I got to thinking about different systems and their effect on play today regarding candidates for a Warcraft-based campaign, and one of the thoughts that popped into mind was about AC systems in D&D, specifically the ascending versus descending thing.

Now, this is a well-worn argument at this point, but generally the modern wisdom has fallen in favor of ascending, as it seems to be felt to be a much more intuitive mechanic, just on the grounds of the math, no subtracting of negative numbers or the like as you'd occasionally run into in the older editions.

But then I got to thinking about how I might reduce the impact of gear greed in the game, to allow for more of a shift in focus away from power grind and just let players get on with the game, and it struck me that one of the ways gear escalation happens is when numbers aren't capped.

And then I remembered the old descending AC system, and started thinking of it in a different light.  With the old editions, you never got the crazy mathematical escalation you find in D&D ACs because there just weren't that numbers to go around, and the descending scale starting at 9 meant there just was a natural cap to how ridiculous AC could ever get.  

I also started wondering about that whole "18/00" percentile thing I never really understood back in the day, as a way of capping a stat while still allowing for a more powerful characters to be represented in some way.

So what are some examples you can think of of mechanics derided as "broken" that when analyzed less shallowly reveal a little more wisdom than is realized?  

To throw out another example, the infamous "you can die in chargen" thing from Traveller, that so few people seem to realize is the very lynchpin of how the game balances the character system.

In Mage: The Excuse, it is really easy to kill anyone. One wizard makes a portal in a looking glass and the other gives him a heart attack. In reality, the absurdity of the power level in the game is important.

Mage was about, to me, trying to implement wisdom and subtly, despite the fact that everyone has bazookas. The game has to be run in such a way that killing someone almost never solves the problem. Player characters are able to live, once they have been discovered by their enemies, because killing them doesn't help the situation. Both sides gain more by converting each other than by killing, and everyone on every side is busy plugging holes. The technocrats know that if they kill you, any problems you were containing will explode in their face.

Crappy limited fighters, versus all-powerful mages.

Dungeons and Dragons is often criticized for the wild disparity in play value between fighters and mages, even as 4e is lauded for the balance.

But being a 'crappy' fighter meant that, hey, when it came time for combat, you didn't have to think too much about what to do, didn't ever catch crap for casting the 'wrong' spell, and if you didn't want spend money on books and time on reading them, you could quickly learn all you needed to know. It also meant that players that wanted to be a more 'realistic' hero had an option, a class that didn't necessarily do ridiculous things at some point.

So, even though the classes were 'unbalanced', players were allowed to balance themselves based on how they wanted to play.

I remember in D&D, I'd have not particularly fluent players, that nonetheless could play their fighters well, where in 4e, I've got players with a year of experience that still struggle like heck with all the complications that simply cannot be avoided....even if it's all 'balanced'.

Fighters are balanced in old D&D because they were necessary for adventuring. If the party encountered to many fights for the wizard to keep up with, only the fighter still could fight. A fighter buffed by a wizard is more powerful than a wizard and a fighter fighting on their own in a lot of cases (magiced weapons, haste). In the context of the dungeon, enemies can't get to the wizard because the fighter can block the hall.

D&D isn't suppose to be a crappy pvp game, even though people want to play it that way. It is suppose to be team vs. environment.

Item saving throws are a lot better than the alternative of DMs being sparse as hell with wealth and magic items.

There is no such thing as inherently "broken" mechanics. Just GMs and players who let them break their games.

Quote from: Benoist;393154There is no such thing as inherently "broken" mechanics. Just GMs and players who let them break their games.

Wow.

 I love that thought.

So things aren't broken - there are just lazy GMs or players out there who whine too much.


- Ed C.

Quote from: Benoist;393154There is no such thing as inherently "broken" mechanics.

*cough* Exalted *cough*

Quote from: Benoist;393154There is no such thing as inherently "broken" mechanics. Just GMs and players who let them break their games.

A mechanic that does not do what it is intended to, is broken.

A mechanic that does not do what the player desires it to, is not necessarily broken, just undesirable or incompatible with the player(s).

Unfortunately, the latter usage is far more common, because gamers are by and large staggeringly ignorant of game design concepts, despite possessing an undeservedly high opinion of their own judgement.

It is these latter usages, where a player dismisses a mechanic that actually works quite well as intended, that I created my thread about.

Quote from: Koltar;393156So things aren't broken - there are just lazy GMs or players out there who whine too much.

They're lazy, or they want to use such mechanics to break the game to their advantage, or they let such mechanics break the game because they've never been taught how to handle such problems as GMs or players, or they believe the rules are the game, the game is the rules... yeah. "Brokenness" is about GMs and players, the actual game table, when said mechanic comes up in the game. Not about the mechanic itself.

Oh, for another example, stacking crits in 3.0 vs the 3.5 team's revision that took them out.  Taking them out because they made crits less "special", even though they were necessary to give the lower-damage/more-accurate weapons an edge against high-damage weapons.

Quote from: J Arcane;393158A mechanic that does not do what it is intended to, is broken.

I disagree. "Broken" is an absolute statement. It means the mechanic is non-functional, reduced to pieces, shattered, irreparable, weakened to the point of uselessness. There is no such thing as a "broken" role playing game mechanic, only "broken" outlooks on said mechanic.

It's a complete misnomer from day one.

...minor apologies for a side-tangent here......however....

Benoist,


 Does this idea maybe cover why everyone else thinks that GURPS combat is too slow or complex - yet I never seem to have those problems when I run the game?

To me, D&D 4/e combat is as slow as a snail in the slow lane of life's slo-mo machine.


- Ed C.

Quote from: Benoist;393161I disagree. "Broken" is an absolute statement. It means the mechanic is non-functional, reduced to pieces, shattered, irreparable, weakened to the point of uselessness. There is no such thing as a "broken" role playing game mechanic.

It's a complete misnomer from day one.

If I create a game about one thing, and my mechanics result in something completely different, I have made a broken game.

White Wolf's original Vampire, was a broken game.  It was supposed to be about storytelling and intrigue and drama, but the mechanics were largely written to encourage high-powered street thuggery.  It is a failure of the system to support it's premise, and thus, broken design.

That's what game design is about.  Making sure the systems you construct, support the philosophy behind the idea and the setting.

Quote from: Koltar;393163Does this idea maybe cover why everyone else thinks that GURPS combat is too slow or complex - yet I never seem to have those problems when I run the game?

To me, D&D 4/e combat is as slow as a snail in the slow lane of life's slo-mo machine.

Let's say you're having really slow 4e combats. Some guy, named... Peter, say, tells you "I don't have any of these problems in my game". Say now that you have reasons to believe the guy isn't actually full of shit, and his games indeed go rather smoothly.

If you then state "4e combat rules are broken", then you are just full of shit. When you're saying that something is "broken", all you're really saying is "I don't know how to deal with this rule that doesn't create the outcomes I want in the game!"