Quote from: VisionStorm on February 08, 2023, 07:02:22 AM
As far as niche protection is concerned, I honestly don't give a crap—at least in terms of affirming any particular class roles. And I have never played a game where characters were able to max out every skill and attribute, outside of a few video games with RPG elements. And that's only if the player has enough time on their hands and the game has enough stuff to do, with enough XP awards (or whatever the game uses), to actually allow that to happen in the first place. But no actual TTRPG I have ever read realistically allows that, outside of pure whiteroom speculation scenarios, cuz the costs are almost invariably too prohibitive to get there. And if you've ever run into that, I call shenanigans on the GM or how that game group handles character progression, cuz maxing out every single ability in actual tabletop play is next to impossible in basically every major "skill-based" systems out there as far as I know.

You don't need to max out every ability to see the problem emerge.  You only need to push a handful of abilities too far.  This is why Hero System 4E has an essay on setting Active Power limits.  That was in no way a theoretical thing.  I saw the exact problem it was addressing crop up over and over again in multiple campaigns, multiple genres, as player and GM.  As a GM, I had to tinker with it a lot to get it fixed properly in any new campaign.  Because the fact is, when you have abilities that scale like mad, there is no exact fix that will satisfy everyone.  The GM has to decide just how crazy effective blinding a group of opponents is going to be, for example. 

GURPS largely gets around this by capping off the upper end in 3E, though I can't say if 4E handled it, since I only know by reputation that it provided more options.  That is, GURPS 3E had pretty severe limits built into the base system.  The hard cap as its own problem in that it cuts out some harmless things that would be appropriate to some settings.  (Even with flexible Active Point limits, Hero still has a touch of that, too.  Small scale transforms are almost worthless, and then there is narrow setting appropriate window, followed by over-powered. )

Ascendant addresses this problem by using careful math and some thought in how it compartmentalizes its abilities.  I can't say if it works or not, because it's style is not aimed at what my group would play.

I don't think there is any such a thing as niche protection. There's niche specialization.

Niches can't be "protected" by a system because niches are not fixed or preset things. They're things that emerge from a particular group dynamic. The same character might serve a different niche if transplanted into a different party. In Idiocracy, Joe goes from being the most average man in the world in the present to the most intelligent man in the world in the future.

Once a niche is discovered, if the game then allows you to develop and advance your character according to that niche, then you have niche specialization. When presented with the options of lead, follow, or get out of the way, Joe's new niche in the future caused him to grow from someone who gets out of the way to someone who leads.

This distinction in terms is important. If you think niches are something that can be protected, it's only natural to think then a class-based game is the one that does that. But if you understand that it can only be specialized in, then it's the skill-based game that are more supportive of niches.

As a demonstration of the point, an actual experience myself and a lot of gamers had was, back in the day, if you were playing a fighter, you were the best at fighting. But then along comes barbarian and cavalier, and then it kind of felt fighters were overshadowed. That you had fighter as a class was completely incapable of protecting your niche. Because when you got transported to a world with a different set of character types, your niche changed.


There's this ever-present thing sometimes called "comparative advantage." You could have Joe the Fighter and Fred the Fighter. And Fred's player is a min-maxer and figured out a way to make Fred better than Joe at melee attacks, better than Joe at ranged fighting, and be tougher than Joe to boot. Sounds like a lot of trampling on toes.

Until you get into an actual play.

Joe, it turns out, has a comparative advantage as the party's archer. Why? If Fred is better? And it's because Fred's toughness becomes of less value when he's not up front blocking. The cost of giving up that value is a lot higher for Fred than it is for Joe. Joe doesn't lose that much value because he doesn't have a crazy high toughness. So the opportunity cost for Joe is lower to take up the role of ranged fighter. Fred just can't be in two places at once.

Now once play begins, Fred's player continues to min max as his character advances. "Hey, If I'm not going to be firing my bow anyway, why waste slots specializing in it? I should just put everything into melee." Meanwhile, Joe does the opposite and does specialize in ranged fighting since that's what Joe does. Before long Joe is actually better than Fred at ranged combat in an absolute sense. When they divy up loot, Fred takes the magic sword while Joe takes the magic bow. Fred raises Strength while Joe raises Dex.

