Quote from: Omega;955221I agree. But... I do believe even OD&D had stat checks. And aside from Strength and Wisdom the stats do actually grand some small bonus.

Think of it more like that roll to see if you get psionics or qualifying for a Paladin or one of the other high stat requirement classes in AD&D. Its a pretty low chance.

Its there to reward a lucky roll. You got a 17 DEX? Here, have a +1 to hit with bows.

Pretty much the same in BX but you got sometimes a slightly better bonus. up to +3. But those are still fairly rare.

So what you are saying is that Gronan was wrong?



Shocking.

Quote from: RPGPundit;954071So, anyone here want to actually defend point-buy character creation over random rolls?

There's nothing wrong with it, particularly if you have a group of players who know what they are doing and know what they want to play. I actually prefer it because it minimizes minmaxing and broken characters. However with that in mind, the last 5e campaign I started one player started rolling ability scores and the next thing you know everyone was pulling out dice, so I decided that letting them have their way meant we could be playing sooner.

I think for OSRs, rolling is part of the experience though hardly necessary. I think as far as point buy goes, the system I liked most was the one used in True20. They dropped ability scores completely and used the bonus/penalty as the score. You had six points to distribute among 5 abilities, with +5 and -2 being soft caps pending GM approval. If you wanted to adjust the feel of your game you could adjust the number of points accordingly. I built Lassiviren the Dark on 5 points, though I pretty much translated him straight from the Rogue's Gallery. Personally I'd love to use that method in an OSR but M+M and AGE are already using it. That and it looks weird if you're used to ability scores.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;955269So what you are saying is that Gronan was wrong?



Shocking.

Well the minute the game got on the shelves all the original players were proven wrong as people promptly started using OD&D for every style of play known.

Shocking. :eek:

Quote from: Thegn Ansgar;955239If you find yourself continually at odds with these so called temperamental players over these 44 years... the problem isn't them, it's you. Especially if it's more than 1 or 2 of them, then you are the common denominator of the problem at hand.

Or maybe the problem is you.

Quote from: Omega;955278Well the minute the game got on the shelves all the original players were proven wrong as people promptly started using OD&D for every style of play known.

Shocking. :eek:

Cindy Lou Brady comes into a thread to call me a big meanie poo-poo head and tell us all where D&D touched him in a bad way?

Shocking.

Yeah and I'd still rather debate with Chris than most of the fruitcakes out there that have latched onto RPGs as their reason to act clinically insane.

Quote from: Skarg;9552151. What if you also rolled for starting level? How much of a random level spread would seem good? Or does that seem like a non-starter?

Haven't actually done that, but I did consider it in the last ACKS campaign I ran.  I still wanted it to skew towards lower levels, so I was thinking roll 2d4 (or maybe 2d6) and take the lower die as your starting level.  But, like I said, we never got around to testing it out.  I do kind of like the idea, though, at least in the specific case of ACKS (because it allows you to hire henchmen of up to 4th level in a large enough city, so why can't one of those random 4th levels be a PC instead?).

Quote from: Skarg;9552152. What if your starting level were determined by some calculation based on the opposite of your attribute rolls? So if you roll bad stats, you start at a higher level than the PCs who roll great stats?

I'm not fond of this idea because it's such a blatant balancing mechanism.  Aside from avoiding decision paralysis, the other major reason I like random gen is because I prefer to play in the manner of "given a world such as this, what would happen if it were real?" and, in the real world, being weak, ugly, and stupid (bad stat rolls) doesn't make you more experienced (higher starting level).

Quote from: Thegn Ansgar;955239If you find yourself continually at odds with these so called temperamental players over these 44 years... the problem isn't them, it's you. Especially if it's more than 1 or 2 of them, then you are the common denominator of the problem at hand.

Depends on the size of the group we're talking about.  If I have problems with more than one or two people out of five, then, yeah, there's a good chance I'm the problem.  If I have problems with more than one or two people out of five hundred, then the issue is much more likely to be them.

I'm going to go and innocently stick my head into what appears to be some sort of long-running holy war that I was never aware of the existence of, and risk getting it bitten off for saying:

I quite like point buy. It allows (and, conversely, forces) the players to decide what their priorities are. Getting to make more or less the character they want to play tends to get them more invested in the game than if they just got handed a random pile of numbers and told to make sense of it.

