Quote from: Spinachcat;426521I am interested in this Eastern vs. Western MMO.  Where can I find some good info breaking down the differences?

Do some google searches for "Asian online games news" and "Chinese MMO news" and you'll get a lot of it.  

The biggest things are:

1:  It's all microtransactions (very few Chinese have credit cards, or even checking accounts, for that matter).  The way these games work is that you buy a bulk unit of in-game currency, which you "deposit" in your game account using a code from the item you purchase in the store.  As you use the in-game currency your account depletes, and then you buy more.

2:  They are played in internet cafes and gaming kiosks.  Most people don't own their own computers, instead they spend long hours camped out in shared public internet hookups.  Its very rare for people to play from home (which would require a good PC, all the necessary software, and an internet connection).

3:  They're primarily themed with chinese mythology - mostly medieval.  Even games built outside of China tend to use chinese mythology.  Japanese mythology isn't popular (long memories of WWII).

4:  The games are tightly regulated by 2 big government agencies.  They cannot show sex, or even R-rated nudity.  Blood, guts, decapitations, amputations, and other graphic violence is not permitted.  Also, there can be no hint that the game in any way criticizes the government.

5:  All in game communication is monitored.  "Sexting" isn't permitted, nor is political activism.

6:  The games are often incredibly "grindy" from a US perspective.  The asian market tolerates about a 100x higher level of "boredom" than the western market will.  This is partly because many players use these games as a meditation tool - they drift off while they play and aren't really aware of what they're doing.  Think Pachinko.

7:  The koreans play with koreans, the chinese with chinese, the japanese with japanese, etc.  From time to time, these national divisions go to war, and its serious business.  Thousands or tens of thousands of people get mobilized to clash over real-world issues (again, a lot of angst over WWII).

RyanD

Well it took me way longer than I thought, but I finally got to the point where I'm ready to talk about changing D&D.  

Required Reading:

1e DMG:  Pages 97-100 (example of play)

3.0 DMG:  Pages 130-132 (example of play)

You notice what's missing here?

Playing this game with miniatures and maps with defined squares. This classic passage (retold by Monte in 3.0) is a great example of D&D, and yet it unfolds without:

* 5 foot steps
* attacks of opportunity
* reach
* line of sight
* movement rates
* terrain effects

What if we imagined an alternate universe where D&D never had miniatures or playmats, and instead, the entire game took place within the imaginations of the players?

For most of my time running D&D prior to 3.x, this is how we did it.  It was only very occasionally necessary to use miniatures - and when we did it was mostly to help keep track of the monsters and their locations.

What if we re-built D&D from the ground up excluding specific positioning?  If the default rule was "players can always do anything they wish during a conflict as long as it sounds reasonable and they succeed on their die rolls as necessary"?

"I run across the room and stab the orc with my sword" is just as valid as "I take a move action and go 3 squares, and then a standard action melee attack once I threaten the orc".  And it doesn't really matter if the distance was 3 squares or 13 squares.

I will tell you that this focus on miniatures and exact positioning was a commandment from Peter to the design team (and not something that most people including me really disagreed with).  The idea was that a part of the 3e design was that players could always figure out how to maximize their combat options; that required making these things defined and specific rather than DM fiat.  And in a world with all 4 segments participating, that wasn't a big deal (in fact it was a feature for the Power Gamers and the Thinkers, and the Storytellers and the Character Actors just asked other people to help them when necessary).

But in a world where we have a social network highly unbalanced in favor of Storytellers and Thinkers, this system, and the vast rules complexity it brings, and the reduction of drama and narrative to just those things permitted by the rules, is more of a liability than a benefit.

So let's toss it.  Our first commandment for D&D shall be "no more figures, no more maps, no more specific positioning".

(Of course, we'll sell a tactical combat rules supplement so that when that really big battle takes place where it just makes so much sense to use the figs and the maps the DM will have good rules for them.  But conflicts that use those rules should be exceptions, not the norm.)

The only bad part about that is both 1e and 3e were all about minis. 1e gave all measurements in inches, for example. 3e gave everything in squares.

Quote from: RSDancey;426580So let's toss it.  Our first commandment for D&D shall be "no more figures, no more maps, no more specific positioning".

What about a middle ground like Sally Forth?  I have a Japanese TRPG from the early 1990s (Legend of Double Moon) that has something similar in it.