Even class-based games are totally capable of supporting niche specialization. It's just skill-based games usually let you specialize a lot quicker. Which is not necessarily good or bad. Maybe it should be a struggle to adapt to a new niche.

QuoteOne issue I've always seen with skill-based system is a tendency for anything cool to be knicked by others in short order so your character loses their uniqueness relative to the others. This is particularly true in games with caps on performance. Once you've established that 10 levels is the max for a skill you're going to hit a point where everyone can fight equally well, cast equally well and skill monkey equally well. It gets especially notable in specific genres where a few key skills/attributes are just so much more important than the others... ex. Mecha piloting in a mecha game.

Well yes, but it is example of game with strong genre theme, and narrow profession focus.
If you instead run game without specific focus - where you can play anyone in the world - Call of Cthulhu, Warhammer, then such exploit is not really possible, unless campaign itself will push players to work in the same profession, and you'd have to play really impossibly long time to acquire characters good in everything everywhere all at once.

Otherwise - your dedicated thief will always outthief your priest, unless for some weird reason your thief cease to practice thievery, and priest priestly duties.

Quote from: VisionStorm on February 08, 2023, 07:02:22 AM
But get rid of classes and turn everything into a skill or special ability (Feat, Perk, Edge, Advantage, whatever) that players need to spend enough points or whatever, and need to qualify for to get, and that bitching and looking at other player's character sheet largely ends.

When you put it that way, it seems like you're just bending over backwards for a few people that will never be happy.

I'd just let those guys kick themselves out of my games.


That being said, I wouldn't mind borrowing from a system like Traveller, where much of a skill set is determined by a background package drawing from homeworld, class trades, education and training, and the necessity of life events. Skills should provide some degree of granularity in a setting or party that might call for it--like that all-knight party that was brought up. The class just might give a proficiency bonus only to synergistic skills.

Quote from: Lunamancer on February 07, 2023, 11:24:38 PM
"Hey, are you calling me stupid?"

"No, but your mother still loves you."

Ha! Quite the insecure gaggle.

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When I say fidelity to the world as a GM, I mean I care more about the world making sense than the rules of the game.
So I've always rejected the idea of RPG rules representing the game "physics."

The Rule of Spool: Keep that yarn yardin'!

Yeah fair, it kind of asks the game a lot to accomplish something in explicit units when all it really deals with is a percentage of happenstance. This issue of micromanaged laws of nature even extends to damage as well: Try as you might, it would be far easier to just say "Your character dies" when falling from a certifiably fatal height, rather than try to painstakingly scale the falling damage to the micron of the final splat. For non-magical fire, I mean, you could have multipliers of heat damage for every ten cubic feet of burning room, or as the DM you could just say, "It's too hot, you die."

Thankfully, no one makes dice that randomly determines cubic-kilometers of dragon's breath, or blood-drained-in-one-night by the gallon. You could never figure out how much aether you need to pull from the cosmos if you had to actually measure it by the cup to cast any spells, since as far as Science can tell, there isn't any aether to measure, so we have no baseline to make decimalized dice rolls for that anyway.

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I am a stickler, though, for acknowledging the differences between risk and uncertainty as economist Frank Knight used the terms. Risk, you don't know the outcome, but you know (or at least can figure out) the odds. Uncertainty, you don't know the odds. You may not even know all the possible outcomes. One of the key consequences of the distinction is you can in theory do math on risk to formulate optimal decisions. Under conditions of uncertainty, that's not possible. You have to go with your gut.

I think most situations in real life resemble uncertainty rather than risk. In RPGs, because we use specific rules and dice and randomizers, it's skewed heavily towards risk over uncertainty. So I do feel some need to try and undo that when I can. And keeping AC's secret certainly moves the needle in the right direction. It's just not something I personally can get passionate about. Technically, you never know when or if the DM has a secret modifier in play, so you don't actually know the odds just because you know your opponent's AC. You only think you do.