Exceptions abound, of course. So do extreme cases. I have one player who absolutely adores randomised chargen, to the point where she'll ask me to help her roll up new characters just to see what she ends up with. I have another player who seems to genuinely not understand the concept of not being in control. (the former loves Warhammer Fantasy; the latter is the reason why I can't play Warhammer Fantasy with this group. ) I'm somewhere in between, I can get into the spirit of just rolling with what I'm thrown sometimes, but by and large, for the most parts, at the end of the day:

I quite like point buy. What can I say? I was never a gambling man.

Quote from: Thegn Ansgar;955239If you find yourself continually at odds with these so called temperamental players over these 44 years... the problem isn't them, it's you. Especially if it's more than 1 or 2 of them, then you are the common denominator of the problem at hand.

I tell potential new players the following (and more, of course) about my campaigns:

1) There are no rules, just guidelines for the GM -- as the needs of the setting, the current situation, and the campaign's style of play are far more important that following the "rules as written."
2) These guidelines are based on OD&D and B/X with additions and subtractions. These means random rolls for attributes. Spell-casters start with a random selection of spells and add spells by finding them in the world. There are lots of "limitations" that are not found in WOTC editions of D&D. Etc.
3) I run sandbox campaigns. I have no story to tell so there is no story except what your characters do in the world. The world is what it is. If orcs are in a location, they are what you encounter there whether you are 1st level or 10th level.  Same with dragons, etc. Random events and wandering monsters happen.
4) Rules lawyers and min-maxers are not tolerated at my table.
5) Combat is fast and theater of the mind.
6) Players are expected to have characters what fit the campaign world, are basically friendly to other party members and are interested in adventuring.
7) Players are expected to focus on the game while it is running -- not their phone, tablet, laptop, etc.

I expect at least 90% of potential players to walk after hearing these facts about my campaign. I'm sure many of that 90% feel that I am the problem as I am unwilling to run my campaigns to suit there needs. However, in reality, neither I nor they are the problem -- in fact there is no problem; just a campaign that is not designed to try to make everyone happy. The lack of trying to meet the needs of all potential players admittedly really annoys some people but as those people have never been willing to pay me a living wage with full benefits to run my campaigns for them their way, I really don't care if they are annoyed.

Quote from: Omega;955222Let me guess... You are really young to the internet?

Ha, I wish! Maybe then I'd be young in general and get my hair back. No, I was on Usenet D&D discussions in, what would it be? '88 or '89. I'm just skeptical that when someone says something that starts with, "Why can't people admit that..." that it is informed by actual people that they've recently seen saying something truly unacceptable. Certainly I do not see who on this forum said anything to elicit that response.

Quote from: RandallS;955325However, in reality, neither I nor they are the problem -- in fact there is no problem; just a campaign that is not designed to try to make everyone happy.

This boils down the entire thread into one succinct line. The whole thing discussion has been a desperate search for a problem, where none exists.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;955290Or maybe the problem is you.

Did you really just use a "No, you" argument? I'd expect that from my three year old (well, maybe not my three year old, since he's got better reasoning skills than that), not from a grown ass man who has 44 years of role playing experience.

Quote from: nDervish;955314Depends on the size of the group we're talking about. If I have problems with more than one or two people out of five, then, yeah, there's a good chance I'm the problem. If I have problems with more than one or two people out of five hundred, then the issue is much more likely to be them.

If out of five hundred people, you have problems with say 2% of them, then yeah the issue is likely to be them. But Gronan is acting like he has such problems the majority of the time. If out of 500 people you only have a problem with 10 of them, that's such a small amount of people it's not even worth bringing up. There's no point to even mention it as part of an argument. Only an unreasonable person would bother stating something so statistically trivial.