Quote from: RSDancey;426580(Of course, we'll sell a tactical combat rules supplement so that when that really big battle takes place where it just makes so much sense to use the figs and the maps the DM will have good rules for them.  But conflicts that use those rules should be exceptions, not the norm.)

Optional rules and rule supplements is a good way to go, in my opinion.  It would help to give advice about what it means to use a particular rule option or supplement.

Quote from: Benoist;426536Bingo.

I would just add that if we could somehow overcome the incestuous gamers play with gamers paradigm and just somehow make it easier for gamers to play games with other people, whether they themselves become gamers or not, that would be a big win for the hobby. It would take a change in culture, for one thing, and games that complement this change in paradigm (which may, or may not, already exist), for another, but that's not impossible, in my opinion.

I think it is the greatest single failing of recent D&D to make the barriers to entry very steep, especially regarding rules and investment. Under earlier D&D, it was very easy for new players to have most of the full game experience without the rules...they could merely react to the DM's description and allow the DM or another player to make the few rolls necessary until they got the hang of it. The more a game insists an interaction insists on a very elaborate mechanic to represent it, especially one divorced from the action in perspective of the player/character - be it a 4e tactical battle, or a mechanical social contest - the higher the barrier to entry compared to "you are here. what do you do?"

Quote from: RSDancey;426580What if we imagined an alternate universe where D&D never had miniatures or playmats, and instead, the entire game took place within the imaginations of the players?

For most of my time running D&D prior to 3.x, this is how we did it.  It was only very occasionally necessary to use miniatures - and when we did it was mostly to help keep track of the monsters and their locations.

What if we re-built D&D from the ground up excluding specific positioning?  If the default rule was "players can always do anything they wish during a conflict as long as it sounds reasonable and they succeed on their die rolls as necessary"?

I would be very curious to know what the 1999 data had to say about the popularity of miniatures use among D&D games prior to the release of 3rd edition. In particular the popular basic sets of the 1980s had very limited language regarding miniatures, and the rules usually seemed to imply that the game would be mostly verbal. It has always been my understanding that Gygax did not use miniatures in D&D and the references to them in early products was mostly commercially motivated. It is telling that the 1e DMG example is one that focuses almost entirely on verbal description and open-ended reactions to that descriptions - IMO the basis of D&D play.

I think this true open-endedness, in which a player may try to do anything he can think up in response to his environment, is the heart of play and the greatest advantage over even an advanced MMO which will in the forseeable future only allow a limited range of options in response to a given situation. Even a next-level MMO with a sophisticated physics model more advanced than say, a "force unleashed" with many interactables only offers a marginally larger "menu." Existing MMOs really only offer a menu of reactions more limited than even fairly primitive games whose model they resemble (Ultima underworld, Daggerfall/Morrowind, for example.)

In my opinion the major flaw of miniatures use is that it is a contributing factor to making combat disproportionately time consuming relative to the amount of the action in an adventure that is combat. Most other in-game actions take less time to resolve at the table than they do for the characters. Combat is much the opposite. In some ways it is essentially a minigame that interrupts the main action of play which is - DM describes situation / PC reacts according to decription.

I think your "sounds reasonable" is an important point, though. Even if we are not catering to "power gamers" it should be reasonable for players to declare that the tougher characters are standing in front of the weaker ones, or use the environment to gain a concrete advantage within reason - i.e. fighting from a choke point, etc. This doesn't require miniatures or strict positioning rules - it just requires the understanding of the game environment as real.

So a rule that enforced abstraction, so that a character could "move and attack an orc" no matter what the lay of the (mental) landscape might be, whether or not the GM agrees, might be damaging to that "realness." But I'm not sure how strongly you mean "exclude." If you mean "does not require a mechanical model of specific positioning," that's great. If you mean "mechanically precludes any consideration," I think that's venturing toward what John's talking about - superfluous mechanics impeding play.

Quote from: John Morrow;426585What about a middle ground like Sally Forth?  I have a Japanese TRPG from the early 1990s (Legend of Double Moon) that has something similar in it.

That's interesting. I've used similar ideas to that, before, myself. For me the important point is that the abstraction of these ranges are useful and convenient, but that the described game reality should trump the abstraction. But for most cases this kind of abstraction would work well.

When Ryan mentioned "no maps" as a commandment, I took him to mean "battle maps," but I hope that maps of any kind would not be "forbidden."

