Quote from: KenHR;643201This thread feels like 1985 again.

Some good things have come from it (for me at least).

Quote from: -E.;643215Now that's interesting.

You questioned my genuinity in post 93 -- my suspicions about your courage came in 95 as a direct response to that.

That's a funny thing to get wrong, don't you think? The bit where you forget you started adding up the homonyms?

Yes, I found it hard to credit that someone could hold two completely opposing opinions in the same sentence almost, a better way to put it would have been 'are you taking the piss'.

Quote from: -E.;643215The reason I want to look a clear examples framed in terms of, you know, roleplaying game scenarios, is that I'm afraid that if you go making up terms like "central game pillars" and "fringe rules" we're going to be hopelessly lost.

Central pillars - levels in D&D
Fringe rules - to quote you "Extreme mechanics (Morrow Project's bleeding an insta-death rules, or Toon's you-can't-die rules) will surely affect game play. No doubt."

So why will "Extreme mechanics" affect player choices while central pillars won't? Levels have a direct bearing on how easily characters die, why should they be any less influential than rules which indicate how quickly characters die?

To repeat myself, which this thread seems to involve a great deal of, are you taking the piss?

Quote from: -E.;643215You've been running at full speed away from it ever since. But if you think I'm ducking your points, can you re-state them without inventing any words?

I'm game for that, too.

Here to serve,

Yeah, you've lost the argument.

Quote from: The Traveller;643161Okay, I refer you to Arneson's interview:

QuoteI adopted the rules I'd done earlier for a Civil War game called Ironclads that had hit points and armor class. It meant that players had a chance to live longer and do more. They didn't care that they had hit points to keep track of because they were just keeping track of little detailed records for their character and not trying to do it for an entire army.

Time for a visit from the tangential historical detail monster.

Arneson's memory does not serve him well here. Less charitably, one could say that Arneson's memory about what was in Chainmail, versus what he invented himself, became decidedly less reliable after Arneson started suing TSR over D&D. (As did Gary's over certain things Arneson did in fact invent.)

Anyway, the contention that Chainmail didn't have armor class is a common enough canard that I put up some documentation about it here - and yes, even the term "armor class" is a Chainmail term:

http://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2012/10/armor-class-in-chainmail.html

Chainmail exhibits all of the qualities that Arneson describes in your quote: because Heroes took multiple hits to kill, because wearing more armor avoids blows, you had the chance to live longer and do more. Arneson did prefer a different approach to hit points, but not the one that D&D ultimately adopted.

While it's always hard to provide evidence that something doesn't exist, I have pretty extensive access to Arneson's unpublished games, notes, etc., and I'm not aware he ever designed a game about, let alone entitled, ironclads. And I did ask him about it myself.

Now that much said, Arneson was a huge fan of Fletcher Pratt's naval wargame, and there is a sort of armor class in Fletcher Pratt (ultimately deriving from Jane) with various thicknesses and resistances to penetration from shells. Probably Arneson is hazily remembering some ACW-based Pratt game he ran once. There's certainly truth in the notion that prior to Chainmail, there were games in various settings that had quantified armor ratings that prevented hits. However there's absolutely no grounds to believe that D&D has hit points or armor class for any other reason than that Chainmail had them.

Enough tangent.

A nice juicy RPGSite thriller, no quarter spared, ad hominen attacks with colorful pithy industrial language, an emotive topic laid bare.

So I find levels useful as a shorthand way of juding relative power. I prefer a hybrid with a level and skills approach. Much like Bushido, ah poor under rated FGU..., level advances you in your core competancy and you get points to spend on other stuff. So your wizard can weild a sword its just going to imply that Gandalf was a few levels higher than Boromir....

I hate gold for XP as its simply crazy, but on its own that doesn't mean either xp or levels are crazy, simply that monetary reward gained is a very poor indicator of experience, after all I work for an Evil American Bank so THIS I KNOW.....

now I have never expereinced a game in which PCs strive for adventure to get experience to get levels. In 33 years of gaming its always been PCs strive for adventure to  gave the king, or rescue the Dark god from the annoying holy order that have imprisoned him. My own 13th level thief hasn't recieved any XP or gone up a level for 10 years because we just kind of forget. I don't think in this we are so very exceptional (unlike in every other way ) That is why groups that level up when the GM feels like it or when the quest is completed or after 10 sessions or when dave comes back from holiday are actually more common than groups where Drafin The Black has 12,347 Xp and wants the DM to tell him the XP he gets for killing that Wyvern in the last fight and insists on adding his 10% bonus to earned xp due to 17  Strength...... etc etc .....
So Levels are fine they are a good rough way of knowing that 4 5th level PCs should kill 5 orcs easily and will loose two PCs to a fight with 5 Ogres.
that why some degree of class balance across all levels is to me desireable because what is the use of a level system if a 4th level fighter is equal to a 7th level Wizard and a 15th level wizard is equal to a 4 10th level fighters and a small army working together and ...etc etc ....

