time anyway) and was loving up by the numbers, accidentally spamming "Turn someone on" rather than "Make someone feel beautiful". They are really, really good for well intentioned characters who just make things worse unless the dice gods hate you. (I'm not as happy with Call Someone On Their poo poo as I am the other three). But don't take them unless at least one of them is what your character is trying to do anyway.

Oh, has anyone else used Final Showdown to kill a Dark Power? (The Infernal in that game and the Dark Power tried so hard to recruit my Queen - and flirting with a Dark Power is a dangerous game, but one Queens are made for).

# ¿ Aug 24, 2014 00:22

neonchameleon: Nov 14, 2012

Tulpa posted:

Yeah, my objection is mainly that having to roll for the grown up moves ends up with the awkwardness of what should make sense for my character, that she is finally acting in a more emotionally mature way, is sabotaged by my terrible dice rolling luck. It took 3 sessions of attempts before I could actually call someone on their poo poo and my cold is at +3! I was just sabotaged by my unbelievable bad luck, and having that happen over and over made it frustrating that I took those moves instead of something like rewriting my sex move or darkest self.

... urgh. Your cold was at +3. Normally when you call someone on their poo poo, someone has shut them down - meaning you get to invoke a condition. Up to +4 most of the time. Your dice must hate you.

# ¿ Aug 24, 2014 02:28

neonchameleon: Nov 14, 2012

Gazetteer posted:

There is actually a third-party Carrie skin. It's called The Fury. But that's a Skins for the Skinless skin, which despite being a very popular third-party collection, kind of range from "wow this is a lot worse than it initially seemed" to "literally unplayable." Trying to explain what's wrong about Skins for the Skinless is kind of a writeup in of itself.

Not terribly hard. All the Skins for the Skinless I've spent any time reviewing do exactly the same thing. Monsterhearts is a game about broken teenagers where the skin is a metaphor for the way the teenagers are broken that also happens to give them power. And are frequently kinda hosed up to use.

The Skins for the Skinless make the very basic mistake that all the moves are Cool Things Monsters Can Do. The skin ideas are great and the description talks an excellent game about how they represent broken people. (Which is why they are popular - every time I see one of them I want to re-write it from scratch). But the moves are just cool stuff that doesn't rebound or make things hard on the user. At a case by case level there's a lot of bad design beyond that, but they all start with mechanics that head off in exactly the wrong direction.

# ¿ Oct 17, 2014 19:06

neonchameleon: Nov 14, 2012

ActingPower posted:

I've been collecting some other fan skins, if you're interested. I don't know how many of these are well-known or popular, but I have:

The Anansi

The Animator

The Deep One

The Gorgon

The Harpy

The Incubus/Succubus

The Reverent

The Rusalka

The Shadow

I also have the Selkie preview, if you need that.

You've got two of my four there - The Gorgon and The Deep One

(Cliff notes: The Gorgon can't look anyone in the eyes without starting to petrify them, and the Deep One is a metaphor for a gay kid raised in a fundamentalist environment - and works on the basis that the sort of drivel that's spouted and some unfortunate people believe is true). Both have playtested pretty well although I'd love any more feedback.

I've two others that I can't recommend as highly; The Kitsune is meant to be the kid that doesn't dare take anything seriously but the skin doesn't hook gut deep, and The Banshee; a control freak who screams to try and keep control (as if that is ever going to work! Especially when the bodies start appearing when in Darkest Self) which I think is very good but I haven't tried playtesting yet, and it has a lot of its double-edged nature riding on consequences of the Banshee's screams being loud.

Oh, and the Incubus and the Succubus are separate skins as far as I know. At least I've seen different skins under the name Incubus and Succubus. Oh, and the Harpy is a Topher Gherkey (unless there are others out there by the same name; there are at least three Kitsune other than mine I'm aware of).

quote:

And while I'm posting, I was just wondering if anyone has made/would be interested in a write-up for the One.Seven Design games? (Lady Blackbird, GHOST/ECHO, Lasers & Feelings, etc.) Since many of them are shorties, I would just do all the short ones together in one post.

Definitely! I've yet to see a miss from One.Seven.

neonchameleon fucked around with this message at 23:26 on Oct 18, 2014

# ¿ Oct 18, 2014 23:08

neonchameleon: Nov 14, 2012

Cythereal posted:

Isn't this concept basically one way to play the Angel, albeit with some different mechanics? It feels too narrowly defined for a skin, and I'm not a fan of skins that railroad the character's sexuality.