I'm guessing this is what you really mean when you say that few players take up the monomyth mantle at all? Much of the emergent story that happens in the game simply will not boil down to some clattering dice. Either your in, or your out, and the world moves on without you... Or, it doesn't, depending on the call to adventure. The hero might find reasons to refuse that call, but in the end there is no other road to take, and as a player you should only be doing so to fish for the right hook, not reject your fortunes entirely...

I just realized that many people would tragically refer to that as "railroading" the story, except that it's such a basic pattern of human storytelling that you might as well be trying to racially identify as an alien, or a djinni (or a stubborn mule, more like!) So what if some uncouth braggart happens to dangle a damsel in distress along your way to the Grail?
You're just going to leave her hanging like that?!

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Yeah. You can have a dude do cartwheel in plate armor. But have him march in that armor for 12 hours. And a few hundred other guys, too. And measure by the slowest of them. Then compare that to the same people marching unarmored. There's more than enough evidence for knowing how equipment and the weight of packs and gear slows down troop movements.
Cartwheels in armor is a good demonstration why weirdo combat penalties, like limiting Dex bonuses for heavier armors in 3E, are kind of silly. It stands to reason that armor made for battle should allow you to remain functional in battle. But there's definitely some movement hindrance in both march-scale movement and short scale sprints.
I will say fast guy is a valuable role in a party. Although terrain is also a major factor, in a sufficiently open area, the faster party is able to set the range at which combat will occur. If they are also able to out-range their slower adversaries, they will be able to take out enemies much more powerful than themselves. For this reason, Beholders are basically useless outside of their dungeon habitat. The last thing you want as a PC is to be this powerful badass that can be punked by 0th level longbowmen or horseman archers. So it helps to have a fast ranged fighter in the party.

This really explains the follower and henchmen rules then! A warrior out adventurin' needs to save up the cold gold in order to afford the kinds of beasts of burden and attendants that (respectively--watch that loyalty score!) carry and maintain his full plate for him. That means the rules for playing a knight have always been part of the game for that class, it's just that you start off from coin-o uno! All you'd need to do to add the paladin class at all would be to write out a set of oaths that your warrior can choose from—there was never a need for some of these hardcoded classes at all!

To be fair, the rules do explicitly mention that all characters are assumed to be sneaking about as quietly as they possibly can, which would be much more exhausting to do in full plate during the equivalent numbers of hours spent marching would imply, even if you can manage not to clink and scrape and clatter with each step somehow. Imagine being hunched over, searching thirty square feet for a few hours, before needing to move on the next room to do the exact same thing... forget healing potions, the game would need stamina potions, and a way for the characters to juggle them all silently, along with the rest of their encumbrances.

So as a warrior, you'd want to save your plate mail for those instances that you can convince an outpost of solders to raid an orc camp with you, rather than the six or so of you as a party trying to take on (*rolls dice, checks tables*) 27 orcs with their own chieftain all at the same time! Now that's what I call *cavalier!* No wonder people were asking for more and more powers, and a reliable way to balance the monster encounters against these new abilities!

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I'm pretty meh on session zero. Mike Tyson said it best, "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth."

Whoa! Is there still a way that you can take some *evasive action*?!

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Eh. The dice determine the attributes. But you still get to choose the class. You only need a 9 to qualify for the four basic classes. And if you're using 3d6, the vast majority of scores fit sufficiently in the middle where there's no obvious best choice of class to lay. When you are blessed with higher scores, it's often the case that you create interesting and highly effective characters by not choosing the obvious class.
Got a super high Dex? Consider playing a fighter. There's the AC bonus. But also a high Dex can mitigate the two-weapon fighting penalties. Having that extra attack will go a long way towards making you a better fighter. Or consider the illusionist. A very high Dex is a class requirement. You don't get to play the class otherwise.
Think high Int is wasted on a fighter? Two things to consider. First, a high Int lets you know additional languages. If you also have a high Chr and plan on using it to raise an army, consider that the additional languages opens up the field as to who you can recruit. Second, a 17 INT is required if you ever plan on switching classes to a magic-user. Why not just play a magic-user in the first place? A few levels of fighter will give you a nice hit point buffer to get past those low MU levels, and you can still swing a mean sword when your spells run out.