Quote from: RandallS;955325I tell potential new players the following (and more, of course) about my campaigns:

1) There are no rules, just guidelines for the GM -- as the needs of the setting, the current situation, and the campaign's style of play are far more important that following the "rules as written."
2) These guidelines are based on OD&D and B/X with additions and subtractions. These means random rolls for attributes. Spell-casters start with a random selection of spells and add spells by finding them in the world. There are lots of "limitations" that are not found in WOTC editions of D&D. Etc.
3) I run sandbox campaigns. I have no story to tell so there is no story except what your characters do in the world. The world is what it is. If orcs are in a location, they are what you encounter there whether you are 1st level or 10th level.  Same with dragons, etc. Random events and wandering monsters happen.
4) Rules lawyers and min-maxers are not tolerated at my table.
5) Combat is fast and theater of the mind.
6) Players are expected to have characters what fit the campaign world, are basically friendly to other party members and are interested in adventuring.
7) Players are expected to focus on the game while it is running -- not their phone, tablet, laptop, etc.

I expect at least 90% of potential players to walk after hearing these facts about my campaign. I'm sure many of that 90% feel that I am the problem as I am unwilling to run my campaigns to suit there needs. However, in reality, neither I nor they are the problem -- in fact there is no problem; just a campaign that is not designed to try to make everyone happy. The lack of trying to meet the needs of all potential players admittedly really annoys some people but as those people have never been willing to pay me a living wage with full benefits to run my campaigns for them their way, I really don't care if they are annoyed.

There's hardly any relevance of all this to my quote which you were replying to, but none of what you say here is unreasonable, nor is it even bad form to have a list of what new players can expect. If they leave beforehand, that's one thing. If they're bummed because their character rolls are effectively useless and they feel that there's no point in even playing when their character is just going to drag the party down and make things worse... and then you project your own ideas and say that they want some kind of power fantasy, when they're likely just wanting a character that's not completely incompetent and can actively help the party, that's something entirely different.

Quote from: RandallS;955325I tell potential new players the following (and more, of course) about my campaigns:

1) There are no rules, just guidelines for the GM -- as the needs of the setting, the current situation, and the campaign's style of play are far more important that following the "rules as written."
2) These guidelines are based on OD&D and B/X with additions and subtractions. These means random rolls for attributes. Spell-casters start with a random selection of spells and add spells by finding them in the world. There are lots of "limitations" that are not found in WOTC editions of D&D. Etc.
3) I run sandbox campaigns. I have no story to tell so there is no story except what your characters do in the world. The world is what it is. If orcs are in a location, they are what you encounter there whether you are 1st level or 10th level.  Same with dragons, etc. Random events and wandering monsters happen.
4) Rules lawyers and min-maxers are not tolerated at my table.
5) Combat is fast and theater of the mind.
6) Players are expected to have characters what fit the campaign world, are basically friendly to other party members and are interested in adventuring.
7) Players are expected to focus on the game while it is running -- not their phone, tablet, laptop, etc.

I expect at least 90% of potential players to walk after hearing these facts about my campaign. I'm sure many of that 90% feel that I am the problem as I am unwilling to run my campaigns to suit there needs. However, in reality, neither I nor they are the problem -- in fact there is no problem; just a campaign that is not designed to try to make everyone happy. The lack of trying to meet the needs of all potential players admittedly really annoys some people but as those people have never been willing to pay me a living wage with full benefits to run my campaigns for them their way, I really don't care if they are annoyed.

I get a kick out of this every time you post it.

Thanks for everyone's responses to my question about adding different starting levels.

One other comment on a slightly different idea:
Although I often don't use the points in GURPS in many ways (not for experience or strict balance), it seems to me that the weird apples & oranges variety of things with points does allow more room for PCs to be quite different in types and levels of abilities while still providing for some balance and fairness in many different ways. In this way, players can be allowed to play with the type of character they want even if those are different power levels, by balancing in other ways, such as starting in relatively (un)fortunate circumstances, such as patrons, enemies, reputation, legal problems, etc, which could even be just the starting conditions of the adventure and the reason to bring the PCs together for the starting adventure. Of course, you can use that to whatever degree you care or don't care about fairness and balance in starting conditions.

Pundit... I blame you for all this.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;955326The whole thing discussion has been a desperate search for a problem, where none exists.

Well, yeah.  And every time somebody says "Different people like different stuff," somebody else chimes in with "Point buy/random roll molested my baby sister!" and the monkeys load up on shit and start flinging again.