Not at all. First there's no railroading the actual sexuality at all. It's not about that part of the experience. It's about the closet - the internal part. The wall built up inside because you have always been told what you are is very, very wrong. It's the sort of skin that can take the (optional) move "Projection When you successfully Shut Someone Down by claiming that they are a Deep One you may give them the condition Scapegoat. While someone is a Scapegoat no one can learn your True Nature from anyone but you. Gain 1 on all rolls to hurt them".

The Angel is about rebellion and acceptance. The Deep One is about fear, secrecy, and denial. And working out who you can trust due to the central move.

The particular Christian Fundamentalist/homophobic influences are woven into lots of parts of the skin including most of the other peripheral moves. But there's nothing at all there that dictates the character's sexuality in specific any more than for any other skin.

# ¿ Oct 19, 2014 00:45

neonchameleon: Nov 14, 2012

Ratpick posted:

Hey, I just took a look at the Deep One and it looks like a really neat skin. A couple of notes though:

First of all, in spite of the fact that Monsterhearts is based on Apocalypse World, there's no "ongoing" in Monsterhearts. I know, it's a minor quibble, but Monsterhearts has its own language, and moves that would be phrased in Apocalypse World as "take +1 ongoing to [X]" would be phrased as something more like "add 1 to any roll to [X]" in Monsterhearts. I think this is in part because Monsterhearts was written with new players in mind and Avery McDaldno wanted to do away with any terminology that couldn't be phrased better in clear language.

Secondly, Bringing the Storm is basically two stat substitution moves in one. I know it's thematic, but taking into account what Gazetteer has already discussed (the potential for taking moves from other skins) it's an awfully powerful move, especially for something like the Selkie (another Cold+Dark skin that relies heavily on water for its schtick).

Having said that, I do appreciate what you've done with the skin: it seems like the perfect skin to represent a kid from a strict background who has internalized the toxic memes they've been taught. Even though there's a clear metaphor of internalized homophobia and guilt over one's homosexuality ("Have you tried not being a monster?" comes to mind) the skin seems like it would drive the drama towards eventual self-realization and letting go of those toxic ideas.

No ongoing: Good point. I've edited.

Bringing The Storm: It's not as powerful as it seems. It's two conditional stat substitutions rather than two complete ones. If you're inside (e.g. in school) you aren't in the rain or in the storm so you gain nothing from it. And I can't say I'm unhappy with the idea of a Selkie becoming pretty powerful when outside and in the middle of a storm. And pretty weak when caught at school or even when they are in a good mood. I've edited the wording to clarify the move that your target has to be exposed to the storm to lash out at them.

And that's a pretty perfect description of what I was trying to do. With an alternate dark end built into the skin with Metamorphosis.

Thanks for the feedback

# ¿ Oct 19, 2014 01:38

neonchameleon: Nov 14, 2012

I tend to mentally put Monsterhearts skins into a number of categories. Warning: Effortpost ahead.

Joke: This is a joke skin. Laugh and move on. Few of them are good for actual play. Some, like the Neighbour, can be - but mostly for spurring everyone else on.

Fail Fail skins are unusable. They either haven't had basic consistency checking, or make either the PC or the game unplayable.

Mechanics Fail: The mechanics simply don't work or don't fit with MH. Can possibly be fixed with a rewrite.
Thematic Fail: The behaviour modelled by this skin is either going to break the character or the game (see The Beast for details).

Bad Bad skins are playable. They just take care and work, and although they don't break games or play experiences the game is better without them.

