Quote from: Benoist;393290Fact is? There's no such consensus as you're describing. What you got is way too many people posting about games on WotC boards, RPGnet and others who bitch about mechanics being "broken" when in fact they aren't at all, and what's at fault is their own way to look at game mechanics, rather that the game mechanics themselves. But that would break the spell. Cut through the smoke and shoot right through the mirror. See, it's all convenient, because if, as a game company, you manage to convince your audience that yes, game mechanics really can be broken, then you can profit from it through erratas, further developments of the game, up to "revised editions" and of course "new editions" of the games that just "fix" all these "awfully broken mechanics".

It's all bullshit. GMs and Players are in control. If a rule breaks your game, then someone at the game table fundamentally needs to reexamine what he or she is doing. Probably more than one. If a rule breaks your game, that means you let it become such a bad rule it ends up breaking the game.

So you really think there are no broken rules? You don't think the fact that in WoD increasing the number of dice you got to roll increased the chance of a critical failure or that the orignal 4e Skill challenge needed errata, or that in V&V a character who manages to stack their agility to 50 or so not only gets 4 attacks before everyone else but those attacks are at +25 to hit and damage, or that the distribution curve of 2d6 means that a -2 modifier has different % effects on your chance to hit based on you own skill....
Maths and probability really can be broken

Quote from: Jaeger;393289So to sum up this thread...


 The word "Broken" is entirely subjective and does not mean what anyone thinks it means. Even if the majority of gamers use "broken" in a way that they all seem to understand.

Which just shows that everyone has basically missed the point of this thread to begin with.

The whole point of the thread was, in theory, to present alternate rationale behind mechanics that are often derided.  If anything it is a thread all about repudiating the popular gamer idea of "broken".

I expected the general structure would be post an example of a mechanic that takes a lot of crap from a large group of people, and offer an alternate interpretation that defends it's utility against said crap.

Like I did with the example of descending AC.  

If anything, I expected any derail to be the result of accidentally sparking off that hoary old flamewar, not some irrelevant bollocks about the meaning of "broken" and a lot of butthurt whinging about the very application of the term, despite the whole fucking point of the thread being to explore situations where it was misused, and maybe as well encourage people to think a little deeper about game theory.

Then I remember that it's the RPGsite, so of course instead we get a bullshit prick-waving match over a single term, and two people completely fucking unaware of the irony of derailing an entire thread with an argument about derailing threads.

Quote from: J Arcane;393299If anything, I expected any derail to be the result of accidentally sparking off that hoary old flamewar, not some irrelevant bollocks about the meaning of "broken" and a lot of butthurt whinging about the very application of the term, despite the whole fucking point of the thread being to explore situations where it was misused, and maybe as well encourage people to think a little deeper about game theory.

Then I remember that it's the RPGsite, so of course instead we get a bullshit prick-waving match over a single term, and two people completely fucking unaware of the irony of derailing an entire thread with an argument about derailing threads.

Alright. I'll just drop it then, and move on on topic this time.

Another broken thing from D&D is "save or die".

Granted, too much save or die is silly, but a light sprinkling of those 'save or die' rolls in D&D really made for some exciting times. It beats the "I rush my battlemind up and use my Iron Defense ability, knowing fundamentally nothing can hurt me" stuff that is common to 4e.

I've even taken to putting extreme damage effects (on rare occasions) in 4e, where a character might well take 100 points of damage (note--that's still unlikely to be fatal unless the character is already sorely wounded), and much like in D&D, an actual risk of loss seems to add interest to the battles.

"Save or die" sucks if you have 4 people in your party and one just croaks. That's 25% of your manpower down the drain. If you have 6 or 8 people, that's only 16.7% of 12.5% of your manpower which is a lot better.

Quote from: J Arcane;393299Which just shows that everyone has basically missed the point of this thread to begin with.

The whole point of the thread was, in theory, to present alternate rationale behind mechanics that are often derided.  If anything it is a thread all about repudiating the popular gamer idea of "broken".

I've been watching this with interest - I find it hard to conceive of any mechanic that doesn't have some redeeming value somewhere. Or, at least can't be easily fixed.
But here goes:
AD&D: xp for gold (encourages stealthy looting rather than direct monster slaying), different tables for different ability scores (adds layer of complexity to char design - do I put a 13 in Dex that doesn't do anything, or a 13 in Cha for more reactions/loyalty?), Rangers having 2 HD at 1st level (cool that they're more resistant to sleep, cloudkill), different subsystem mechanics (often simpler, quicker, less problems from unexpected synergies - compare Surprise in AD&D to Labyrinth Lord where Clerics get better surprise rolls than rogues due to Wis)...also minimizes game mechanic impact of very high ability scores, which are much more essential to survival in later editions.