In the "simple pleasures" thread, I talked about the sense of possibility a map implies. A map that's really just a flowchart or a story frame, in my opinion, lacks the independence from a preset chain of events that a concrete map gives.

Quote from: RSDancey;426580So let's toss it.  Our first commandment for D&D shall be "no more figures, no more maps, no more specific positioning".

I imagine that would make many fans of the current iteration of the game more than a little uneasy.

Others would see it has the next coming of Christ.

I have no idea how folks would fall into either one of these categories, or the middle, for that matter.

Personally, I like using miniatures, but I also do believe that their use should be an option, something that is added onto the default game play, not a requirement for people to play. So I don't see it as a bad thing. I'm finding the suggestion interesting, so far. Let's see where this goes.

Quote from: John Morrow;426550...

While I don't agree with everything Ryan is saying, I don't think he's trying to toss anyone out of the hobby.  He thinks they are leaving on their own.  Argue to his argument, not what you think his motives are.

He's not saying people should leave, but the logical conclusion of his arguments is:-

1. people of types 1 (PG, Gam1) and 3 (CA, Sim) ARE leaving and there's nothing we can do to stop it
2. soon only people of types 2 (Th, Gam2) and 4 (ST, Narr) and 5 (generic) will be left
3. type 5 (generic roleplayers) is of limited commercial interest because types 2 and 4 will be 78.6% of the market [(22+22)(22+22+12)] and because type 5 is relatively easy to satisfy somewhat (can enjoy any kind of game) and hard to satisfy completely (a game which combines all elements)
4. network externalities exaggerate this
5. therefore the commercially successful games will be ones which cater primarily to types 2 and 4
6. therefore games should be written for types 2 and 4
7. therefore no-one should bother their arse writing TTRPGs which types 1 and 3 might enjoy
8. therefore there should be no TTRPGs on the market for types 1 and 3
9. therefore types 1 and 3 should have no TTRPGs to play
10. in other words, types 1 and 3 can fuck off to MMOs which are better suited to their preferences, if only they understood what they actually enjoy, the dumb fuckers.

Quote from: RSDancey;426580...

But in a world where we have a social network highly unbalanced in favor of Storytellers and Thinkers, this system, and the vast rules complexity it brings, and the reduction of drama and narrative to just those things permitted by the rules, is more of a liability than a benefit.

So let's toss it.  Our first commandment for D&D shall be "no more figures, no more maps, no more specific positioning".

(Of course, we'll sell a tactical combat rules supplement so that when that really big battle takes place where it just makes so much sense to use the figs and the maps the DM will have good rules for them.  But conflicts that use those rules should be exceptions, not the norm.)

And here is an example of Dancey doing exactly this, only worse:- he's disregarded the logical Thinker position, which would be that consistent positioning is a part of consistent resolution of combat which is a part of consistent application of the consequences of good chargen decisions which is a part of the facilitating of Thinker style play. E.g. if I'm a Thinker why am I going to concentrate on movement-rate related stats if they are GM-fudged?

Quote from: John Morrow;426559...  So I'm willing to believe that some segment of Character Actors may be drawn away by MMOs, but I think it may be premature to write the whole segment off, perhaps simply because of categorization issues.  It's entirely possible that even though Character Actor seems to match what a lot of character focused players do, that we would have shown up as Storytellers in your survey results, because our perspective is more Strategic than Tactical.  But either way, I think the problem is that "Story Focus" suffers from the problem that seems to plague all role-playing theory discussions, which is what is meant by "story" and what's the best way to get it.  

QFT.

QuoteIf that's the case and the hobby is left with Strategic/Combat Focus and Strategic/Story Focus, the common ground is "Strategic", which you defined as "'Strategic' means 'a perspective larger than the immediate future and surroundings'."  And if that's the case, then suggesting the hobby move in a Forge game direction is full of fail because the vast majority of Forge games, including Dogs in the Vineyard, are Tactical.  They are meant to be played as one-offs or at conventions or as mini-campaigns.  They often revolve around a particular limited scenario and limited character type.

I asked elsewhere in these discussions if anyone knows of any Dogs in the Vineyard campaigns that have lasted for years, or a year, or even for a dozen sessions with the same characters, the way many D&D games do (if I'm not mistaken, D&D 3.5 was designed with the assumption that a year of play would bring a character from 1st to 20th level, right?).  And even if one game did last that long, would they start another one?