Overwhelming Bad: Unlike the other bad skins, throwing in an overwhelming skin can absolutely make the game rather than break it - it's just that in these cases you aren't playing vanilla Monsterhearts, and should agree to this with the whole table in advance. Otherwise overwhelming skins have a tendency to either not work at all, or to take over the entire game. The normal problem is requiring a stable of character-specific NPCs (see The Chosen, the Serpentine, and the Heir for details) - but a time travel skin like The Second also qualifies. (The Seer doesn't - looming dread of a terrible fate merely adds another element).
Overpowered Bad: Someone failed at playtesting and probably conceptually. Tone the moves down. This is actually startlingly rare; there are some moves that are too good but generally the game involves teenagers messing up and with the starting stats it's hard to prevent this.
Monstrous Bad: Someone hasn't realised that this is meant to be a game about teenage monsters with teenage problems and has written a skin about teenage monsters with monstrous problems. These don't break games, but the individual player's experience won't be as intense as with a good skin (although they may have more fun in the way people playing joke skins do).
Uninteractive Bad: The textbook case here is The Unseen. Who only needs to interact with the people they choose. The type of Skin can be written - see both Ghost and Sasquatch - but you don't do it by letting the PC choose who to interact with.
Teflon Bad a skin with a collection of moves that reduce drama and consequences. A lot of core Monsterhearts skins have one single healing or even no-selling move, but if you have more than that you can leach drama out of the game:
1. No-Sells: A No-Sell lets the PC reduce the consequences for a hit they've just taken. The textbook example is The Queen's The Shield - or even the Ghoul's Short Rest for the Wicked.
2. Heals: Under a given condition you can either remove Harm or cure a Condition. See the Vampire feeding, or the Hungry Ghost. Consequences cease to matter as much so the game is no longer feral
3. Reactions: Reactions punish others for attacking this character. Ultimately this is a form of Uninteractive Bad because people like a chance of success rather than to simply be punished for trying. I'm not aware that any official MH skins have this sort of reaction.
The worst case I'm aware of for a Teflon Bad skin is The Faithful which has two Heals, two Reactions, and the most extreme No-Sell I've ever seen, approaching a Reaction. And that's not counting a scene-crashing move.

And then I break the Good Skins into two categories:

Roleplaying: An associative skin alludes to its core issues with the mechanics. They frequently don't have a mandatory move but have mechanics (especially among the Darkest Self and/or the Sex Move) that reflect parts of teenage experience. The Roleplaying skins are good, with a lot of RP hooks, but they only point you in certain directions. Textbook would probably be the Vampire - the Vampire has no predetermined moves (although almost all of them pick the same ones) and is mostly a skin that is very good at certain types of antisocial behaviour. Roleplaying skins tend to lead to a good experience for all with a range of options
Bleeding: Bleeding skins have issues rather than being teenagers who have problems. The Ghost with their Unresolved Trauma would be a poster child here. When you are playing a Ghost your experience pivots around your unresolved trauma because it's overwhelming and quite literally defines your character. It's intense, gut-deep, and bleeding skins should be handled with even more care than other skins. Bleeding skins can often be a lot tighter than roleplaying ones, but not everyone will want to play one.

# ¿ Oct 19, 2014 22:36

neonchameleon: Nov 14, 2012

Musk is something the Second Skins do wrong and I've seen nowhere else. Moves that work in context but don't have to be taken in context. The worst case I can think of is The Cuckoo which has (or at least had) two mandatory skin moves - Feathers and Shredding The Looking Glass. The entire purpose of Shredding the Looking Glass is to tone down the otherwise overpowered Feathers. So people who take Feathers without Shredding cause problems.

# ¿ Oct 20, 2014 10:53

neonchameleon: Nov 14, 2012

Gazetteer posted:

Okay, having given this a bit of thought:

Part of the problem with making content for MH is that a lot of the moving parts are intangible, even compared to other PbtA games. You need to pay really careful attention to what behaviours you're incentivising, and I just feel it requires a good working grasp of both MH in particular and game design in general to be able to pull off. Most people doing third party skins also fail to recognise how important it is to give players a clear goal or ongoing objective inherent to the skin. Topher in particular often writes one into his descriptive text, but then fails to reinforce it at all in the mechanics.
...
This comes right out of loving left field. For one thing, the skin�s mechanics do not actually ever direct you toward showing people that death isn�t scary in the first place -- the only move related to giving advice at all is Roll the Bones, and that�s entirely optional. This is also REALLY dark in a way that even �just flat out try to kill someone� isn�t, and which does not seem to come naturally from the rest of the skin at all.

I think this is right on the nail. There is literally nothing in the Calaca pointing me in a direction as to how to behave except the Darkest Self. Every single move is a supernatural ability that has no mundane equivalent or a stat swap move including the sex move. "What are the consequences of sex?" "Magic." Literally the only behavioural mechanic (other than sometimes shedding the skin) is the Darkest Self. It's a collection of cool abilities rather than a metaphor for teenage problems.

# ¿ Oct 20, 2014 23:02

neonchameleon: Nov 14, 2012

Halloween Jack posted:

Plus, it just doesn't line up with a monster archetype the way "manipulates others by eliciting passion and denying it" lines up with vampires.

No... but it lines up with a monster game. And thank you. I may have a first draft of The Initiate (if I go with that name) up tonight. Central move will be something like:

Consciousness Raising: Whenever you make a public nuisance of yourself in a way that helps your cause or helps ensure others have heard of it, clear one unrelated condition or take 1 forward. Anyone who assists you gains the same benefit.

