Quote from: tenbones on February 14, 2023, 11:08:46 AM
It *really* underscored, like Shark, my realization that the constraints of 1e and 2e were *genius* in their design. Whether it was intentional or not - it was genius. But the problems of 3.x are manifold.

...
All these systems only point at the obvious: D&D fantasy is its own genre that doesn't require any of the mechanics used to express it to enjoy that genre. You could run D&D on any number of systems that would allow you to play faster, cleaner, with better fidelity than 3.x. Just ask any OSR fan. (And I'm saying this as a non-OSR player/GM).

Isn't this largely because 1E was built as rules to solve specific issues that happened at the table?  Then 2E mostly consolidated those same rules.  3E was trying to rebuild everything from the foundations but without the understanding of why things were built the way they were.  Chesterton's Fence all over again.

I moved away from generic systems because I found what people said about Hero System to be true of all generic systems:  You can play any genre you want in Hero, as long as you don't mind it playing out like all the other Hero games.    My Fantasy Hero "Forgotten Realms" game generally ran better than my D&D 3E games, but that was because we wanted it to be more like Fantasy Hero than D&D in some respects.  The more I made that FR game like D&D, the less we liked it.  Whereas, we initially enjoyed the 3E game because it was more like D&D. 

I find it hilarious, because a stated aim of the 3E designers was to make the "Hero System version of D&D"--meaning customization. But what made Fantasy Hero fun was not the customization. That was actually a bit of a chore.  Rather, it was how smooth the system played once you were done with the work of customization.  Had they really thought hard about their goal, then 3E would have been even more complex to build characters, but not had all of those glitches in play.  Whether that hypothetical "played like D&D" might have been a sticking point.

Quote
This goes completely against my own experience, and attentiveness/observation is something that I've consciously cultivated since I was a kid*. And there's been zero difference in my experience between actively looking for something or becoming suddenly aware of it through instinct. It's all about pattern recognition, and that applies more or less equally whether you notice a noise that sounds like someone is entering your house, or you're actively using your hearing to guide you to the source of the noise or track where they're going. The only difference is that in one instance you weren't expecting it and aren't trying to do something specific about it, and in the other you're consciously focusing that same attentiveness that allowed you to suddenly notice something to track its source.

That's why Perception/Awareness in my opinion should be a Attribute not skill.
From my experience many people will be skilled in only one of sub-sets - be great in thought research of crime scene and finding clues but terrible in avoiding stealthy assassin following their tracks.

Just like with Strenght you can train it as Attribute - in wide range, but you can also train only some specific use of Strength while sucking at others.

QuoteUnless by "searching for clues" you mean trying to figure something about what you found that isn't apparent through sensory perception alone (such as where it came from, if it fell from somewhere, or something to that effect), your ability to notice things pretty much has you covered whether you're doing it actively or passively. And even when you're trying to deduce stuff, if that deduction involves finding additional stuff through sensory perception so you can put two and two together to figure something out, your ability to notice things may still be relevant in finding those secondary clues (maybe that thing you found fell from somewhere that left a trail. But how do you find the trail, assuming there is one...? And if you need a second Perception check to find that trail, do you really need a third Deduction check to figure out that's where the thing came from when the player probably can figure that out the moment you tell them they found a trail? And if the player figures it out but the character fails the Deduction check, do you prevent them from acting on that assumption, cuz skill checks trump player agency?).

Sure Investigation skill IMHO implies well knowing what you are looking for, wider picture, not mere sensory. Like for instance checking how some mechanism work would be Investigation in my book, noticing that it is there, passively without effort would be Perception check (assuming it's not visible at first glance). Or any Research through pile of information (that's totally out of Perception range basically, though maybe High Perc. should give bust to how fast your research goes).

QuoteMeh, even in sandbox play I don't see the point on requiring a check if they player specifies that they're searching in the exact spot where the thing they're searching for is actually at. Stuff like that is the point where I actually agree with old school players that complain about overuse of skills to handle everything. Skill checks are for when there's doubt. But if you, as a player actually specify the exact spot where something happens to be at, there's no doubt that if dig around you'll stumble onto it eventually, if only by accident, unless there's pretty strong magic or something masking its presence.

That I agree. But there is also some matter of brevity.
With many rooms - if players do not take look at every specific element - abstracted roll (including aspects like - how much time they spend in room for instance) allow game to move faster.
And sure it's possible that if players declare they make throught search for 10 minutes it's basically auto-win.