It's my impression that Dogs in the Vineyard (and others like it) just aren't played that way.  In fact, the whole idea of "Story Now!" is Tactical, about story happening immediately, not over the long haul.  Dogs in the Vineyard drives tactical escalation in a tightly focused tactical setting where everything is immediate and accessible (If I'm not mistaken, doesn't the game even suggest that they players should be able to find anything that they look for?).  So how is this supposed to appeal two two segments of players that you've identified as "Strategic"?  Don't traditional games have far more to offer in that regard?

IMHO on the whole people play Forge games because they are impatient to see dramatic things happen - they don't like to waste time noodling around when they could be getting on with the action. I prefer to immerse myself as the same character time and time again over a period of time. Having a substantial fleshed-out game-world to explore and freedom to stray outside specific kinds of scenario makes that possible.

But in a narrow sense Forgite games may be more "strategic" in the short-term in the sense that you are "strategically" controlling the story rather than "tactically" directing your character's actions "in the moment".

Quote from: John Morrow;426565...

In particular, as I mentioned earlier in this thread, game mastery appeals to certain segments of players but it is also behind many of the biggest complaints that other types of players make and is one of the key problems facing casual players.  If the segment that finds game mastery is leaving the hobby, then perhaps reducing or even eliminating that element of play and providing players with transparent rules that one doesn't have to master to use effectively would draw in new players that might be turned off by that aspect of the game.

Personally I will spend hours poring over rules to get the best out of a character because I don't like being "done over" by unfair rules, but I always try to design my games to make that either impossible or trivial because I don't want my players to be "done over" by unfair rules whether they are into game mastery or not. The idea of Timmy cards to deliberately trick people is repellent to me. For a long time I held the view that wizards in D&D 3.5 were inherently weaker than the spellcasting classes (at least in the game as run by the DM), but I still wanted to play a wizard for the sparkle; but resented the "Timmy-card" element of being gratuitously shat on by the rules. I've finally given up and play an Oracle in Pathfinder. I'm not playing a wizard again because I couldn't take being worn down by the constant shit of having ridiculously shit stats. (Of course, wizards could rule the world if the game were run differently - it does depend on the DM's style. But this guy's style was pretty much the default hack-n-slash style.) Are there really people out there who get a kick out of seeing other people swallowing Timmy cards in ignorance while they min-max it out to their heart's content? Do they think they're terribly clever? I mean sure, I sometimes like to feel I've got a little extra edge by the way I've arranged my abilities etc., but generally it's a question of just trying to keep up with the people whose preferences lie with inherently more powerful character classes, or in LARP who are more agile/athletic/experienced/all-round competent than me. I'd probably find it frustrating if I were all-round significantly more powerful than everyone else.

Related to some of this talk about minis:-

With a TTRPG, you can skip time according to whatever is of interest to your group. With an MMO, if everything is in realtime, time presumably has to be handled with a degree of uniformity across thousands of players. This may not be a problem in high fantasy games where you can teleport from one location to another, etc. But in low fantasy games - TTRPGs have an edge there.

My own view is minis should only be used when necessary to keep a rough idea of what's going on. If you have huge numbers of combatants, how on earth do you keep even a rough idea of where they all are so everyone's on the same page without using minis? Sure the GM can fudge it all by narration but it's not very satisfactory. But I see this sort of battle as anything involving 10+ combatants, which could easily happen once per session, or once per two or three sessions.

Quote from: John Morrow;426565Well, that was Ryan Dancey's argument in 2000 (I've posted those quotes elsewhere) and how D&D 3e was designed so he's not inherently opposed to that idea at all.

3.X is a great design. There are many thing in it that made me go "Yup if I thought of that it would been in my AD&D 1st campaign". However it was the latest in a long line of mechanic fixes. Granted it was needed at the time but I think trying to find the perfect set of mechanics to appeal to today's gamers should not be the primary goal of the game designer. That the heart of what Ryan Dancey proposed in earlier posts. New mechanics to make tabletop more appealing to today's audience.

For example take Aladdin the Disney Movie. I consider pretty funny at the time and a fairly good disney movie. However it is loaded with pop references that doesn't age. For example how many know Arsenio Hall? Which is one of the forms the genie changes into?  Contrast to the Lion King which requires no understanding of the times to fully enjoy. Doesn't mean Aladdin can't be enjoyed but it is not the same as it was in the 90s when it was released.