# ¿ Oct 24, 2014 17:15

neonchameleon: Nov 14, 2012

Lemon Curdistan posted:

You should post your stuff in the AW thread and not FATAL & Friends.

And when it's up to the working draft stage I will. Rather than spinning off a conversation here.

# ¿ Oct 24, 2014 17:20

neonchameleon: Nov 14, 2012

So the Queen is the corgi's pet not the other way round?

# ¿ Nov 11, 2014 17:37

neonchameleon: Nov 14, 2012

Kai Tave posted:

I feel like bait-and-switch games were considered a cool thing to do at one point, I remember that I used to see threads about them on RPGnet all the time, almost always some variation of "Hey I want to pull a bait and switch on my group, is this a good idea or the best idea y/n?"

And there are only two situations where it ever works. The first is if you know your players really really well (when you shouldn't be asking on a forum). The second is that it can work if you respect the characters and don't try to change them in the slightest. They were expecting what they were investigating to be a Mafia front; what you give them is either a Camarilla front or a Mythos Cult instead. (Or whatever). And do it while being careful to not change anything that's been established so far.

# ¿ Dec 3, 2014 11:09

neonchameleon: Nov 14, 2012

Ratpick posted:

In spite of owning it and being a huge fan of Dungeo World and Monsterhearts I've never actually played Apocalypse World, the game which spawned those two. All this talk of Battlebabes is making me want to play it.

Just because of that I started looking at the Apocalypse World playbooks again and something hit me that I hadn't quite realize the first time around: the playbooks are very asymmetrical in terms of how much power they have in setting, but that doesn't translate to disparity in mechanical effectiveness. What I mean is that the Hardholder is literally a guy with a fortress and the Chopper has a gang of bikers, but you could still easily conceive of a situation where a single Gunlugger poses a potential threat to their safety. As some people have pointed out, it actually leads to a very TV-showlike setup. It's great design

One of my friends calls it the 'mo people, 'mo problems scale. That the bigger your footprint in the game is the more the game comes up with problems for you to solve and the less able to solve the in-game problems on your own you are.

# ¿ Dec 21, 2014 23:45

neonchameleon: Nov 14, 2012

Hyper Crab Tank posted:

Just to briefly mention it, it's not like the sexual farce isn't a cultural mainstay in the west too. It's been around since the ancient Greeks in the form of satyr plays as well as general comedies about sex.

As a Brit, Maid appears to be aimed at about the same tone of comedy as the (for some reason much loved) Carry On films. Although there aren't the same underage issues in Carry On films (not that they aren't vastly problematic in their own ways).

# ¿ Dec 22, 2014 11:54

neonchameleon: Nov 14, 2012

Gazetteer posted:

if their skill is acting, then the MC is more or less required to try to work in a school play subplot (why have I never been in a Monsterhearts game with a school play subplot? gently caress homecoming dances, that sounds amazing).

I've no idea - everything from the backstabbing auditions to the star-crossed lovers who are paired up with the wrong people is great. If set in Britain, a Christmas pantomime rather than a normal play works even better - with little things like automatic cross-dressing (it's what passes for childrens' entertainment in Britain - and was a definite influence on Rocky Horror). Or for Shakespeare fans, Twelfth Night and The Taming of the Shrew both work well depending on the tone of the game. Just a warning - the play is about as likely to actually happen without fairly severe editing as a party is to reach the end without cops being called.

# ¿ Dec 23, 2014 02:58

neonchameleon: Nov 14, 2012

The Deleter posted:

and there aren't many situations where he won't be in the Box.

I can't agree here - the average episode of Dr. Who takes him out of the box for most of the episode.

# ¿ Dec 23, 2014 12:10

neonchameleon: Nov 14, 2012

The Deleter posted:

Except he doesn't? There's many different interpretations and ways he's played by different actors, but the show is ostensibly kid-friendly despite all of the gruesome deaths and dark themes. It's a completely different kind of show than the ones Apocalypse World is based on, where death and sexuality is depicted more starkly and the outcome of an episode isn't 100% guaranteed to be a happy ending. He doesn't work in AW thematically, not without some serious changes. It's the complete opposite of "perfect" from him. Also,

Doctor Who is not guaranteed a happy ending in any way, shape, or form (although far more for Old!Who than nuWho). But that's not why The Doctor is a miserable match for Apocalypse World. There are two central reasons - the first is that Dr Who is almost entirely episodic in a way that many playbooks (especially The Hardholder) resist. The closest to Doctor Who you could do is a "road trip" game involving Driver, Skinner, Savvyhead, and Battlebabe. The second you put in a "Tied playbook" - tied to a location or group of people (e.g. the Hardholder, Hocus, Chopper, or Operator) you can't hit one of the core the themes - which is that every story ends with the Doctor and Companions climbing in the TARDIS and flying off somewhere else. At that point you have the 6th Doctor Gallifrey situation (or other such messes).

