Quote from: Armchair Gamer;10846544th and 5th Editions both have random dungeon generators in the DMG.

I don't remember seeing that in my 5e DMG, but maybe we have different standards for what constitutes "rules for things".

Quote from: Rhedyn;1084670I don't remember seeing that in my 5e DMG, but maybe we have different standards for what constitutes "rules for things".

D&D 5th edition DMG Page 290
D&D 4th edition DMG Page 190

Quote from: estar;1084671D&D 5th edition DMG Page 290
D&D 4th edition DMG Page 190

Huh, what do you know. Yeah these are decent rules.

D&D was first. That, alone, is a huge precedent.

TSR advertised the game, despite the "Satanic Panic". Plus, the D&D cartoon brought more gamers to D&D than most people realize. That & the Dragon magazine ads.

I've been in retail for decades. Advertising is KEY. You, as a company, need to let people know who and where you are. Expensive, but simple.

Hasbro is spending more now on D&D than since the 80's (book ads, cartoon, movies) and that has driven the hobby.

I saw a kid playing an RPG in a kid's cartoon. Stranger Things. Rumors of a D&D movie. A player-friendly 5th edition.

Thankfully, there's a lot there to drive the hobby to new players. Is that bad?

Quote from: estar;1084621Prolongs combat and on average players dislike making a to-hit only to ultimately fail.

At which cost? You've got nothing to do until your next turn comes up. With an active defense, it's still in your hands if the dragon's bite is going to hit you or not - on the dragon's turn. And even worse - D&D combat is more samey: whether you you're level 1 and roll to attack with a +3 total bonus versus AC 15 or level 7 with +8 versus AC 20 makes no difference. The numbers change, yet it feels as if nothing has changed, if it was not for special abilities/feats/better weapons/etc.

Having attack and parry at varying probabilities creates varying combat dynamics, varied gameplay.

And all that's ignoring how in D&D enemies with high AC can be both frustrating to hit and prolonging combat just the same. We've had this problem several times in our Star Wars Saga Edition game now.
But, hey, I guess we've saved an extra die roll.

Quote from: estar;10846211) Dragon Age/Fantasy Age, Palladium Fantasy RPG, and so on.

Fantasy Age, alright. Palladium Fantasy is an old game, hardly indicative of current game design trends.

Quote from: estar;10846212) What hit points originally were designed for is to represent that a hero can last four times longer than a ordinary warrior. This is a creative choice, some RPG like Dragon Age  and Palladium Fantasy made a similar choice, other like Runequest, GURPS, Fate, did not. If you don't think that a hero should last four times as long in combat then D&D in any of its edition (or the above RPGS) is not going to cut it for you.

There's a range of alternate ways to make heroes last longer than hitpoints. I'll make a thread about it.

Quote from: estar;1084621It may not be explained well or presented well at times, but it is rare for something to be "just because". It not how writes operate.

This seems like a non-sequitur?

Quote from: estar;1084621However if one is ignorant of the history of how RPGs developed then its design can seem arbitrary designed. When I learned how hit points and the mechanics of D&D developed, that gave me the insight I needed to how to translate anything the PC wanted to do into rulings consistent with the system. The same with Runequest, Harnmaster, GURPS, and the other system I ran.

Well, RPGs are instruction manuals. If you'd need to understand the history of a game system or the designer's intent beyond what is expressed in the actual rulebook, it would be a poor manual. In fact, you have to judge a game system by its rulebook, with RAW and RAI being hopefully largely congruent.

Fortunately, it doesn't take learning the history of D&D to understand that hitpoints represent some kind of abstract survivability, composed of endurance, luck, perhaps skill/experience. Because it is so abstract, you, the GM, get to choose which of these sources of survivability applies in a given situation. That makes it both flexible but also more arbitrary because the GM (or the player) gets to pick whether they were saved by being tough or nimble or just had plain luck. Instead, and this harkens back to the cinematic combat threads, having determined what actually happened (toughness, luck, nimbleness, etc) being decided by the dice.

If you survive an attack because you invested in being agile (and therefore hard to hit) during chargen, then all of this becomes part of your stats on the charsheet adding to characterization. Abstract hitpoints add less to characterization because having 100 HPs doesn't tell you if you're survivable because you're tough or just plain lucky.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1084737At which cost? You've got nothing to do until your next turn comes up. With an active defense, it's still in your hands if the dragon's bite is going to hit you or not - on the dragon's turn. And even worse - D&D combat is more samey: whether you you're level 1 and roll to attack with a +3 total bonus versus AC 15 or level 7 with +8 versus AC 20 makes no difference. The numbers change, yet it feels as if nothing has changed, if it was not for special abilities/feats/better weapons/etc.