In my current hack/clone (of the 5th edition, not 3rd), I have five abilities: strength, dexterity, perception, intellect, and charisma. Perception has search, stealth, and survival as related skills. It makes more sense to me having perception as an ability than having characters and monsters with passive Perception scores.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on February 14, 2023, 05:08:48 PM

Quote from: tenbones on February 14, 2023, 11:08:46 AM
It *really* underscored, like Shark, my realization that the constraints of 1e and 2e were *genius* in their design. Whether it was intentional or not - it was genius. But the problems of 3.x are manifold.

...
All these systems only point at the obvious: D&D fantasy is its own genre that doesn't require any of the mechanics used to express it to enjoy that genre. You could run D&D on any number of systems that would allow you to play faster, cleaner, with better fidelity than 3.x. Just ask any OSR fan. (And I'm saying this as a non-OSR player/GM).

Isn't this largely because 1E was built as rules to solve specific issues that happened at the table?  Then 2E mostly consolidated those same rules.  3E was trying to rebuild everything from the foundations but without the understanding of why things were built the way they were.  Chesterton's Fence all over again.

I moved away from generic systems because I found what people said about Hero System to be true of all generic systems:  You can play any genre you want in Hero, as long as you don't mind it playing out like all the other Hero games.    My Fantasy Hero "Forgotten Realms" game generally ran better than my D&D 3E games, but that was because we wanted it to be more like Fantasy Hero than D&D in some respects.  The more I made that FR game like D&D, the less we liked it.  Whereas, we initially enjoyed the 3E game because it was more like D&D. 

I find it hilarious, because a stated aim of the 3E designers was to make the "Hero System version of D&D"--meaning customization. But what made Fantasy Hero fun was not the customization. That was actually a bit of a chore.  Rather, it was how smooth the system played once you were done with the work of customization.  Had they really thought hard about their goal, then 3E would have been even more complex to build characters, but not had all of those glitches in play.  Whether that hypothetical "played like D&D" might have been a sticking point.

I've been thinking about this post...

I'm not entirely in agreement, but I do understand what you're saying - I do agree that system expression IS a big deal.

Let me be a little more specific. When I'm talking about D&D Fantasy as its own genre, I'm talking about Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, Gnomes etc. banding together to go dungeoncrawling, campaigning across a pseudo-European/world fantasy pastiche setting. Where some of the characters fall into "iconic" roles like "fighters" "rogues" etc.

I think less about the system being used to express those conceits. Just like I don't watch Vox Machina or any other anime - and try to ascertain what ability was used in that movie/anime etc. and pin it to the D&D mechanics that inspired it. They don't match. That's the problem, we make it up in our heads. But in actual play, it's rare that it matches up like that.

The key issue here is the mechanics itself get in the way of those expectations. Unless one thinks of their games purely by their mechanics, then this is the dividing line. I don't think there is anything wrong with wanting to express a game genre via a set of mechanics you enjoy. My problem is when people only believe that the mechanics themselves are the game.

I'm approaching it from the angle of trying to get the game to be as 'free flowing' as possible while being true to the genre. The system itself I'm using definitely adds flavor to it - but I'm wanting it to be secondary to the game itself. It's the tool used to express the genre in play. I want as small as a footprint as possible while still being mechanically fun to use.

3.5 does not fit my requirements compared to the other systems I run. I'm not sold on one-system to rule them all, either. While I'm pretty vocal about Savage Worlds, I think it hits solidly in the middle of the bell-curve. It can handle very high-powered stuff, but I'll go with MSH for the top-end power-level for my gaming. And as you imply, some systems just do specific things very well. 3.x is in competition with a lot of other options that do what 3.x purports to do, but they do them much better.

Savage Worlds Pathfinder is *better* than Pathfinder native, as an example. It scales better, it's much leaner, the flexibility for modification is *vastly* easier. And it does D&D Fantasy without any loss of coherency.

I can't imagine why I'd use Pathfinder 1e/2e to play the same game or even genre.

Tenbones,

I think we are in the same ballpark, just slightly different goals.  Another way to express what I was getting at is:

- Fantasy Hero using Forgotten Realms early source material did "D&D as wannabee superheroes" pretty darn well.
- AD&D using the same source material did "D&D as scarred dungeon crawlers" pretty darn well.
- 3E run by a GM who knew how AD&D worked, in order to get away from wannabee superheroes to scarred dungeon crawlers wasn't too shabby, at least at first.  Especially when the group had been doing wannabee superheroes for some time.