Quote from: One Horse Town;643217Some good things have come from it (for me at least).

It started out well enough.

Quote from: KenHR;643229It started out well enough.

I think outside of Traveller it's been worthwhile, and there's been a bit of good stuff in some of the replies to him.

Quote from: KenHR;643229It started out well enough.

That...seems to happen a lot.

Quote from: gleichman;643231I think outside of Traveller it's been worthwhile, and there's been a bit of good stuff in some of the replies to him.

Yes, I agree.

Quote from: gleichman;643231I think outside of Traveller it's been worthwhile, and there's been a bit of good stuff in some of the replies to him.

Yeah, there has been some really good stuff here.  Just weary of the same old arguments being trotted out again...they were old when I started playing in '83 or so with my brothers...and, looking back, yeah, those arguments are just being made by a single party.

Quote from: The Traveller;643222Yes, I found it hard to credit that someone could hold two completely opposing opinions in the same sentence almost, a better way to put it would have been 'are you taking the piss'.


Central pillars - levels in D&D
Fringe rules - to quote you "Extreme mechanics (Morrow Project's bleeding an insta-death rules, or Toon's you-can't-die rules) will surely affect game play. No doubt."

So why will "Extreme mechanics" affect player choices while central pillars won't? Levels have a direct bearing on how easily characters die, why should they be any less influential than rules which indicate how quickly characters die?

To repeat myself, which this thread seems to involve a great deal of, are you taking the piss?


Yeah, you've lost the argument.

I'm not taking any piss, I assure you.

And I'm happy to explain what I see now that you've clarified your terms -- thanks for that.

Why I think highly-lethal or highly-non-lethal combat rules can affect play:
In my experience (AD&D, D&D3.5, various flavors of Gamma World, GURPS across a variety of settings, Traveler, Hero, DC Supers, Marvel Universe, Morrow Project, Paranoia, and many, many others) death in combat usually means exiting the game for at least awhile, and often the loss of a character the player has grown attached to.

And (IME) most combat is somewhat, but not extremely threatening -- Toon and Morrow Project are examples at opposite extremes. But for virtually all the games in the middle (D&D at any level, Hero, GURPS, all the supers games I've played, etc.) play is "about the same."

How the PC's approach combat will, IME, vary by genre, more so than the game rules excepting ultra-deadly or totally-non-lethal cases:

Here's a real-life example
In Hero system hand weapons aren't very deadly or crippling (unless you play with a bunch of special rules). When we played Super Heroes, we did a ton of combat because that's what the genre calls for. When we used the same system with the same optional rules for other genres, combat generally fell to what the genre expectations were.

And that includes situations where the players might have found it convenient to use hand-guns as knock-out weapons (knowing they were highly unlikely to kill)  -- I recall a single incident from more than 20 years ago, where a player wanted to shoot someone valuable because he knew he'd just knock him out, and the players decided that even though he was right about the rules, it shouldn't be allowed to happen -- the genre expectations overode the game mechanics.

Levels Not Driving Play
I've played a bunch of D&D (Levels) and a bunch of GURPS Fantasy and Fantasy Hero (no levels), and I don't see much of a difference. I see player decisions driven by character conception and in-game situation. I don't see people spending all their time grinding low-level monsters for nothing but the XP the way MMORPG players sometimes do. I don't see a pre-occupation with leveling up as a way to deal with an immediate situation the way you postulated in your scenario.

My conclusion is that -- outside of the far ends of the bell curve -- game rules are subordinate to things like character, genre, and situation, and I don't have any experience with games where the leveling rules are so out-there that they actually override those things.

There are edge cases: 1st level AD&D is ultra-deadly, any-hit-can-kill-you, and it plays a lot more like Morrow Project... but once you're past 2nd or 3rd level, combat is about as deadly as it is in most every game and that doesn't change: at-level encounters at 10th level are about as likely to kill you as at-level encounters at 5th level. Level rules (outside of the first couple) don't, in my experience, make a huge difference and don't over-ride other non-rule considerations.

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: Drohem;643257Yes, I agree.

Gleichman is just pissed because I've had him on ignore for a while, there's only so much of threads being turned into castle gleichenstein that can be taken.

Quote from: KenHR;643265Yeah, there has been some really good stuff here.  Just weary of the same old arguments being trotted out again...they were old when I started playing in '83 or so with my brothers...and, looking back, yeah, those arguments are just being made by a single party.

This is the same site that had a wizards versus fighters thread not so long ago. I think that argument even predates D&D. Feel free to read another if this one makes you uncomfortable, by all means.