Having attack and parry at varying probabilities creates varying combat dynamics, varied gameplay.

And all that's ignoring how in D&D enemies with high AC can be both frustrating to hit and prolonging combat just the same. We've had this problem several times in our Star Wars Saga Edition game now.
But, hey, I guess we've saved an extra die roll.

Why not play Harnmaster?  It is an elegant system, easy to use after playing a couple of combats and has everything you seem to be looking for.

Quote from: moonsweeper;1084746Why not play Harnmaster?  It is an elegant system, easy to use after playing a couple of combats and has everything you seem to be looking for.

Greetings!

Hey Moonsweeper! Have you played a lot of Harnmaster? What do you like about the Harnmaster system? What do you NOT LIKE about the Harnmaster system? I've looked over some of the supplements over the years, but never played the system. They in the past--seemed to be very hit and miss as far as availability. In one game store or another, I'd see one or two Harn books, and that was it. Seldom anything new, and the ones they had seemed to not move and be bought either. Product wise, I always got the impression that they were inconsistent in production, supply, and ongoing support, so I always ultimately said no despite being impressed by many of their production values.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1084737At which cost? You've got nothing to do until your next turn comes up. With an active defense, it's still in your hands if the dragon's bite is going to hit you or not - on the dragon's turn.

The virtues of D&D combat is that it quick, and it is in the ballpark so to speak. The virtues of GURPS is that the mechanics have a one for one correspondence to what you would do as a character in a well designed system. But one of the price of GURPS that combat takes longer to resolve compared to classic D&D and D&D 5th edition. As for D&D 3rd edition low level combat is quickly resolved while high level combat is not. In D&D 4th edition combat takes about as long as GURPS to resolved. In 4th edition case is not a defense roll that prolong combat but rather the wealth of options for healings.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1084737And even worse - D&D combat is more samey: whether you you're level 1 and roll to attack with a +3 total bonus versus AC 15 or level 7 with +8 versus AC 20 makes no difference. The numbers change, yet it feels as if nothing has changed, if it was not for special abilities/feats/better weapons/etc.

As a wargame D&D combat is uninteresting, but thankfully it is a RPG which means the circumstances of the combat encounter matters, and presence of the human referee means any factor that relevant can be ruled on. The problem you mentioned above sounds like Pathfinder/3rd edition issues of low level versus high level combat. In which case you are omitted all the feats, spells, and class abilities that players have. Above is not an issue with classic D&D. The players ability to do hit scales faster than the monster AC compared to 3rd, or 4th edition.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1084737And all that's ignoring how in D&D enemies with high AC can be both frustrating to hit and prolonging combat just the same. We've had this problem several times in our Star Wars Saga Edition game now.
But, hey, I guess we've saved an extra die roll.

The problem with Saga is the same one the afflicts various 3.X derived RPGs. Everything scales as one levels and you get the Elder Scrolls/Eternal Orc effect.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1084737Fantasy Age, alright. Palladium Fantasy is an old game, hardly indicative of current game design trends.

You didn't ask about what current RPGs shared the same design element. You asked about RPGs in general.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1084462It's not a design that you see non-d20 games strive to emulate.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1084737There's a range of alternate ways to make heroes last longer than hitpoints. I'll make a thread about it.

Sure but not relevant to the points I was making.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1084737This seems like a non-sequitur?

There is a reason for everything even it not apparent at the time. Particularly something that involved creatively like writing an RPG.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1084737Well, RPGs are instruction manuals. If you'd need to understand the history of a game system or the designer's intent beyond what is expressed in the actual rulebook, it would be a poor manual. In fact, you have to judge a game system by its rulebook, with RAW and RAI being hopefully largely congruent.

I stated numerous times that OD&D flaw is it presentation. It relies too much on its audience being the wargaming community of the early 70s. So when hobbyists outside of the community obtained the game,what it didn't explain exploded into thousands of questions and an equal number of interpretation.

However that doesn't mean its history and assumptions are not relevant. We now have a much better idea today and can use that knowledge to referee OD&D more effectively in a tabletop roleplaying campaign.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1084737Fortunately, it doesn't take learning the history of D&D to understand that hitpoints represent some kind of abstract survivability, composed of endurance, luck, perhaps skill/experience.