But in the long run, 3E wasn't FH chocolate and AD&D peanut butter.  It was more like pineapple and bacon on pizza with ranch sauce.  Because superheroes doing dungeon crawls is a fun thing, but it wasn't exactly the fun thing we had in mind.  And then the acid reflux set in, because it turns out that while we like pineapple and bacon and ranch sauce, it's one of those tastes you've got to be in the right mood to enjoy.  Then it's not hard to find someone who focused on just doing pineapple pizza the best they could, without getting too cute about it, and you kind of lose interest in the more, um, "elaborate" version.

yep. We're on the same page.

The funny thing is that since we started before 3e ever landed, we had that similar experience of what AD&D was... which naturally applied to our means of engaging with 3e.

People that started in 3e (generally) only had 3e as their perspective, which we were blind to by our biases, and ran with it. 4e... 5e... and even now, the majority of players that came into the hobby at the 3.x stage and later (which is vast majority of the D&D playerbase now) is scratching their asses as we did when we realized that D&D as it's presented isn't how we originally engaged with it.

I actually don't think 3.x players even realize how busted up it gets at high-levels, or if they do, they assume it's just "the way it is", which goes into my gripe about "the system IS NOT the game."

It could very well be that's what propelled me out of D&D as a brand. I'm not going to fault people for being in that state of engagement (system as game) - I certainly dwelled there for far too long. I just realized the peak experiences I had in any campaign I ran, transcended the system. The realization for me was that the system was primary problem that was getting in the way of what I was wanting to do in my D&D games. My favorite supplements for 3.x weren't even made by WotC.

Case in point, the catalyst that got me down this road was a book that is generally reviled among 3.x purists - Swashbuckling Adventures (7th Sea 3e.) They condensed entire "archetypes" of play into 5-level prestige classes that were MASSIVELY frontloaded with Feats. And all the 3.x purists screeched about it being overpowered and not following the rules of 3.x blah blah. But they never asked themselves, if it made the game better by design. I can confirm - it did. And to a larger point - it underscored it further when I discovered Fantasycraft, where the power-curve was expanded in all directions, across a 14-level spread, instead of 20... with beefier options that felt much better for the player.

This got me looking at 1e and 2e, reading up on design choices, and what Gygax originally intended... and it was a revelation. It made me realize that why stop at 14 levels? Why not go for 10? And just pack it all into a mechanically dense package. Others have done the 6-lvl concept, but they're not trying to do the full range of what BECMI does in a 3.x form.

Maybe that's the synthesis I'm looking for? To play the full range of BECMI on a more robust set of rules. Ironically I've done this in 3.x... but it was too brutal on me. The types of campaign conceits I use pushed the 3.x chassis beyond its limits, the customization I had to do far exceeded any homebrew stuff I did in 1e/2e. And while I tout the capacity of Savage Worlds, I have yet to quite "get there"... but it's a player issue in this case. I have veteran players dragging along a lot of 5e noobs that are paralyzed most of the time by the depth of play we're demanding. The dot-to-dot Adventure Path mentality of my younger players is not sufficient to handle the requirements I place on my in-depth campaigns. I think if I were running 3.x it would be even worse, because they're groomed into thinking of the mechanics AS their PC's, vs. their PC's as characters defined by their skill/stat/Edge choices in SW.

Someday I need to break out Fantasycraft and put it to the test to see if I can achieve the same thing.

Quote from: tenbones on February 16, 2023, 01:12:48 PM
The funny thing is that since we started before 3e ever landed, we had that similar experience of what AD&D was... which naturally applied to our means of engaging with 3e.

Yep.  And just as central, we had earlier experiences of playing things that were very much not AD&D, which also informs the engagement.  It's two things at a base (and then more piled on top):

- Engaging with the game on its own terms, and trying to understand those terms.
- Running the game we want to run, possibly compromising a little because of system.

As far as BECMI with more robust rules is concerned, does the Rules Cyclopedia measure up to that?

Quote from: ClusterFluster on February 16, 2023, 02:07:34 PM
As far as BECMI with more robust rules is concerned, does the Rules Cyclopedia measure up to that?

Probably not.  RC is a consolidated, reorganized version of BECMI.  It drops a lot of the Immortals part, adds its minor twists, and several other changes that may or may not matter all that much.  I don't know the full list, because I haven't seen anything but Basic and Expert in years, and have never owned Immortals.  However, the central mechanics all work the same. 

ACKS is a more robust BECMI/RC, from one way of looking at things.  It takes many of the assumptions of those designs and runs with them to a lot of detail. 