2nd Ed - kits (great for character background development), skills and powers (OK character point costs were bad, but good basic idea)

3.0: varying class progressions e.g. epic BAB progression for fighters (allows them to use Power Attack or Expertise at higher levels), ability damage (much more streamlined than the condition tracks of SAGA/4th Ed - but really, should always have a save), 3.0 haste (which let fighters actually move + full attack using their boots of haste), 3.0 costed wings of flying (which let fighters fly like the wizards).

4th Ed: multiple ability dependent ("S shaped") classes - are broken but should work if characters didn't get the ability bumps each 4th level driving stat divergence between their prime and crud stats.

Exalted: I'm with most people in that I think rolling 20 d10s to do anything is a bad idea, but I've heard this defended as that you can "tactilely feel the godlike power" or something.

Quote from: Doom;393308Another broken thing from D&D is "save or die".

Granted, too much save or die is silly, but a light sprinkling of those 'save or die' rolls in D&D really made for some exciting times. It beats the "I rush my battlemind up and use my Iron Defense ability, knowing fundamentally nothing can hurt me" stuff that is common to 4e.

I've even taken to putting extreme damage effects (on rare occasions) in 4e, where a character might well take 100 points of damage (note--that's still unlikely to be fatal unless the character is already sorely wounded), and much like in D&D, an actual risk of loss seems to add interest to the battles.

"Save or dies" really could still exist since any roll might have lethal consequences - even if explicit effects that kill you (Finger of Death) are out, there's still the possibility of failing a Jump check and falling into the 500' pit. Having a mechanic where you get a reserve of rerolls or something might have been more effective than an outright ban, actually.

4th Ed. removing save or dies wasn't so much any belief on the part of the designers that these are bad (even though they claimed that), so much as that they're a mechanic that causes problems in tandem with   other 4e rules - 4e literally can't do save-vs-death because of Defenses (the attacker rolls, which feels very different subjectively to the player, even with the same probability...) and "Saving Throws" being basically a coin flip.

Really great OP, J_Arcane! Made me understand AD&D in a new light. I'd never thought through the implications of there being caps in AC and stats - the idea being that a game design caps off a value progressing beyond a certain level since the game would go all wonky beyond that value.

The really interesting thing is that no post-AD&D edition addressed this problem satisfactorily. With 3E you get the impression that the designers simply removed number caps - but never worried about the ensuing progression being wonky. 3E high level play is screwed so severely that it's the best demonstration to date we have of a design addressing only half of the equation.
 
Which is ironically also true of 4E. 4E doesn't cap the numbers, but it has them progress steadily. Which is bullshit. If every PC and every monster progresses by simply adding +1 per level to their opposed die rolls (recall, AC means the monster takes 10 on their d20 defense roll), there's no mechanical progression going on in any meaningful sense (the +1 simplifies 4E's actual number progression, but not too much). This successfully avoids the progression from getting wonky, but it actually ceases to be a meaningful progression at all.

So there. AD&D's decision to 'cap' the progression of AC and stat numbers has never, ever, been improved on satisfactorily. In fact, so many people prefer AD&D's way of doing this that they port it over into later editions like 3E.

Quote from: noisms;393217I think there's a real "I know better than the designers" attitude amongst a lot of RPG geeks.

Perhaps because many RPG geeks also create their own rules or house rules. Moreover, in the field, what's really the difference between a "designer" and an amateur? There's not exactly a lot of rigor that goes into creating and publishing a set of rules...

Seanchai

Certainly, I've been a "professional" game designer. It sucks. I'd rather be an "amateur." You have more artistic freedom and the pay is better (because you can spend the time you'd have to spend getting nattered at by corporate in order to secure an actual paycheck from writing RPG material working at a real job).

Every professional RPG writer is just a fanboy whose materials are being purchase by some game company or another. The only advantage to that is gamer cred from the people who still have respect for names they see in the credits of books. But you can get the same creepy adulation releasing material for free on the web. Seriously.

I get more fan mail from my "free" projects than I got from my "professional" projects. Not only do many people "know better than the designers," but I would argue that pretty much anyone whose life path isn't leading them to be a "professional" designer has probably made the right choice at some point.

-Frank