The above is so general that it is useless to a novice or experienced referee trying to decide how to describe a 8 point hit on a character who has 40 max hit points. It is more useful to understand that the mechanic was developed to represent the fact that a hero i.e. 4th level character can last four times longer in combat than the ordinary warrior.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1084737Because it is so abstract, you, the GM, get to choose which of these sources of survivability applies in a given situation. That makes it both flexible but also more arbitrary because the GM (or the player) gets to pick whether they were saved by being tough or nimble or just had plain luck. Instead, and this harkens back to the cinematic combat threads, having determined what actually happened (toughness, luck, nimbleness, etc) being decided by the dice.

I don't have a problem with the judgment of the human referee in this and many cases. I have confidence that hobbyists are smart enough to figure out what interpretation works best for them. The issue I see is is continued emphasis on deference to the rules instead of deference to the setting of the campaign.




If you survive an attack because you invested in being agile (and therefore hard to hit) during chargen, then all of this becomes part of your stats on the charsheet adding to characterization. Abstract hitpoints add less to characterization because having 100 HPs doesn't tell you if you're survivable because you're tough or just plain lucky.[/QUOTE]

For those interested in Harnmaster I wrote a detailed blog post about it

A 911 call from the Attic

To recap some highlights

The combat basic procedure is

1) Side A rolls attack
2) Side B roll defense
3) Cross index the level of success (Critical Success, Marginal Success, Marginal Failure, Critical Failure) on the combat chart and apply the result.
4) If you hit you will get to roll a number of D6. Add the impact of the weapon aspect to the roll. Aspects can be point, edge or blunt. Typically range from 0 to 11. This givesthe total impact of the blow.
5) Roll hit location. You can aim high low or middle.
6) Subtract the Armor in that location
7) If the remaining impact is great than zero look up what type of injury you take for that hit location.

You can take a minor, serious, or grievous injury. You record each injury separately. The nominal effect is rated in injury levels. A S2 result means you have a serious injury with 2 levels of damage. Each level subtracts one from any roll with d6s against your attributes or -5 per level for skill rolls. Aside from the injury levels many wounds have special saves. Shock, fumble, stumble, amputation, and the dreaded kill roll. The type of save and the injury you sustained determine how many d6s you roll against the attribute to save.

For example if you took a M1 hit to the hand requires a fumble roll if you were holding something in that hand. Normally it is a 1d6. Unless you have a crap dexterity you can't fail. However in a fight where you took a S2 wound to the chest, a pair of M1 wounds to the thigh, and a S3 gash to the upper arm you are looking at rolling that 1d6 at a +7 modifier. The more injuries you take the worse these saves get even the minor ones.

You can look at the charts here.

Overall HM Combat is not as fast to resolve as most editions of D&D but a lot faster than GURPS and other RPGs with combat systems with a lot of details. The key reason is the well charts, the low numbers involved, and the front loaded character sheets.

There little downside to Harnmaster other than pricing of the components. The base rules are a decent price but the magic, religion, and beastiary are all at the usual premium price that Columbia Games/Kelestia charges.

While joined at the hip with the Harn setting, the fact that Harn is a low fantasy medieval setting makes highly adaptable to other fantasy campaigns.  The system itself is straightforward enough to be easily house ruled.  I mention an important house rule in the blog post.

I find Harnmaster combat system to be only one of the few that consistently engages players in term of roleplaying. This is largely because the players are continually engage in offense and defense, that the way HM describe injuries really adds to ambience of what going on without bogging it down.

Quote from: estar;1084758The virtues of D&D combat is that it quick, and it is in the ballpark so to speak. The virtues of GURPS is that the mechanics have a one for one correspondence to what you would do as a character in a well designed system. But one of the price of GURPS that combat takes longer to resolve compared to classic D&D and D&D 5th edition. As for D&D 3rd edition low level combat is quickly resolved while high level combat is not. In D&D 4th edition combat takes about as long as GURPS to resolved. In 4th edition case is not a defense roll that prolong combat but rather the wealth of options for healings.

Well, it depends. Quite a few Critical Role combats aren't quickly resolved either. If speed was an issue, I think 3.x/PF would have never lifted off the ground the way it did. I also doubt that an additional die roll is a significant speed bump. If you compare the pros and cons of an Active Defense, it's hard for me to see the cons outweighing the pros, much less clearly outweighing them.

Quote from: estar;1084758The players ability to do hit scales faster than the monster AC compared to 3rd, or 4th edition.

