Quote from: Certified;786313The combat is only a pretense in the game. The real game is the struggle to deal with endless combat and the weight of your memorizes. There are 3 core mechanics, 4 if you count advancement. Central to this is the escalating bureaucracy placed on you by command.  I would really suggest checking out the game as I can't really do it justice.

I will at some point. Though right now I'm playing 5e and Mong Trav, while running a Mong Trav game too. You are making it sound more interesting, the blurb on DTRPG makes it sound combat heavy:

This high-octane Science-Fiction role-playing game for 2 or more players has your Space Troopers killing bugs all across the Cosmos. You'll advance in rank, improve your weapons, slay civilization after civilization and find out who you are through an innovative "Flashback" mechanic.

Terra's plan is to kill every living thing in the Universe to protect the home world. See where your tour of duty in the 3:16th Expeditionary Force takes you and your friends. Revel in the kill-happy machismo and enjoy a campaign of Carnage Amongst The Stars.

Quote from: Old Geezer;786293The middle, curled up under the dining room table, weeps, hugs itself, and drinks bleach.

Also, many great games have no skills at all.  OD&D doesn't and we did all kinds of stuff.  Because hey!  We had imagination!

Needing a fucking rule and a fucking skill name for every fucking thing you want to do is dated.

USE ROPE
CLIMB
RUN
WALK
CHEW GUM
EAT FOOD
TAKE SHIT

but for stuff like SWIM, CLIMB, JUMP, DODGE, ACROBATICS, etc OD&D does have a sklill system its just an implied skill system that changes based on the table and the DM.

So might be  -
Narative skill system - you describe your actions and if the DM thinks they are reasonable you suceed
Stat check skill system - you describe your actions and try to relate to a stat (I duck out of the way, I hold on as long as i can etc etc ) and the DM has you roll a d20 under a stat
Save based skill system - the DM decides that an action is akin to a save type and so has you make an appropriate save on a d20

All games where the PCs exist in a fictionalised world where they do stuff and the DM adjudicates the results of those actions based on commmon sense and/or the rules have mechanisms for resolving actions. Otherwise the game would stop working.
Those mechanisms might be simple like a narative description which the DM either approves, rebuffs or complicates or simple like a unified d20 check + bonus vs DC, or they can be complex like a series of rolls modified by various simulationist details perhaps with disparate subsystems to resolve each element.
What ever the systems are they exist even if they are implied and vary between groups.

Quote from: dragoner;786309Simplicity can be key in a beer and pretzels style wargame, others, not so much. I used to play Squad Leader also.

Don't get me wrong. That wasn't a complaint. I've enjoyed war games before but I'm honestly surprised its classified an rpg. I always thought it was a small scale war game like Space Hulk.

Quote from: jibbajibba;786317What ever the systems are they exist even if they are implied and vary between groups.

And they're all dated. Horribly dated.

Quote from: Nexus;786320And they're all dated. Horribly dated.

I actually think that over simulationist add many variables , often out of the players control and resolve subsystems is a more dated approach.

So you have a list so things that affect your climb skill and the DM needs to combine all of them adding up a bunch of numbers for surface, weather, training, etc etc then uses that to modify a skill check itself base don teh combination of many numbers that feels more aged than saying well okay make a Dex check with Advantage

Personally I prefer to have a climb skill, maybe because i used to do climbing and so have seen the weak girl climb far better than the strong guy and the fat lad with not a lot of coordiantion follow the right process and climb far more reliably , if not faster, that the skinny guy that rushes. So skill counts for something. But a climb skill with Advantage/disadvange would be my way to go now.

I was joking.

I'm in the "Why does it matter what's "dated?"" group. People like different things, almost everything has been done before in this area and debating which was is objectively "better" seems little strange. Its all just ways to resolve imaginary actions while playing Let's Pretend so largely subjective.

My comment was comparing the old Classic Traveller way for skill checks to Mongoose's way; that's why I like the unified task mechanic. "Old School" or dated actually don't mean that much to me as terms, not that I don't like the old school stuff, because I do.

Oh well, I like charts and tables and percentile rolls and math in play so I suppose I'm hopelessly dated.  Honestly, I find basic physics equations to be simpler than the abstract game mechanics that are devised to avoid them.

Many of my favorite games are small press pamphlets from the late seventies and early eighties.  I don't know, I always feel the more "modern" the art and layout get the more we lose from what made gaming great.  I look at a 5e D&D book and I think IT (from A Wrinkle In Time) got to it.  Really, make your own fun is the great thing about the hobby and "You must buy your fun from us and have fun the way we tell you," to is the worst thing about it.

Guess I'm hopelessly dated.

Quote from: David Johansen;786333Oh well, I like charts and tables and percentile rolls and math in play so I suppose I'm hopelessly dated.  Honestly, I find basic physics equations to be simpler than the abstract game mechanics that are devised to avoid them.

Many of my favorite games are small press pamphlets from the late seventies and early eighties.  I don't know, I always feel the more "modern" the art and layout get the more we lose from what made gaming great.  I look at a 5e D&D book and I think IT (from A Wrinkle In Time) got to it.  Really, make your own fun is the great thing about the hobby and "You must buy your fun from us and have fun the way we tell you," to is the worst thing about it.

Guess I'm hopelessly dated.