And who says you can't play Scooby or Shaggy in MotW? Other than the monsters of Scooby Doo not being the same as MotW monsters. Kick Some rear end may be a core move, but the two of them are really really bad at it.

# ¿ Dec 30, 2014 00:39

neonchameleon: Nov 14, 2012

Gazetteer posted:

Actually, no, the Meddling Kid explicitly has a move that allows them to declare that the monster was a man in a mask all along.

I thought I'd double check that - aaaggghhhhh! That's a treasure trove of bad design including a move for +1 Forward whenever. and further breaking the Manipulate Someone move. And as you mentioned looking back it's a playbook by the game designer.

# ¿ Dec 30, 2014 18:52

neonchameleon: Nov 14, 2012

I'd assumed that they'd handle Warlocks one of two ways.

1: Warbeast packs! Nothing bigger than a Lesser, and preferably a pack beast. A one fury familiar being standard starting equipment - with a two Fury Lesser if you were lucky.
2: PC warbeasts (e.g. small Trolls, Cyclops, Warpwolves). And part of the Warlock's job is to enable the PC warbeast to be a wrecking machine.

# ¿ Jan 1, 2015 01:47

neonchameleon: Nov 14, 2012

theironjef posted:

Never once have I understood any of what the Forge or GNS or Tarnowski (is he also RPGpundit or are they different guys) or any of that stuff is about. It's basically people trying to codify why they are Angry About Games, right?

The Forge was essentially a talking shop about RPG design. Like most things, Sturgeon's Law applies - 90% of everything The Forge did was crap. Especially their overarching RPG theory (GNS for example is thoroughly rejected by everyone including Ron Edwards other, so far as I can tell, than parts of ENWorld). But it was a primal swamp from which things grew - designers like Vincent Baker and Jason Morningstar came from The Forge (and Avery Mcdaldno says "The Forge is the website that most altered my life"), and they supported Evil Hat in the early days, hosting the Evil Hat forums.

The basic premise of The Forge boils down to "We love the idea of White Wolf's 'Storyteller' games, but the rules are like a clarinetist; they simultaneously suck and blow for what they are claiming to do. What would a game that actually does what White Wolf games claim to look like? Let's try and make that." The first actual success after several years of trying was probably My Life With Master. And the inverse Rule Zero is a misapplication of something sensible. The sensible version starts off with the idea "Designers should design games that don't require the GM to fix them in post-production. If you require the GM to fix it in post-production then you, the designer, have screwed up".

Pundit is a "Get off my lawn" blowhard who hates anything he doesn't personally like, and likes old school D&D.

Edit: GNS suffers from being wrong. The Big Model suffers from explaining everything including that 1+1=3. It probably contains the truth, but it's close to useless. And re: Bliss Stage, once again I say Sturgeon's Law. 90% of everything is crap, and experimental games are even more crap than Yet Another D20 Shovelware Game.

neonchameleon fucked around with this message at 22:09 on Feb 5, 2015

# ¿ Feb 5, 2015 21:58

neonchameleon: Nov 14, 2012

Doresh posted:

I dunno, I've read several complaints regarding d20 about how tanks don't work because they have no real way of raising their threat/priority/whatever, or really anything that stops the enemies from just rushing past them, eating an AoE and murdering the squishy wizard who's actually dishing out the damage.
And then Pathfinder released a similar feat that apparently nobody uses because it's broken. Weird.

Mind you, this whole problem seems to be largely based around both the players and the GM treating RPG combat very video-gamey, or at least the GM ignoring stuff like the opponents intelligence, morale or general unwillingness to just run past the overmuscled freak wearing a ton of plate armor and wielding a giant sword that's on fire.

First, nobody uses Taunt because it's a full round action that affects only a single target. In short you're doing nothing productive while you draw off one single enemy and have them pound on you - if you succeed at all. You've ruined your action economy. The feat itself is terrible. (If Taunt affected all enemies in a 30' radius or was a permanently on field it might work). "Your complain you don't have a gun so I'm going to give you this nice nerf gun" is not a solution.