Yeah but it's still less varied gameplay, by simple virtue of having one less variable. So even if the above is true, it means that on average the numbers you need to roll to hit get lower as you level up. (Which btw means that the tougher enemies at higher levels are easier to hit - because you're a hero now. Is that the right feel of facing a threatening menace instead of a low level robber?). On average. Whereas with an active defense, your hit rate also goes up as your character becomes more experienced - and so does your critical hit range under various systems. The additional variable then is the Active Defense stat of the enemy and the random element of the dice roll. You might face off against a defensive specialist but if they fumble their first Active Defense roll, they might be screwed already. Or you might roll really well against an Offensive specialist but the NPC keeps rolling really well as well, negating your attacks.

Having this variability is a plus.

Quote from: estar;1084758You didn't ask about what current RPGs shared the same design element. You asked about RPGs in general.

If it was great game design concept, it should be informing current game design, surely? I don't see it getting too much traction outside of D&D, however. Perhaps it does in superhero games, where it kinda fits the genre. And in video games, of course. But otherwise? I don't think it's very influential in the rest of the hobby.

Quote from: estar;1084758The above is so general that it is useless to a novice or experienced referee trying to decide how to describe a 8 point hit on a character who has 40 max hit points. It is more useful to understand that the mechanic was developed to represent the fact that a hero i.e. 4th level character can last four times longer in combat than the ordinary warrior.

Well, that's not helpful in running 5E. To run 5E with good descriptions, you probably weigh total HPs, current HPs and damage taken against each other.
And fortunately novice GMs don't need to come up with a proper description or any description at all. I remember the days when we didn't describe "You hit for 8 point of damage" in our games. For beginners it's often fun enough to get the game up and running and leave the details up to everyone's personal imagination. Reading the early history of D&D probably won't help them.

Quote from: estar;1084758I don't have a problem with the judgment of the human referee in this and many cases. I have confidence that hobbyists are smart enough to figure out what interpretation works best for them. The issue I see is is continued emphasis on deference to the rules instead of deference to the setting of the campaign.

Well, I do. It makes character less distinct, particularly less mechanically distinct. If HPs are a general basket case of traits subsumed into one number, then it represents general awesomeness rather than awesomeness at a particular thing or maybe even two specific things. That is less fun to me.

Regarding Hârnmaster, it's a great game, possibly my favorite system - even though I do recognize its limitations.

It's a simulationist game system that is aimed at medieval authenticity. Unless you're heavily armored, combats aren't taking too long because, while resolving a single attack takes longer (but gives you more information about what happened), the sheer lethality of the game system tends to cut fights short.

That's because Hârnmaster does "reality simulation" as opposed genre simulation. Given its striving for medieval authenticity, it's NOT well-suited for heroic fantasy - you're bound to end up with PCs with amputated limbs, dying of infection if you approach it like D&D. Also, it is an old-school game in that it does not have character customization via Advantages/Disadvantages (Feats). It does have a long skill list though - with many skills not directly relevant for a D&D adventurer's life.

And, yeah, as Rob has correctly pointed out above, you may end up in a situation where combatants are so covered in wounds that any of them has only a 10 to 20% chance to hit left. That can make combat drag on. (On the other hand, heavy armor can make combat drag on as well, where you either need a critical attack vs a failed parry or hitting an unprotected location to hurt the enemy.)

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1084878That is less fun to me.

That the heart of it, the combination of mechanics that D&D presents as tools for a referee and players to use for a fantasy tabletop roleplaying doesn't appeal to you. Which is fine. I count GURPS among my favorite RPGs, it just that a decade I learned enough about OD&D so I can run a campaign as equally as I could in GURPS.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1084878I think 3.x/PF would have never lifted off the ground the way it did.

Up until the release of D&D 3.0, a major reason for hobbyist to switch to alternatives is that they had more choices in order customize their characters. You could play a warrior who knows a few spells. AD&D 2nd edition took a stab at this but kits for the most part were a bit haphazard and not universally accepted. However in D&D 3.0, Wizards figured out how to do character options right in a way that fit with the concepts of past editions of D&D.

D&D 3.0 was predestined to have a huge opening because of the near death of the game during TSR's demise. However it kept it's audience in part because players could now play that warrior who knew7 some spells in a way that worked well. Because in coupled with the SRD under an open content gave D&D the flexibility needed to realize dozens of characters in very different settings even when sticking to the core rules.

