Quote from: Justin Alexander;805783I actually consider the bullshit of a A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming to be even more damaging and corrosive to effective gaming than the "RPG systems should only try to do one thing" meme that came out of the Forge.

Why?

Quote from: Justin Alexander;805783In practice, I've found that the one-line stat block is mostly bullshit, too. It requires substantial rules mastery and/or a manual look-up to achieve and I'd much rather have the useful information at my fingertips.

Interesting. When I run 5E I do so from stat blocks that mostly fit on one page:
Name, Initiative, Hit Points, AC, hit bonus, damage.

Sometimes there are special things the critters can do, but that's most of what I need to know in order to run an encounter. Sometimes I don't bother with initiative and just use my die roll. Cuts things down even more.

A great example of 'rulings' being a mess is Amber.

'How much can a guy with Amberite Strength lift?'
"Um. More than a guy with Chaos Strength."
'(stare)'


Mind you, the issue here is that Amber highlights the lack of information rulings-systems give. In a game of D&D, you might have a certain dial of what kind of activities you expect, like 'people are reasonably close to real people' and then you are essentially handwaving in 'like real life.'

Actually, which makes me realize that one way to sort of combine the two is to have a cohesive body that people can be familiar with, which essentially _serves_ as a body of rules without having to be explicitly listed out. Like 'real life' or 'like you see in Star Wars.'

Obviously that isn't perfect, as per every argument about what you can do in RL or Star Wars or whatever gets you.

Quote from: Will;805841A great example of 'rulings' being a mess is Amber.

'How much can a guy with Amberite Strength lift?'
"Um. More than a guy with Chaos Strength."
'(stare)'

Two answers seem obvious.*

1. Why do you care how much a guy can lift? (In other words, your question lacks any context and as far as I know, Amber is a heavily context driven game.)

2. Back half of a Cadillac as long as the ground is firm. But I may be misremembering.


* Never played Amber. Read the books mabye 30 years ago.

'Can I throw this rock? This boulder? This anvil? The Buick?'

Stuff comes up.

'Can I jump over this ravine? Can I jump on top of this house?'

Quote from: Will;805843'Can I throw this rock? This boulder? This anvil? The Buick?'

Stuff comes up.

'Can I jump over this ravine? Can I jump on top of this house?'

Can you tell me, or find it in the PHB, what's the required Strength score for doing all those things in, say, D&D 3.5e? Or 5e, or NWoD, or most RPGs, for that matter.

3.5e:
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/carryingCapacity.htm
(Carrying, lift/drag)

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/weapons.htm
Improvised weapons, match with existing weapons. So if there is an existing thrown weapon, you can, otherwise no.

Giants, however, have special ability to throw boulders:
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/giant.htm

And I believe there are special feats or abilities or whatnot for PCs to do similar.

Jumping is easy, all listed here:
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/jump.htm

Similar with climb and a bunch of other specific real values for stuff.

5e has similar carry/lift/drag rules, I don't know about the other stuff.

Superhero games often have stuff like this, because throwing weird shit is generally more common. (I don't have a ruleset handy, but I'm PRETTY sure M&M has a way to do this in various editions)

So, other than 3.5e (probably the most played and annotated game on the planet in the last 10 years) SRD (not the core rulebook), no rules for jumping.

And there are no explicit rules for throwing stuff, just carrying, lifting, and vaguely handwavey guidelines for improvised weapons.

Quote from: The Butcher;805901So, other than 3.5e (probably the most played and annotated game on the planet in the last 10 years) SRD (not the core rulebook), no rules for jumping.

And there are no explicit rules for throwing stuff, just carrying, lifting, and vaguely handwavey guidelines for improvised weapons.

You do realize the SRD is all pulled from the core three right?

And yeah, Hero also has rules for all that. As does Mutants and Masterminds I'm pretty sure.

Most games I've played in which character strength goes WAY above the norm include some rules to contextualize just how strong that is, even if its just listing how much they can lift.

The jumping rules are right from the core books. I'm pretty sure it didn't change significantly from 3e.

The rules for throwing stuff IS pretty explicit: you can throw an improvised object so long as it can be roughly equated to an existing weapon, and then you have an 'improvised weapon' penalty.

So, in other words, you are wrong, but utterly committed to never giving ground. Got it.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;8057115E is is an OK system. Just ditch published 5E adventures. It sounds like they try to hard to be pre-written stories.  We are having a blast playing 5E in the Village of Hommlet.

Phandelver in the starter set is every bit as good as Hommlet. The two dragon modules are meh.

Tell you what, Butcher, tell me how many game systems I have to quote and how popular they need to be before you'll concede that 'actual numbers' aren't unusual in game systems.

No need to get your panties in a bunch.

I asked you to show me rules for two situations (how far one can jump, and how heavy an object one can throw), in three different games (3.5e, 5e, nWoD).

You gave me rules for one (jumping) in one of these games (3.5e).

The "rule" you gave me for throwing is no rule at all, but a guideline to do what any GM with half a brain will do -- extrapolate from existing stuff -- and does nothing to answer the question you yourself posed (how much Strength does one need to throw something that weighs X).

Superhero games like M&M and Hero usually feature more specific rules for this because it's a genre trope to have superstrong combatants throwing implausibly heavy inanimate objects at each other.

But fantasy, horror or SF games? Only very rarely.

Even those of the new-school, oh-so-logical, unified-task-resolution persuasion.

Which is the entirety of my point: all game systems are incomplete.

5e does have the rules for jumping, that one I know, because I've been thinking of how to adjust it to make Athletics proficiency make you jump further.

5e rules are: you can long jump a distance in feet equal to your strength score, you can high jump a distance in feet equal to 3 + strength mod. Half distance on both if you don't get a 10 ft running start. (there are extra rules for landing in rough terrain or clearing a hurdle on a long jump, and a suggestion to allow a Strength (Athletics) check to sometimes jump higher (but oddly not LONGER)).

All rulesets require some filling in, but I think that things like benchmarks for Strength well above human isn't something that is that uncommon if its a setting where the players will likely be able to achieve it.

(I wouldn't know nWoD because I have never been interested, got burned out on oWoD)

Quote from: Will;805916Tell you what, Butcher, tell me how many game systems I have to quote and how popular they need to be before you'll concede that 'actual numbers' aren't unusual in game systems.

Will is right, the usual case for RPGs is to use actual numbers not the reverse.

Fate is one of the few popular RPGs that leave most of the numbers undefined in favor of Does this happen? and what are the results in terms of the narrative.