Second, the threatening guy isn't the guy weighed down by plate armour. It;s the guy able to obliterate all of you in six seconds by wielding the forces of creation. And due to the way full round attacks work, the guy in plate armour is only really threatening if you give him a full round to tear you to shreds because you are stupid enough to stand there rather than run past them. It's only GMs who ignore the opponent's intelligence that have the enemies go mano-a-mano with the guy in the tin suit while there is a wizard on the field who is remotely accessible. (And that includes carnivorous animal intelligence - if the animals are intelligent at all they should know better than to try to bite through plate armour). It's only GMs who treat RPGs as video-gamy that have enemies who will do what the PCs want them to rather than what is actually in their best interests. Admittedly you are right that arrows should be preferable - but once again you shoot the caster - they are both an easier target and significantly more dangerous than the guy slowed down by wearing a lot of metal.

# ¿ Feb 8, 2015 18:30

neonchameleon: Nov 14, 2012

kaynorr posted:

Oh they should absolutely be judged by the same standards as the world at large. The issue things like Polaris raise is how important is replayability and flexibility to a game? If I go into (either by buying it or just sitting down to play it) it knowing exactly what is on the tin, I don't think there is any inherent flaw in the game being a one-and-done affair.

That said, it's been a good decade since these kinds of things first hit the scene, and what's far more interesting is the degree to which these workshop designs have fed back (and not fed back) into games that reach for a broader audience. IMHO, by and large I haven't seen it - maybe with the exception of the God-Machine nWoD stuff which tries to create a marriage between the narrative and the mechanical with the Conditions & Beats mechanics. Examples to the contrary would be great, but I'm not aware of anything that takes the design insights of, say, the world's greatest "samurai climbing a mountain to kill a witch and betray each other" and applies it to anything broader that witch-murder-based-mountaineering.

I've never read let alone played The Mountain Witch. I can however see the influence of My Life With Master on Apocalypse World, Fiasco, and Monsterhearts. Evil Hat's fingerprints are, of course, all over anything MWP has done in the past five years.

# ¿ Mar 5, 2015 19:54

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 03:22

neonchameleon: Nov 14, 2012

Kavak posted:

So D&D caster supremacy wasn't an in-rule thing until 3.0?

It depends what you mean.

In oD&D and 1E the casters were on a different power curve to the fighter. So the fighter deliberately started stronger and ended weaker. The risk was lower but the rewards weren't as high. And the game was soft-capped at level 10. When a wizard was more powerful than a fighter but nothing like a level 15 3.X wizard.

2E (well, post Dragonlance) was weird. D&D rules used to play a different game entirely.

In oD&D a delve was one day. No resting in the dungeon or wilderness (wandering monsters). Which meant that although mechanically the wizard spells and the fighter hit points recovered at a different rate, in almost all cases this was a fluff difference. You'd go into the dungeon fully prepared, leave by the end of the day, and rest at base until everyone was healed before trying again. The 8 hours prepares the wizard, 2 weeks heals the fighter wasn't a critical factor. It was "The fighter spends two weeks of light activity and carousing. The dungeon isn't going anywhere. And the wizard hits the books. If you really need speed, fetch a cleric. Dragonlance and 2e changed this in the direction of fighter supremacy by having Epic Quest Adventures where the wizard got their spells back every morning and the fighter almost never got HP back.

On the other hand in oD&D you weren't a party of half a dozen. If you had half a dozen PCs you should have at least a dozen hirelings. The wizard might only have 1d4 hit points, but with half a dozen wardogs, and half a dozen people wearing armour between them and the enemy (as well as the other PCs) there was enough meat and muscle that they shouldn't take a hit unless they messed up. Dragonlance had a small party with no hirelings. Which meant the wizard had nothing keeping them from going down but the generosity of the DM and a very thin wall of meat. So either the wizards died easily or the DM didn't attack them. How powerful wizards were here depended on the DM.

But where 3.0 shattered everything was the saving throws and removal of the level soft-cap. In AD&D saving throws got relatively better as you levelled up (so you didn't throw save or suck spells at high level enemies because they wouldn't work). In 3.X they get relatively worse. The highest level PC in Greyhawk was about level 13. 7th level spells were things intended for big evil NPCs. Not for PCs to casually toss around multiple times a day. Also as well as the level cap being removed, so was the endgame. The fighter as a level 10 class feature got an army to balance out the wizard's power.

And Vance's mages normally had either plot device spells or bound or bargained with to do the work for them. The D&D wizard is based on wargame battlefield artillery.

# ¿ Apr 25, 2015 22:37

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