I was involved in the GURPS community since the start of the public internet in the early 90s. After D&D 3.0 released I started noticing that the people trying out D&D are largely now comprised of those, like you, who disliked how D&D worked. I.e. the whole AC, Hit Points, levels, etc. New players who grativated to GURPS because it had more options for characters, you could do more with the mechanics were reduced to a trickle.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1084878I also doubt that an additional die roll is a significant speed bump.

I am relaying the comments made by the dozens of players I refereed or interacted with over four decades. Many years of which with GURPS as my sold fantasy RPG. I am not expecting you or anybody else to be dazzled by that but it does show my opinion is ground in something more than that how I think. Of course it could be an artifact of the hobbyists found in eastern Ohio, western Pennsylvania, and western New York with a few outliers like a game store in Savannah Georgia. But hey what I know about the preferences of people  who play tabletop roleplaying.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1084878Having this variability is a plus.

Sure if that one's preference it can be of a vital importance. I have a friend I been roleplaying with since the early 80s and levels are a deal breaker for him in any RPGs including CRPGs. If it isn't some type of freeform point buy or freeform pick system he doesn't want to play it.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1084878If it was great game design concept, it should be informing current game design, surely? I don't see it getting too much traction outside of D&D, however. Perhaps it does in superhero games, where it kinda fits the genre. And in video games, of course. But otherwise? I don't think it's very influential in the rest of the hobby.

You are aware of the relative size of D&D+Pathfinder+OSR versus the rest of the hobby? Both in terms of campaigns being played, and products being released.

Goto DriveThruRPG and click on Rules system on the left hand side. Not click on a category of RPG and note how many product are counted. Compared any category to that of D&D+Pathfinder+OSR.

I would say that D&D design ideas are very influential.

However also keep in mind that back in 1990, it matter because there was limited space in a distributor warehouse, and limited space in on a game store's shelf. That no longer the case. It enough for a given system to have hundreds of customers to remain viable. And for the same reason why despite D&D having a huge amount of mindshare that there a crazy amount of diversity in the alternatives. Because the barriers for anybody to make a professionally done product that is understandable by another and widely distributed is stupidly cheap in money and takes a lot less labor (although not as radical).

The moral of the story is that while D&D mechanics dwarf everything else, it doesn't matter for other concepts. Because the rules of the market has changed.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1084878Well, that's not helpful in running 5E. To run 5E with good descriptions, you probably weigh total HPs, current HPs and damage taken against each other.
And fortunately novice GMs don't need to come up with a proper description or any description at all. I remember the days when we didn't describe "You hit for 8 point of damage" in our games. For beginners it's often fun enough to get the game up and running and leave the details up to everyone's personal imagination.

I don't think of the editions of D&D do a good job in explaining this. Or the whole concept of that a player can do anything as long as it is consistent with the setting and what been described about their character, irregardless of what the system says or implies.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1084878Reading the early history of D&D probably won't help them.

I disagree backed by my experience in the past ten years by my example describing things, along with teaching and coaching players in my campaigns.

This is a detailed comparsion between D&D 3.0 and Harnmaster Combat
https://web.archive.org/web/20071017220410/http://www.warflail.com/downloads/HMCvsD20.zip

Quote from: estar;1084995I am relaying the comments made by the dozens of players I refereed or interacted with over four decades.

For a game with routine and frequent combat, having an extra die rolled on every attack is a huge deal. The occasional opposed check when eg grappling works fine, but IME opposing a defence roll to the attack roll does not work in D&D. It works fine in a game like Runequest* or even D&D-based games with a different focus. Eg I ran an AD&D-derived "Highlander" campaign where the Immortals' duel was the focus and highlight of the typical session; in that situation adding more detail to combat and an active defence worked very well. D&D's focus on routine small group combat argues for simplicity of resolution IME.

*Actually I remember we hated the whiff factor of the Parry roll in Runequest and went over to an opposed roll-high check, Attack vs Parry.

Quote from: S'mon;1085044For a game with routine and frequent combat, having an extra die rolled on every attack is a huge deal.
...
D&D's focus on routine small group combat argues for simplicity of resolution IME.

Yep, I agree with this. Even for something more abstract like Fudge, I prefer the optional unopposed rolls rules. Opposed rolls also decrease statistical variance so you get less randomness. I like randomness!

D&D is at it's best when it's fast and somewhat unpredictable (within reason.) Other, more realistic (re: gritty) games, can afford a steeper bell curve and actually work better that way.