Robust is in the eye of the beholder.  In my eyes, my game is a more robust version of some of the same things RC is doing, but that's because I didn't at all mind rewriting a new game that doesn't care a fig about compatibility.  And in fact, the more I work on my game, the less like RC it becomes.  Still, I'm trying to cover some of the same style of play that RC does. 

Quote from: ClusterFluster on February 16, 2023, 02:07:34 PM
As far as BECMI with more robust rules is concerned, does the Rules Cyclopedia measure up to that?

I don't believe so. One of the considerations about BECMI... and I was hesitant to use it even in my post above, but I knew Steven would understand why I used it, is the *assumption* one would ALWAYS get to the "I" in BECMI.

When I say I want to play in the full range of what BECMI offers is a system that offers that possibility with the least amount of interference. It doesn't mean each and every game I run is expected to get to that high level of play.

There is an inversion with mechanics-to-GM skill that is rarely discussed. New GM's and journeyman GM's need chunky mechanics to get them through one-shots, AP's etc. until they feel they have a handle on things to go off-roading. Many never go offroading, though they may be quite good at GMing and not need those chunky mechanics at all. BECMI are not chunky mechanics, imo. What they don't do, however, is give me what I want in such systems at the deeper end of the bell-curve. In fact the closer you get to the M and the I, it becomes a necessarily very different game both narratively and mechanically.

I *don't* have a problem with BECMI at all. I just have better options due to my own experience and facility with systems and mechanics which abstract the gameplay better.

As for the Rules Cyclopedia - I'm with Steven. It's a great (one of the best) self-contained systems that has a nice fat chunky bell-curve of play. But it falls apart towards the higher-end. Which I can actually excuse since the vast majority of play in d20 writ-large doesn't happen post 10th-level (of course your mileage may vary - my campaigns tended to hit about about 14+ before coming to their natural conclusions, but it would take years to get there.)

Edit: 3.x has always shined up until around 10th-lvl for me. That's when the cracks really started to emerge. It's pretty easy to old it together natively, but in my sandbox games which can range all over the place, the niche-protection, and forced elements of the game begin to require me to take some steps beyond RAW WotC/Paizo rules to patch it and keep it sailing.

Just with 3.X, epic level play has always struck me as an odd concept anyway, the abilities begin to look ridiculous as they scale up.

In either case, it's like they were trying to design a smooth transition from mortality to demi-immortality to divinity. I'd try skimming over the rules for Immortals once or twice but the rules cease being intuitive, and I find it unlikely that you could suspend disbelief after finishing level 36 and jumping into this entirely new game system of gods stated out like a biology textbook.

In any case, I'm not sure I'd have the patience to continue a given campaign well up to the 20's anyway, as you guys have mentioned anything beyond level 14 or even 10 just looks like page filler. It's printed right in the introductions that the purpose of OD&D's Supplement IV was to give player's perspective about what should be considered "god-like" in the framework anyway, but of course their word was taken as bond over the previous statement that you can achieve any number of levels you like. People do read, just not the parts you want them to focus on, most of the time.

Quote from: ClusterFluster on February 16, 2023, 09:19:20 PM
Just with 3.X, epic level play has always struck me as an odd concept anyway, the abilities begin to look ridiculous as they scale up.

In either case, it's like they were trying to design a smooth transition from mortality to demi-immortality to divinity. I'd try skimming over the rules for Immortals once or twice but the rules cease being intuitive, and I find it unlikely that you could suspend disbelief after finishing level 36 and jumping into this entirely new game system of gods stated out like a biology textbook.

In any case, I'm not sure I'd have the patience to continue a given campaign well up to the 20's anyway, as you guys have mentioned anything beyond level 14 or even 10 just looks like page filler. It's printed right in the introductions that the purpose of OD&D's Supplement IV was to give player's perspective about what should be considered "god-like" in the framework anyway, but of course their word was taken as bond over the previous statement that you can achieve any number of levels you like. People do read, just not the parts you want them to focus on, most of the time.

In theory, a game with a wide range like that should support two things:  The relatively rare case where you start low and then ramp up all the way to the end.  And also running multiple campaigns in the same setting, at different power levels.

And of course, remember that when these rules were released, there were a lot of people using whatever rules were at hand to play different things.  Even in my AD&D days, I never had characters go much past name level starting from level 1, but we did have a few short campaigns that started at name level or higher and went through a couple of levels before they ended. 

There's also an effect that I find positive when done well.  I'm certainly aiming for it with my own system.  That is, the intended scale of play might be from barely competent starting adventurer to full hero, say.  Still, I find it useful if the game starts a little earlier than that scale, and ends a little past it.  If nothing else, it frames the intended scale and provides some hints on how NPCs off it should look.  This is not unlike the Dying Earth, where Vance has his characters referring to these pinnacles of the magician profession long past, who reached a scope the current characters can only dream of.