Hey, you're right! It's sort of like a lateral optimization, a min-maxing without the enslavement to false stereotypes. "There is no dump stat,"  in the sense that "there is no spoon" (as long as you *play your cards*--er, dice--well.)

In fact, you can go the opposite direction: Conan began his life as a thief on the streets of a slummy city, before moving on to be a pirate for much of his years long before taking the Aquilonian Throne as its King--and knowing this, the Screen Rant makes sense in making the case for Conan really being a Rogue instead of a Berserker with a magical rage ability. In the all-human world of Howards' Hyperborea, "barbarian" is really Conan's background, even his "race" altogether! Of course, he became a man far removed from his home culture, and for this, we don't truly know what powers the Cimmerian warriors ever had.

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Well, also clerics can start their own church. It's an explicit cleric ability. You even get discount prices on labor and materials, presumably due to all the true believers out there. But you still gotta pay for those things somehow.

Of course! Each class had a means to spend oodles of gold beyond divvying up what they owed to their sidekicks and helpers, and these lairs powered the idea of an epic level campaign that was already baked into the game mechanics.

Then again, Gygax at the time still thought of D&D only as a means to introduce more players to wargaming, rather than being an end unto itself. You'd have adjust your ideas of what an "epic level campaign" is to understand this thinking, otherwise you get into the issues presented by third edition, wherein you try to roleplay demi-gods that never die--unlike Achilles.

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Paladins are more restricted in terms of keeping personal wealth--

*AUUUUGH!!*

(Isn't there some cute and helpless princess shopping in a royal market somewhere that you should be babysitting?!)

Quote from: jhkim on February 03, 2023, 01:54:59 PM
So I've been looking over Worlds Without Number, and I'm curious about the implementation of broad classes in practice. I'm familiar with the generic class concept from Call of Cthulhu D20, D20 Modern and True20.

• Call of Cthulhu D20: two classes = Offensive and Defensive
• D20 Modern: six classes = Strong Hero, Fast Hero, Tough Hero, Smart Hero, Dedicated Hero, Charismatic Hero
• True20: three classes = Expert, Adept, Warrior

In all of these systems, I saw the class system as a holdover getting in the way. It seemed more straightforward to just go with a skill-based system like Savage Worlds or OpenD6. In Savage Worlds, you have skills and edges. In True20, you have skills and feats - and the class mechanics are another mechanical layer in addition. To me, it didn't seem to be adding anything.

Are the broad generic classes in Worlds Without Number different in practice? Or do people who like WWN's broad generic classes also like them in these earlier systems?

As mentioned elsewhere, Crawfords latest kickstarter, Cities Without Number is fully skill based. It IS compatable with SWN/WWN.

Kevin is also freely sharing the betas of the kickstarter, and will have a free edition of the game when completed.

From the kickstarter update:

Munificent patrons,

The race has begun. How far will Cities Without Number get? With your generous support, you've pushed it further along, and I'm grateful for your consideration.

As promised, the Google Docs link below will take you to the folder where the CWN betas are being kept. You are welcome to share these betas with other people who are interested in them, whether potential players or interested forums.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/12HH1k-ZTV_TnoQmJqXQre9jGak-9pq1d?usp=sharing

Now, onward. There are many pieces of the rough draft yet to fit in place, and much art to be arranged, and all the other thousand tasks that come from making a book. With the help of your support, you may be confident that their fruits will come to you as promised.

With regards,

Kevin Crawford

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/12HH1k-ZTV_TnoQmJqXQre9jGak-9pq1d?usp=sharing

Personally I don't like class based systems, so the idea of the CWN "operator" appeals to me.

Quote from: ClusterFluster on February 08, 2023, 10:49:07 PM
I'm guessing this is what you really mean when you say that few players take up the monomyth mantle at all? Much of the emergent story that happens in the game simply will not boil down to some clattering dice. Either your in, or your out, and the world moves on without you... Or, it doesn't, depending on the call to adventure. The hero might find reasons to refuse that call, but in the end there is no other road to take, and as a player you should only be doing so to fish for the right hook, not reject your fortunes entirely...