So rather than trying to chase your audience with mechanics. Focus on the roleplaying side and have your mechanics follow what you are focusing on. Build off of a core game, in short do what I did with the Majestic Wilderlands. Implement D&D for a specific setting, idea, or theme and create mechanics to support that.

Quote from: John Morrow;426565But it's also clear to me that there is a certain amount of tension between the various styles of play (and present in your own characterization of the Killer player type) and that things that appeal to one play style can detract form another.  

A side note: I feel Killers largely disappeared from tabletop in the early 90s. We have First Person Shooters to thank for that.

Quote from: John Morrow;426565And it's also clear that dialing an element of play that might normally be tolerable to everyone up to 11 to please one style of play can ruin the game for everyone else.

Yes that true, but I hope I made clear that the basic idea is that the human referee can look as his group and figure out what elements that works for that particular group. Give the referee the advice and tools make this easier for him. It is a more difficult route than trying to make a game orient to a particular play style. But it would make the game more sustainable in the long run. Players with different styles will be able to see how D&D can be adapted to their game and thus more likely to buy.  

Roleplaying Games can do this because of their nature. You have to really work to make a RPG that limited only to one thing.

Quote from: John Morrow;426565In particular, as I mentioned earlier in this thread, game mastery appeals to certain segments of players but it is also behind many of the biggest complaints that other types of players make and is one of the key problems facing casual players.  If the segment that finds game mastery is leaving the hobby, then perhaps reducing or even eliminating that element of play and providing players with transparent rules that one doesn't have to master to use effectively would draw in new players that might be turned off by that aspect of the game.

Roleplaying mastery then?

Quote from: RSDancey;426580What if we re-built D&D from the ground up excluding specific positioning?  If the default rule was "players can always do anything they wish during a conflict as long as it sounds reasonable and they succeed on their die rolls as necessary"?

.....

So let's toss it.  Our first commandment for D&D shall be "no more figures, no more maps, no more specific positioning".

(Of course, we'll sell a tactical combat rules supplement so that when that really big battle takes place where it just makes so much sense to use the figs and the maps the DM will have good rules for them.  But conflicts that use those rules should be exceptions, not the norm.)

I think it is a mistake to go either extreme. I myself used miniatures from day one because am 50% deaf and found my games a lot easier to run if I used miniatures. I also found a balance that allow me to use miniatures quickly to reinforce my verbal description so everybody understood what they were seeing.*

Swords & Wizardry, AD&D 1st, etc were all perfectly fine for this. The additional rules I used took two paragraphs to summarize. The basic idea is that you can do a 1/2 move and attack. Most of it was just listing what is a move and what is a attack and what doesn't count as either that you can just do.

And all you need for the verbal only guys and the miniature guys. No attacks of opportunity, facing (well maybe a flanking modifier), etc, etc.

Otherwise I agree with cutting down the detailed tactics for D&D style games.  I like using them with GURPS but there is price to pay in the length of time it takes to resolve combat.

Quote from: Omnifray;426635Related to some of this talk about minis:-

With a TTRPG, you can skip time according to whatever is of interest to your group. With an MMO, if everything is in realtime, time presumably has to be handled with a degree of uniformity across thousands of players. This may not be a problem in high fantasy games where you can teleport from one location to another, etc. But in low fantasy games - TTRPGs have an edge there.

Actually the problem is not combat length. For soloable encounters the ever leveling orc is pretty much the rule among MMORPGs. So pretty much you are fighting for the same length of time throughout the game if you are soloing.

The problem are encounters that can ONLY be dealt with by teams of players. I.e. the boss fights. Those suck time like you wouldn't believe. Time to assemble the group, time to get through the content to get to the actual boss fight. Then the boss fight itself which can only be dealt with by a timed choreography peformed by the team of players.

Quote from: Cole;426599That's interesting. I've used similar ideas to that, before, myself. For me the important point is that the abstraction of these ranges are useful and convenient, but that the described game reality should trump the abstraction. But for most cases this kind of abstraction would work well.

I don't know if Sally Forth would work for me and my group or the way several of us play, because the abstraction might not be representative enough.  But I could envision a game that has several combat systems, one that's entirely verbal, one that uses something like Sally Forth, and one that's square or hex based and letting the GM pick which one they'll use, not only for a while game but maybe even on an encounter-by-encounter basis.  A good explanation of the pros and cons of each approach and when they are optimal could help make that work.