Quote from: gleichman;641177Listen to yourself.

"I get to ignore all the rules I don't like! And I don't like a bunch! And I think that AD&D is somehow special in allowing me to do that!"

And to you, this is the height of game design and you need look no further? What a defeated small minded creature you are.

Because I don't look at an RPG as something I can play with all by myself in my mom's basement?


OK...

Quote from: Panjumanju;641178What I'm getting from this is what you feel Roleplaying Games are still in their infancy and have not yet reached a stage of design maturity. Further, that their proper development is being hampered by over-traditionalism; players clinging to what you feel is an under-developed stage of RPGs when they could be helping make progress. Is that an accurate assessment?

That is certainly a factor.

I think the a significant part of the reason for this is that the RPG industry as a whole lacks real game designers, and currently only has RPG fans and players.

In contrast the designers of the 70s and 80s had backgrounds in wargame design, i.e. games that had to be fun on their own merits. When they were replace by designers who had only played RPGs, the ability to make the game mechanics fun and engaging disappeared.

The result was easy to predict. The Story Teller movement of WoD, covering for a resolution system that increased the fumble chance as skill rose. The arrive of Lite System, for if the rules couldn't be engaging- at least they didn't take much effort. And of course the rise of the Story Game movement, where the rules are no longer a game at all- but instead a method of passing narrative control.

There are other factors as well. But this is the one I'm most concerned with in this thread.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;641180When I play OD&D it is both the game and the social aspect I enjoy. The rules for combat are indeed brief and abstract. They are meant to be so because combat is not the focus of the game IF you use the rules.

I disagree. I think that viewpoint is one you've overlaid upon OD&D and overlaid for the simple fact that you don't acutally like it's combat mechanics.

And btw, this is what I was speaking of when I mentioned avoiding genre appropriate conflicts.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;641181Because I don't look at an RPG as something I can play with all by myself in my mom's basement?


OK...

Pointless ad hominem. It has nothing to do with my point and is an comment that only shows how petty you are.

And it's also misses the point of the test, it requires your whole gaming group to be part of the activity so that you can find out if the mechanics are interesting to the everyone, only some, or no one at all.

Newsflash.  The point of a game is to have fun.  The point of an RPG is to have fun with other people.  That's it.  Not doing scrub analysis all by yourself or any other weird fetish or compulsive behavior you have.


Again, you can't see the forest through the trees.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;641193Newsflash.  The point of a game is to have fun.  The point of an RPG is to have fun with other people.  That's it.  Not doing scrub analysis all by yourself or any other weird fetish or compulsive behavior you have.

Are you too dense to understand English or too dishonest to carry on a real conversation?

How many times do I have to say that my entire group are part of these evaluations? They don't like bad games either, and are fully involved in selecting what we play.

Quote from: gleichman;641194Are you too dense to understand English or too dishonest to carry on a real conversation?

http://www.therpgsite.com/search.php?searchid=362837

Quote from: gleichman;641163And there's another game that passes all those tests too but no one is interested in that.

I'm going to take a wild stab in the dark here and say the missing game is Age of Heroes...

Quote from: One Horse Town;641204I'm going to take a wild stab in the dark here and say the missing game is Age of Heroes...

If that was a wild stab, then I'm actually Constantine the Great

Really, there's no sense in designing your own game if you do it wrong now is there?

Quote from: gleichman;641163Five of the six editions of HERO. And there's another game that passes all those tests too but no one is interested in that. JAGs may will count as well although I only saw an early version of it some years back.

Other games could be fixed by house rules, or played in a limited way such as to avoid their rather glaring failures.

JAGS is, to my mind, is heavily influenced by Hero and GURPS. It includes, basically, two core rules-sets (one of which is in alpha-draft)

- the JAGS Revised core book which gives core rules for point-buy character creation, combat, world-simulation mechanics, etc.
- the JAGS Archetypes book which, when published, will provide extensive rules for super-powers of various kinds

The basic game is very traditional in the GURPS/Hero model, with a reasonably contained set of character options that, in my experience cover a variety of genres and character conceptions.

The basic book does not do super-humans, although it provides a framework that covers some of their abilities (i.e. it explains how a super-human telekinesis grab is different from a regular grab-you-with-my-hand, but doesn't provide any specific rules for buying TK).