I just realized that many people would tragically refer to that as "railroading" the story, except that it's such a basic pattern of human storytelling that you might as well be trying to racially identify as an alien, or a djinni (or a stubborn mule, more like!) So what if some uncouth braggart happens to dangle a damsel in distress along your way to the Grail?
You're just going to leave her hanging like that?!

I think the reason you see monomyth come up so universally across cultures is because the anatomy of the Campbell's monomyth correlates to the anatomy of human action as broken down by Ludwig von Mises. The stories are universal because they dramatize just about every little thing we do. So if it doesn't fit the bill of railroading, it fits the bill of illusionism. Unfortunately that's just how reality works, though. So even if the use of terms like railroading or illusionism can be justified, it's not a helpful way of distinguishing good from bad.

It's actually a common element in the monomyth that the hero is reluctant to take on the journey. You want to make it a habit as a player to always refuse the first hook and take the second, that's fine. It builds a little drama. It also tests the GM. The GM should have a backup plan. It gets to be a problem if you continue to refuse. By the third hook, it's hard not to notice a pattern of all these odd events all pointing you in the same direction. That's the point at which the GM gets accused of railroading.

But you could also think of it like this. You've got a neckbeard living in his mom's basement. His parents keep nagging him to get a job. He goes on line to chat with babes, and they ghost him when they find out he's unemployed. He feels depressed and goes to see a therapist. The therapist asks him if he has a job. He goes to escape into his favorite video game. He's excited about the new DLC. He goes to buy it, but his payment is rejected. His account balance is negative. If only he had a job, he'd have some income.

Here there's also a pattern of all these odd events pointing all in the same direction. But there's no conspiracy. No invisible GM in the sky trying to railroad him into getting a job. It's only natural that the thing that most needs doing is key to solving a multitude of problems. That's exactly what makes it the thing that most needs doing. The monomyth is just a dramatized version of that.

QuoteWhoa! Is there still a way that you can take some *evasive action*?!

Possibly. If you train and prepare for it. That's the point. I don't need a session zero to discuss expectations, just always expect a punch in the face.

A real easy example. Some GMs fudge so PCs don't die. Others let the dice fall where they may. And you can discuss that in advance, sure. Is your PC going to die? If you have the first GM, the answer is no. If you have the second GM, the answer isn't quite yes. It's maybe. So what if you don't know which DM you have? What's the answer? It's maybe. Same as if you know it's the second type of GM. So the second type doesn't need a session zero.

I think RPGers often get way too hopped up in thinking they can just set all the dials and that it's all just a matter of muh preference. As if getting punched in the face is a preference rather than just a thing that sometimes happens. I prefer to just be a Type II GM and let all that noise just roll off my back.

QuoteHey, you're right! It's sort of like a lateral optimization, a min-maxing without the enslavement to false stereotypes. "There is no dump stat,"  in the sense that "there is no spoon" (as long as you *play your cards*--er, dice--well.)

I don't think it's strictly impossible for dump stats to exist. Imagine two different approaches to game design. One says, "Strength is for Fighters, Dex is for Thieves, Intelligence for Mages, and Charisma to please. Con is for dwarfs, and Wisdom for divine grace, a place for everything, and everything in its place." The other says, "Okay, here's a bunch of classes and stats that fit my world. Oh jeez, now what use would Int be to a fighter? Let me think of something to make that make sense."

In the first approach, I think it would take a miracle of coincidences to be completely free of dump stats. In the second type, where it's well thought-out, I think there are going to be a wider range of viable ways to play.

Quote from: ClusterFluster on February 08, 2023, 05:31:28 PM

Quote from: VisionStorm on February 08, 2023, 07:02:22 AM
But get rid of classes and turn everything into a skill or special ability (Feat, Perk, Edge, Advantage, whatever) that players need to spend enough points or whatever, and need to qualify for to get, and that bitching and looking at other player's character sheet largely ends.

When you put it that way, it seems like you're just bending over backwards for a few people that will never be happy.

I'd just let those guys kick themselves out of my games.

That take kinda misses the point I was trying to make, which is that classes suck at handling this kind of stuff, not that I love them so much I can't stand people whining about multiclass combos. A lot of these issues are valid concerns that get solved by focusing the system on skills and special abilities, rather than classes. I just hate the way that people blame it on "min-maxers", like other people dealing with the hand they're dealt and making the best of it (ie. "min-maxing" class combos when all you have are classes) are the real problem, instead of the system being trash.