Quote from: -E.;643278I'm not taking any piss, I assure you.

And I'm happy to explain what I see now that you've clarified your terms -- thanks for that.

Why I think highly-lethal or highly-non-lethal combat rules can affect play:
In my experience (AD&D, D&D3.5, various flavors of Gamma World, GURPS across a variety of settings, Traveler, Hero, DC Supers, Marvel Universe, Morrow Project, Paranoia, and many, many others) death in combat usually means exiting the game for at least awhile, and often the loss of a character the player has grown attached to.

And (IME) most combat is somewhat, but not extremely threatening -- Toon and Morrow Project are examples at opposite extremes. But for virtually all the games in the middle (D&D at any level, Hero, GURPS, all the supers games I've played, etc.) play is "about the same."

How the PC's approach combat will, IME, vary by genre, more so than the game rules excepting ultra-deadly or totally-non-lethal cases:

Here's a real-life example
In Hero system hand weapons aren't very deadly or crippling (unless you play with a bunch of special rules). When we played Super Heroes, we did a ton of combat because that's what the genre calls for. When we used the same system with the same optional rules for other genres, combat generally fell to what the genre expectations were.

And that includes situations where the players might have found it convenient to use hand-guns as knock-out weapons (knowing they were highly unlikely to kill)  -- I recall a single incident from more than 20 years ago, where a player wanted to shoot someone valuable because he knew he'd just knock him out, and the players decided that even though he was right about the rules, it shouldn't be allowed to happen -- the genre expectations overode the game mechanics.

Levels Not Driving Play
I've played a bunch of D&D (Levels) and a bunch of GURPS Fantasy and Fantasy Hero (no levels), and I don't see much of a difference. I see player decisions driven by character conception and in-game situation. I don't see people spending all their time grinding low-level monsters for nothing but the XP the way MMORPG players sometimes do. I don't see a pre-occupation with leveling up as a way to deal with an immediate situation the way you postulated in your scenario.

My conclusion is that -- outside of the far ends of the bell curve -- game rules are subordinate to things like character, genre, and situation, and I don't have any experience with games where the leveling rules are so out-there that they actually override those things.

There are edge cases: 1st level AD&D is ultra-deadly, any-hit-can-kill-you, and it plays a lot more like Morrow Project... but once you're past 2nd or 3rd level, combat is about as deadly as it is in most every game and that doesn't change: at-level encounters at 10th level are about as likely to kill you as at-level encounters at 5th level. Level rules (outside of the first couple) don't, in my experience, make a huge difference and don't over-ride other non-rule considerations.

Cheers,
-E.

Why not just remove the levels entirely so, if it makes that little of a difference to gameplay? Jibbajabba apparently has in a roundabout fashion, and hasn't missed them, I do the same except more explicitly.

Quote from: The Traveller;643292Why not just remove the levels entirely so, if it makes that little of a difference to gameplay? Jibbajabba apparently has in a roundabout fashion, and hasn't missed them, I do the same except more explicitly.

When I play a game (D&D) with levels, I use levels -- when I play GURPS or Hero (no levels), I don't have levels.

I don't see much of a difference in play (from the levels), but I'd prefer not to mess around with the game rules -- I mean, what advantage would I get?

I'm generally not a big fan of tinkering with game systems I purchase.

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: -E.;643295When I play a game (D&D) with levels, I use levels -- when I play GURPS or Hero (no levels), I don't have levels.

I don't see much of a difference in play (from the levels), but I'd prefer not to mess around with the game rules -- I mean, what advantage would I get?

I'm generally not a big fan of for tinkering with game systems I purchase.

Cheers,
-E.

Well we differ there. Jibbajabba has been at 13th level for the last ten years, using neither the XP or the level advancement rules, at a level of competence that suits him. Lots of people say that certain levels have a sweet spot, and this is the method I use - straight out the starting gate, characters in my game are well able to hold their own, reaching the same conclusion from a different angle. I'd say this supports my opinion on the value of levels in a game system.

But as I've said from the start, more power to those who enjoy them, and those who play the game as written, I hold it against nobody.

Quote from: The Traveller;643292This is the same site that had a wizards versus fighters thread not so long ago. I think that argument even predates D&D. Feel free to read another if this one makes you uncomfortable, by all means.

It doesn't make me "uncomfortable."  I don't mind discussing old subjects, it's when the same.  Fucking.  Arguments. are trotted out time and time again that it just gets tiresome.  It'd be refreshing to see a fresh angle once in a while, is all I'm saying.  Plenty of others in this thread had one.

But anyway, back to the dead horse.

Quote from: KenHR;643304But anyway, back to the dead horse.

Why, has someone strapped you to it?