Yup.
Odd the way you conflate the two thought.

I use my own homebrew systems constantly but when I write stuff up I decorate with decent artwork. I use unified mechanics and I like a simple rules set I can riff on easily. But is still all come out of my head. Modern artwork and layout and grokkable rules don't detract anything from making your own fun.

Um, 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?

Quote from: Nexus;786326I was joking.

I'm in the "Why does it matter what's "dated?"" group. People like different things, almost everything has been done before in this area and debating which was is objectively "better" seems little strange. Its all just ways to resolve imaginary actions while playing Let's Pretend so largely subjective.

Fair enough

My rules of thumb are simple

i. If a rule uses complex maths that could be simplified with no loss of texture
ii. If a rule always needs to be read through every time its used becuase its just not grokkable
iii. If a rule counteracts the common sense of the setting
iv. If a rule claims to do one thing but actually the way its is implemented at teh table actually does the opposite

these are bad rules.
They might be new bad rules that are trying to be cool, like roll a target number then roll to hit the target number, or they could be bad old rules AD&D grapple rules .

Now some rules seem fine at the time, the various different parallel skill systems in AD&D 1e for example but you realise over time that they either fail to be consistent (if the fighter is making dex checks to disarm the trap but the thief is making F/R trap rolls the fighter will alway be better with no training) or can be simplified (so Dex x 5% with a -25% modifier is much the same as Dex check -5 on a d20). This means you can spend more time playing the game and less time worrying abouth the rules.

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?

That's enough reason to be a Sorcerer right there.

JG

Quote from: talysman;786277Let's look at the suggestion in my post that you cut out when you replied: using ability scores, d20 roll under for trained skills, d% roll under for untrained. Use best relevant ability: Strength for bending bars, dislodging boulders, etc. Intelligence for most scholarly situations, Wisdom for gut feelings, Dexterity for deft manipulations. Gubba, assuming he's an ax-wielding barbarian, rolls a normal attack roll when hitting things with his axe. He rolls d20 under Strength when busting out of ropes, percentile dice under Strength when busting out of chains. Since he's not trained in piloting a starship, he rolls percentile dice under his Intelligence when attempting that -- or can't pilot it at all, assuming the campaign isn't supposed to be cinematic.

I play with plenty of people who can't remember even simple mechanics; which dice to roll when in MSH can be an issue. AFF's roll high / roll low system can be an issue. The more separate subsystems you have, the more confusing it gets to understand for some players.

If you want different chances of success, just go to percentiles. You can get the same effect as looking for any specific set of rolls on any given die, but it's clear, visible, and easy to understand. There's a reason the BRP system hasn't seriously changed in decades, and doesn't look like it will; it works.

Quote from: dragoner;786315I will at some point. Though right now I'm playing 5e and Mong Trav, while running a Mong Trav game too. You are making it sound more interesting, the blurb on DTRPG makes it sound combat heavy:

Terra's plan is to kill every living thing in the Universe to protect the home world. See where your tour of duty in the 3:16th Expeditionary Force takes you and your friends. Revel in the kill-happy machismo and enjoy a campaign of Carnage Amongst The Stars.

You will do a lot of fighting, but the combat system is highly abstracted and board-gamey (You roll to see how many kills you inflict in a round, not if you hurt things). The real meat of the game is in interacting with your colleagues and planetary natives (It is possible, in theory, to be nice to them, up to a point - the planet is still going to die), learning why you signed up for the 3:16th in the first place, and - as an endgame - deciding what you do when you realise that, and why, you hate home.

I thoroughly recommend it, it's a great game, but it's very particular about what it is and doesn't even try to go outside of it. It ain't a versatile game.

Quote from: talysman;786268If you are going to call a system mechanics idea "dated", it would be "unified mechanics", because forcing all resolution rolls into one paradigm just for the sake of a popular fashion introduces crappy design decisions.

I certainly think "All rolls are made on a d20, no matter how inappropriate" feels dated to me, very "d20 era" - the previous decade. People trying to force D&D NPC group morale checks into a d20 roll - or typically a whole bunch of d20 rolls - for instance, when bell curves work so much better for group checks (1e AD&D's d% morale is badly designed too, IMO - 2d6 or 2d10 is far better).

Likewise there is a more recent "players roll all dice" fad which I hope will seem very dated in a few years.

Quote from: S'mon;786355I certainly think "All rolls are made on a d20, no matter how inappropriate" feels dated to me, very "d20 era" - the previous decade. People trying to force D&D NPC group morale checks into a d20 roll - or typically a whole bunch of d20 rolls - for instance, when bell curves work so much better for group checks (1e AD&D's d% morale is badly designed too, IMO - 2d6 or 2d10 is far better).

Likewise there is a more recent "players roll all dice" fad which I hope will seem very dated in a few years.

I think that is a matter of good design.
A d20 can give you values from 5 to 95% so its probably able to cope with most things you need to check for.
If your morale rules say want a "bell curve" what you really mean is the implementation of the current check is weak not that you can't do it on d20.

2d6 say gives you a % of 8% through 92%. so its range is much the same. What changes is the effect of set linear variables but ad/disad kind of fixes that.

Having said that I switched to 2d10 as the core mechanic for my heartbreaker becuase i wanted crits to be much rarer and I wanted to be able to run to +/- 3 disad/ad