Quote from: Gabriel2;786496Which at least is a philosophical debate over whether such things actually matter in the context of RPG task resolution.

Over the course of a standard session, it seems like the probabilities would even out.  You'd have an extra 2% here, a lost 3% there, a gained 1% a while later.  A game where you could save the odd earned percentage points like pennies might be somewhat interesting if more than a bit persnickety.

I think it makes a difference to a thief playing human fly whether she has 1 chance in 20 or 1 in 50 or 1 in 100 of falling to death. I think it makes a difference whether one of our supposedly expert fighters is fumbling every other round, or once every other fight.

I think it makes a difference whether you have anything between 9:1 and 19:1 odds, and likewise other "great leaps for +1 kind."

Whether the difference is a problem depends on the game one is trying to create.

Quote from: Phillip;786499I think it makes a difference to a thief playing human fly whether she has 1 chance in 20 or 1 in 50 or 1 in 100 of falling to death. I think it makes a difference whether one of our supposedly expert fighters is fumbling every other round, or once every other fight.

But would it matter in less extreme cases?  Is it really that meaningful a difference that the chance is 55% instead of 53%?  I know gamers will argue over every little point, but does that 2% really have a great enough meaning to be worth it?

Quote from: Will;786335Um, lots of funky tables and random stuff, unlike 5e's corporate blandness...

... What?

There's a table of random trinkets.

There's a table of wild magic, including entry 41-42, in which the caster turns into a potted plant for a round.

Wtf, guys?

Bear in mind that I'm a Rolemaster fan...

Wanting more tables, fine, I just find the accusations of _corporate_ness kind of... dumb, really.

Quote from: David Johansen;786333"You must buy your fun from us and have fun the way we tell you," to is the worst thing about it.

I'm not sure that's a corporate issue.  I've seen it in small press games and in entire movements in the gaming hobby. "Swine" as someone around here calls them.  "IT" isn't just corporate culture it's all culture when it becomes oppressive and authoritarian.

Still, I actually wound up carrying 5e in my store, which I originally wasn't, and I've run a few sessions of the basic version, though I haven't gotten around to more than skimming the Player's Handbook yet.  

What I'm talking about is the look and feel of the product.  Not from some misguided sense of nostalgia but from a preference for rough edges and a hand made feel.   I'd much rather know what an interesting thinker has to say than know what the masses wanted.  So Traveller 5e will always be more interesting to me than D&D 5e.  And yes we're playing it and yes it's insane.

Even so, armor still makes you harder to hit in D&D so I still hate it.  Some things never change.

Quote from: David Johansen;786522What I'm talking about is the look and feel of the product.  Not from some misguided sense of nostalgia but from a preference for rough edges and a hand made feel.   I'd much rather know what an interesting thinker has to say than know what the masses wanted.

'Overproduced' is how my music snob friends refer to such things... all the soul is bled out in favor of the shiny and clean and easily digested. My general love of DIY drew me to the OSR... keeps me a looking for quirky little products on RPGnow and the blogosphere... and part of why the full-color glossy-paged hardbacks put me off somewhat (but not always).

Exactly!   That's what I'm trying to say.  Has anyone compared the 5e D&D Rulebook to the current 40k edition.  Very similar looks in terms of layout and white space.

Christ, you guys ARE fucking hipsters.

Quote from: Will;786526Christ, you guys ARE fucking hipsters.

Liking stuff with a more 'hand-made' feel automatically equates to 'hipster'? Couldn't possibly be just a matter of taste... like all the folks who prefer the big coffee-table hardbacks full of color? What's your pejorative for them?
Besides, I like the LotFP stuff Raggi puts out... and the newer stuff looks pretty darn slick... but is still obviously non-corporate in its voice and subject matter... being primarily one man's vision, that doesn't aim for mass-appeal.

Quote from: Phillip;786462For most purposes, a 3d6 system might as well be a 1d10 system. Is it always for real interest in the outliers that the former is preferred?

Bell Curve.

Pff. If it hasn't been mimeographed, it's not a real game system. Just some thing people did for money. It's not authentic if you make a living off of it.

You know what aged poorly?  Minutiae, and the focus thereupon. Back in the 80's and 90's, you could have eight frigging pages of Kult getting taken up with pictures of firearms, or Chartmaster, or GURPS and its bragging of 350 skills.  

Even frigging better if you can slam all that data at people in endless lists of rifle calibers, military gear, and 'computer hacking' tools. Who cares if any of it is actually relevant to the game, or if the differences made any sense at all, the important part was the list. Feeding the gun bunnies.

Are games better now? Better organized, maybe. I'm not a big fan of Torchbearer the game, but Torchbearer the book kicks ass. I'd still rather play Kult with it's clunky damage system and ridiculous Guns And Ammo section than FATE.

Quote from: JonWake;786539You know what aged poorly?  Minutiae, and the focus thereupon. Back in the 80's and 90's, you could have eight frigging pages of Kult getting taken up with pictures of firearms, or Chartmaster, or GURPS and its bragging of 350 skills.

How many Charms are there in Exalted? How many classes/sub-classes in Pathfinder? Not much different from the gun-porn Numberwang IMO.

Hipsters?  No, but I've always leaned towards games like High Fantasy, Wizard's Realm, the original Mechanoid Invasion books, Judges Guild products, Thieves Guild.  I think a big part of it is that I never had much money as a kid so I liked cheaper products and it stuck.

What I like about minutia, and yes I love Chartmaster and GURPS, is it gets rid of uncertainties.  I will say that I think GURPS needs a much trimmed entry level core book.  In particular the martial arts techniques and skills need to be removed from the core.

Really, D&D 5e could have been much worse.  Heck 4e could have been much worse.  There are really bad games out there.  FATAL might win on offensiveness but I doubt anything is as badly messed up as KABAL with its square root of stat divided by square root of stat times one hundred to figure base chance to hit.

Another sign of aged rules:
Pages and pages of gun stats in a game of light-hearted cinematic mayhem.

(I'm looking at you, Feng Shui. WTF??)

Quote from: Ravenswing;786382A hundred years from now, RPG historians are going to laugh themselves groggy at the blinding speed at which ephemeral design fads came and went and the importance their adherents placed on them; it's almost as bad as Parisian hem lines.

Beyond that, going through this thread, it strikes me that a whopping lot of people seem to work by the definition of "rules that have aged" = "rules I don't like."

Imagine MY surprise.

jg