That's fair, maybe Reckall somewhat addressed what you're getting at from the D&D 3.5 fans? thread:

Quote from: Reckall on February 10, 2023, 06:19:22 AM
The two best things this edition offered were the incredible amount of "tool-boxy" material and the quality of the writing (I'm strictly talking about WotC's products). [...]

There are a lot of misconceptions surrounding this edition. Some "players" tried to show that it was "broken" by creating Thanos-level characters. They always forgot how:

A) 20th level Characters don't spring in existence fully formed like Athena from the head of Zeus. They evolve organically. [...] All of sudden, the characters' "builds" makes them unprepared for the new situation. This is how a real campaign works.

B) A corollary of the above: no one ever said that [Gary Oldman]EEEEEEEEVERYTHIIIINGG!!![/Gary Oldman] in the books is available. [...] When the players scream foul, the DM can simply point out how every official world has specific rules. Dragonlance starts with no clerics. The Forgotten Realms have Regional Feats. The list goes on.

https://www.therpgsite.com/pen-paper-roleplaying-games-rpgs-discussion/dd-3-5-fans/45/

Min-maxers seem not to care about the consistency of the game's story elements, regardless of what character options are available. Gonzo campaign material probably exists because of them, but in that sense it allows you to keep the peace and still play a game with a plot without a coherent genre/theme to accompany it. It fits as an eclectic, pulp/weird fiction aesthetic dialed to a hallucinatory 11.

A system that comes "out of the box" with that level of customization and granularity just smooths that process over, especially but not limited to those circumstances of setting. Sci-fi/cyberpunk games probably need far more customization than what I'm guessing has to be the Sword & Sorcery style of gameplay that the OD&D system began with (Gygax was clearly a fan of Lovecraft and Howard, so it fits). It's a matter of distinct design philosophies of resourceful and pragmatic vs mythic and heroic characters. Not saying that you couldn't have a medieval game that accounts for these things, and Star Wars is essentially S&S in hyperspace.

What i've never liked about classes is that a ranger gets better at wilderness things after going into a dungeon and accumulating treasure and deathcount. Same with a thief and other classes. In a skill system typically you advance in the things you actually do which makes more sense. This is particularly bad in 5E when you get a bunch of little class related goodies every level.  I guess this is a small sacrifice to realism but still its odd.

That might be more of a problem with the ranger class existing at all.

Or, the inverse: Only ever adventuring in dungeons.

The GM just has to restrict classes for the sake of the setting.

Or, "ranger" should just be a background.

QuoteWhat i've never liked about classes is that a ranger gets better at wilderness things after going into a dungeon and accumulating treasure and deathcount. Same with a thief and other classes. In a skill system typically you advance in the things you actually do which makes more sense. This is particularly bad in 5E when you get a bunch of little class related goodies every level.  I guess this is a small sacrifice to realism but still its odd.

Well in old editions you advanced in class by paying professional trainers during downtime.
So you could advance more without relation to your dungeon crawl.

I think generally D&D is too much gamist game to really ache about such anti-simulation elements. It was like... never part of the promise.

Quote from: Wrath of God on February 11, 2023, 07:30:18 PM
Well in old editions you advanced in class by paying professional trainers during downtime.
So you could advance more without relation to your dungeon crawl.

And also the PHB ranger did NOT improve in "wilderness" skills by dungeon crawling.

And also also, all of the quantified "wilderness"--ambush and tracking abilities--were also usable in a dungeon.

I mean basically none of the gripes sensible people agree on are actually true.

Quote from: Lunamancer on February 09, 2023, 01:18:52 PM
It's actually a common element in the monomyth that the hero is reluctant to take on the journey. You want to make it a habit as a player to always refuse the first hook and take the second, that's fine. It builds a little drama. It also tests the GM. The GM should have a backup plan. It gets to be a problem if you continue to refuse. By the third hook, it's hard not to notice a pattern of all these odd events all pointing you in the same direction. That's the point at which the GM gets accused of railroading.