I thought that if treated and ran the same as previous editions that 3e would fine if not an improvement on the account of unifying some mechanics and going for roll high instead situational variables determining if you needed a high or low roll. What killed it for me, and made me quit dnd before 4e ever came out (still haven't went back unless you count osric) was the influx of new players.

Suddenely the player base doubled because they shoved magic the gathering players into our "pod" if you will, some of which resented dnd detracting from their card game and whose sole purpose was to sabatoge play and convince everyone the game was hopelessly broken and we should play magic or call of duty instead. these were also largely weebshits with anime everything and so now i am hostile to weebs and anime on principle, like, actively hostile, like, you are black in a sundown town after dark hostile. I still feel its deserved and should become a guiding principle of both the armed forces and the cub scouts.

Yet their stance is impossible if you had come from previous editions, as you know to use what you like ignore or houserule what you don't like a normal nerd...so to end run around this they tried to establish as a sort of zeitgeist that you must interpret dnd rules like magic card rules (so you can get broken and glitchy outcomes like peasant railgun) so they could kill off the evil dnd detracting from their magic and pokemon and yugioh.

Whatever, you can have it, I'll just run game systems that such tards won't even try to start with and laugh at them as they whine about their just dnd problems.

Quote from: Slipshot762 on February 18, 2023, 12:49:35 AM
I thought that if treated and ran the same as previous editions that 3e would fine if not an improvement on the account of unifying some mechanics and going for roll high instead situational variables determining if you needed a high or low roll. What killed it for me, and made me quit dnd before 4e ever came out (still haven't went back unless you count osric) was the influx of new players.

Suddenely the player base doubled because they shoved magic the gathering players into our "pod" if you will, some of which resented dnd detracting from their card game and whose sole purpose was to sabatoge play and convince everyone the game was hopelessly broken and we should play magic or call of duty instead. these were also largely weebshits with anime everything and so now i am hostile to weebs and anime on principle, like, actively hostile, like, you are black in a sundown town after dark hostile. I still feel its deserved and should become a guiding principle of both the armed forces and the cub scouts.

Yet their stance is impossible if you had come from previous editions, as you know to use what you like ignore or houserule what you don't like a normal nerd...so to end run around this they tried to establish as a sort of zeitgeist that you must interpret dnd rules like magic card rules (so you can get broken and glitchy outcomes like peasant railgun) so they could kill off the evil dnd detracting from their magic and pokemon and yugioh.

Whatever, you can have it, I'll just run game systems that such tards won't even try to start with and laugh at them as they whine about their just dnd problems.

...

Look, I detest a lot of 3.x players, for my own reasons, and the less I say about a lot of CCG players the less likely I am to accidentally end up on some terror watch list... but I've never once seen or heard of anyone intentionally destructively hate-playing the game as some sort of grand conspiracy to get it to stop taking players from Magic or Pokemon. Hint: It doesn't. Most D&D players I know either do or did play those games, too. Hell, I would say that D&D players are probably why Magic got a foothold. If anything I would venture D&D players had more to complain about - I do know people who stopped playing RPGs and just became card gamers. Not a lot, but a few. I don't know of a single example of the reverse. I know of plenty of people who stopped playing CCGs, but not because they had been "lured away" by CCGs, or whatever. Most of them got driven off by the game itself. I know I sure did.

The one type of quasi-intentional destructive play I have witnessed is veteran RPG players pissed off that all they could find was D&D groups, who would grudgingly agree to play, but then either play half-assedly, or try to force the game to be what they wanted (Trying to make their "paladin" into a "jedi" because nobody wanted to play Star Wars, trying to make their warrior into a Samurai because nobody wanted to play L5R, etc) and pissing both themselves and everyone else at the table off in the process. Even then, I don't think they were intentionally trying to ruin games, they were just ill-fitting for the games they were in and should have recognized that rather than become a toxic element.

But CCG players playing D&D to try to subvert the RPG hobby? No. Who is going to invest potentially hundreds of hours into something like that?

Heh, I do not require that you believe it, but what other explanation is there for those who insist you let them peasant railgun, you are not playing the rules if you dont, and if you do then see the game is broken we should play something else.

(But CCG players playing D&D to try to subvert the RPG hobby? No. Who is going to invest potentially hundreds of hours into something like that?)
^the pricks i played with i suppose, lol.