The Archetypes book, which you could get a nearly-complete, but unproof-read, not finished-playtesting version from the author (Marco, who I believe still posts here), lists a great many super powers and some rules for creating your own, much like Hero's advantages / disadvantages power modifiers.

One thing that's very interesting: the super-powers book was written with the help of a computer simulator that was designed to implement the game rules and compare, say "Poisoned Claws" to "Armor Piercing Bullets" across a variety of stock opponents and at varying power levels.

While it's not clear that this made the costs "more balanced," one thing that definitely came out of it was clarity in the rules: if you can't tell a computer how to play your game, your game rules are lacking. In some ways, just getting the rules to a level of clarity where the developers could code them into the simulator really helped.

Anyway, if you like GURPS / Hero, I'd recommend taking a look at JAGS.

ETA: Here's an actual play of a long-running going up levels / going down-in-dungeons game I just completed.

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: -E.;641211Anyway, if you like GURPS / Hero, I'd recommend taking a look at JAGS.

Marco and I have been online friends for a long time, since I reviewed a very early version of JAGs for him back in the day on rec.games.frp.advocacy. It was one of only two Free RPGs that I give a favorable review to (the other was Runebearer).

It's a very interesting system, intended in large measure to fill what Marco consider to be gaps in GURPs (which I think it's very successful at) and HERO (I'm more mixed on his success here, i.e. where it does- I don't think it matters).

As much as I liked it when reviewing it, I never really found a use for it given that HERO was doing everything I needed it to already. Currently with my players pressing me to replace HERO in the non-Superhero genres with Age of Heroes- JAGS will always be a good answer to a question I sadly just don't have.

I sort of regret that actually. Marco is a Class A guy.

Quote from: gleichman;640994

Does the game have an escalating Hit Point Mechanic? Examples: All D&D and its copies, Dark Heresy


• Does it fail to scale for the entire human (normal and heroic) range and at least near human superheroic? Examples: Call of Cthulhu, Dark Heresy

I'm not going to get involved with the rest of it, but these two interested me.

I think that guys getting tougher as they increase along the scale (zero to hero for shorthand) is a reasonable method of simulating that scale - along with increased skill ratings, super powers and the like.

Quote from: One Horse Town;641231I'm not going to get involved with the rest of it, but these two interested me.

I think that guys getting tougher as they increase along the scale (zero to hero for shorthand) is a reasonable method of simulating that scale - along with increased skill ratings, super powers and the like.

So you think a Navy SEAL is more resistant to a bullet between the eyes than a Street thug? Or that a sword through the heart of a Spartan is less deadly than it is through the heart of a Immortal?

What they are is less likely to suffer such wounds, not signficiantly more resistant when they do.

This is a failure at the Simulation of Process level, i.e. what's happening in the game is not what's actually being shown by the mechanics. In addition to causing suspension of disbelief problems, it always makes certain real events impossible as the extreme abstraction prevents them from occuring at all. Lastly it conflicts with other game mechanics that are intended to simulate an actual process resulting in a mix design that causes confusion at best and are simply at impossible loggerheads at worst.

It is flatly poor design and always has been.

It's original intent as stated by by E.G.G and others was to make combat safer for the PC and more predictible. At this it succeeds, and in addition it's very easy design, both to create and to play.

Most people don't realize they even have other options in gaming. And too many of those that do have accepted a poor method as standard for so long they are no longer able to see its problems- i.e. they are people still using the stick plow because that new method 'posions' the soil and they are afterall able to plant some crops aren't they?

...A HP argument, particularly one in which skilled characters are just as easily killed as unskilled ones. Really?

What next - Fighter vs Wizard threads? Monks are good threads? WoD is a good system threads?

I thought I was winning, not warping back to the 80s.

Quote from: gleichman;641240So you think a Navy SEAL is more resistant to a bullet between the eyes than a Street thug? Or that a sword through the heart of a Spartan is less deadly than it is through the heart of a Immortal?

No. I think the Navy SEAL is more likely to avoid getting a bullet through the eyes and an Immortal more likely to avoid a sword through the heart. Which when you are abstracting health through increasing hit point values and the like is what it's meant to represent.

It's as valid a method as any other.

What happens in the vehicular zero to hero stakes? Are tanks as susceptible to rpgs as a Citroen C5?

I can see a difference between playing a fantasy game and a modern one though.

QuoteWhat they are is less likely to suffer such wounds, not signficiantly more resistant when they do.

Exactly - thus hit point abstraction.