Why wouldn't anyone want to be hooked by gold and glory?! Oh wait, I forgot that it doesn't gel with their precious *character motivations,* if not their sense of aGeNcY!

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But you could also think of it like this. You've got a neckbeard living in his mom's basement. His parents keep nagging him to get a job. He goes on line to chat with babes, and they ghost him when they find out he's unemployed. He feels depressed and goes to see a therapist. The therapist asks him if he has a job. He goes to escape into his favorite video game. He's excited about the new DLC. He goes to buy it, but his payment is rejected. His account balance is negative. If only he had a job, he'd have some income.

Here there's also a pattern of all these odd events pointing all in the same direction. But there's no conspiracy. No invisible GM in the sky trying to railroad him into getting a job. It's only natural that the thing that most needs doing is key to solving a multitude of problems. That's exactly what makes it the thing that most needs doing. The monomyth is just a dramatized version of that.

Sounds like a real winner... Whatever he stockpiles, it won't be glittering gold!

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I don't think it's strictly impossible for dump stats to exist. Imagine two different approaches to game design. One says, "Strength is for Fighters, Dex is for Thieves, Intelligence for Mages, and Charisma to please. Con is for dwarfs, and Wisdom for divine grace, a place for everything, and everything in its place." The other says, "Okay, here's a bunch of classes and stats that fit my world. Oh jeez, now what use would Int be to a fighter? Let me think of something to make that make sense."

In the first approach, I think it would take a miracle of coincidences to be completely free of dump stats. In the second type, where it's well thought-out, I think there are going to be a wider range of viable ways to play.

*Ahem* I do think you mean: "...Con is for dwarves, Wisdom for grace, a place for them all, and all in their place."

What do you think about the idea of ability score improvements? I don't think they were ever part of the core rules for the old-school games.

Quote from: ClusterFluster on February 13, 2023, 04:51:51 PM
Why wouldn't anyone want to be hooked by gold and glory?! Oh wait, I forgot that it doesn't jive with their precious *character motivations,* if not their sense of aGeNcY!

A lot of players are also hesitant to have close relationships with NPCs, be it in the background or during play, because there's always some suspicion that the GM will exploit it as a plot hook. And I'm sure some GMs do abuse that. But the bottom line is the same as it is with players who thumb their noses at gold as being too materialistic for their characters. An excuse for inaction. Even when it's not gold, even when it's something deeply personal to the character, even when it's consistent with the character's motivations. There's just a resistance to being pushed into action.

And "muh agency" is as much a red herring as "materialism bad." Muh agency is always approached with the baseless assumption that we're talking about some power struggle between the underdog player and the tyrannical GM. But quite frankly that's just stupid. The GM has an infinite number of characters. They don't lose if one of their characters is unfairly undermined. And also the GM is always there. Your loner character goes off to be alone, the GM is still participating in that scene, telling you what happens next. It's the other players that are iced out. And it's the other players that suffer when one player does something that is monumentally unfun for the rest of the group. If anything, players compete with one another for their agency. Not the GM. It's not a negative thing for a GM that pecker slap down a player who is stepping on the other players toes.


By the way, the monomyth DOES account for the "hero" who does not take on the adventure. Joseph Campbell's prime example of that being King Minos who takes on the "anti-adventure" by refusing every call to action. And the consequence is losing everything one by one. I just don't think that sounds like a whole lot of fun. So I'm going to go ahead and veto that and say, sorry, not a valid way to play. Not at this table. I could be wrong. Maybe with the right players and the right story it COULD be fun. Everyone is free to run their own game and prove it can work. But I don't think there's even a single example floating around that even claims to make wallowing in misery a howling good time. I haven't seen it, anyway.

QuoteWhat do you think about the idea of ability score improvements? I don't think they were ever part of the core rules for the old-school games.

I'm not especially fond of it being tied to level advancement. I prefer it be tied to circumstance so that even your character statistics are unique to your PC's unique experiences playing through adventures, and that PC, once lost, can never be replicated by any legal "character build" except by chances so extreme that you won't live long enough to see it.

Obviously plenty of RPGs allow you raise attributes in lieu of spending those points on something else. No reason to call fowl there.