Basically what I've learned from this thread is that some people cannot differentiate blatant hyperbole in jest to illustrate a point from 100% pure seriousness, and also that RPGs are not just games, but a raison d'etre. Those two views seem to have a massive amount of overlap.

No it doesn't

Quote from: Grognard GM on June 06, 2023, 11:49:40 AM
This entire argument is so alien to how I make characters. I mean sure, players that are uncreative/power gamers could maybe get more emersion from builds they don't choose, but I like my GM to respect my abilities enough to let me loose.

What abilities are those? Because 'charop' is not an ability that helps anyone but yourself. In fact, it generally annoys/harms/ruins the rest of the group depending on how much you do it.

Quote from: Theory of Games on June 07, 2023, 06:56:40 PM
Pundit must have been smoking that 'Godfather OG' when he formulated this video 

Because he's wrong. Role-playing games are about taking on the characteristics of another being. 'Character' involves mental/moral aspects of being. So - if I have less options regarding what that other being's characteristics will be, I'm limited in exactly who/what that being can/will be.

Comparison: various versions of D&D/WotC Game™ offer background characteristics which is fun. But, the gap between what those games offer and what a system like GURPS offers is expansive. Galactic. Even.

Let us consider another game: Football (not soccer). When they were just running around and kicking the ball it was cool, but when they gained the option to pass the ball the whole thing took off like a Marine on payday.

I know this idea is revolutionary, probably get me burned at the stake, but: MORE IS BETTER.

Shit, if less was better, Gary never would've done all the BECMI & AD&D splat. He knew what he was doing. And it shows how stupid WotC is since they haven't dumped a billion setting and kit books on the market. "D&D is under-monetized." Really? Wonder why.

Pundit only makes sense here if the world was still stuck playing Chainmail or OD&D. THEN, you could try to say "Oh yeah this really limited BS is the apex of gaming, people!"

If you have all the options to decide what you want to be in an RPG, and no option is prevented to you, and you can make literally anything you could think up, then the one thing that is limiting you is your own Ego. But that's far worse than any number of rules, because WHATEVER YOU PICK it will just end up being some kind of projection of your own ego. You will only be able to create what you are capable of thinking up, and you will never ever end up creating anything that you wouldn't have thought up.

Randomization adds an outside factor. It is God playing dice with the universe. It forces us to have to adjust to things we wouldn't have thought up. So it is much more liberating. It  liberates you from your own smallness.

Quote from: RPGPundit on June 09, 2023, 09:16:31 PM

Quote from: Grognard GM on June 06, 2023, 11:49:40 AM
This entire argument is so alien to how I make characters. I mean sure, players that are uncreative/power gamers could maybe get more emersion from builds they don't choose, but I like my GM to respect my abilities enough to let me loose.

What abilities are those? Because 'charop' is not an ability that helps anyone but yourself. In fact, it generally annoys/harms/ruins the rest of the group depending on how much you do it.

I'll admit to being a bit of a power gamer myself. That said, I think so long as the goal is to help the party and build a character/concept effectively, system knowledge can be used for good. Not that I have a problem with random assignment or with pregenerated and assigned characters/parties. I guess charop isn't necessarily system mastery and responsible decision-making, though.

Also, on that second post of yours, that's kind of part of why I hate the idea of fudging dice. It takes away the randomness and game part of the adjudicated rpg. There's something to be said for randomness and its contribution to honest gaming, for sure.

Quote from: RPGPundit on June 09, 2023, 09:16:31 PM

Quote from: Grognard GM on June 06, 2023, 11:49:40 AM
This entire argument is so alien to how I make characters. I mean sure, players that are uncreative/power gamers could maybe get more emersion from builds they don't choose, but I like my GM to respect my abilities enough to let me loose.

What abilities are those? Because 'charop' is not an ability that helps anyone but yourself. In fact, it generally annoys/harms/ruins the rest of the group depending on how much you do it.

Since your arguments are just stating your views as fact, I'll just say you're wrong. Saying less choice is freeing is some real "war is peace" stuff.

Quote from: RPGPundit on June 09, 2023, 09:16:31 PMRandomization adds an outside factor. It is God playing dice with the universe. It forces us to have to adjust to things we wouldn't have thought up. So it is much more liberating. It  liberates you from your own smallness.

I've said it once and I'm sure I'll say it again; in every other game, players who spend time learning and mastering the game are assets, not liabilities. Only in RPGs do we call them "power gamers" and view them as a problem. RPGs with a power-gaming problem focus too much on using RNG to emphasize the difference between PC and player; it deflects all the system mastery effects into character creation, which is one of the most jarring places to put differences like that because instead of creating a learning environment where one player learns from another...one PC is permanently stronger than another.

This is a permanent defect in the D&D RPG paradigm. Yeah, you can fix it, but doing so means leaving D&D behind (possibly encountering other problems.)

Quote from: RPGPundit on June 09, 2023, 09:32:13 PM

If you have all the options to decide what you want to be in an RPG, and no option is prevented to you, and you can make literally anything you could think up, then the one thing that is limiting you is your own Ego. But that's far worse than any number of rules, because WHATEVER YOU PICK it will just end up being some kind of projection of your own ego. You will only be able to create what you are capable of thinking up, and you will never ever end up creating anything that you wouldn't have thought up.

Randomization adds an outside factor. It is God playing dice with the universe. It forces us to have to adjust to things we wouldn't have thought up. So it is much more liberating. It  liberates you from your own smallness.

Player characters are extensions of the player's ego by their nature. I get the argument that RNG-creation will encourage players to play characters they never would have, but it isn't like that breaks the connection between the  player's ego and the PC's ego.


Let me ask a general question: would you want to play a game where you randomly rolled for leveling up options? Why is leveling up different from character creation when presumably the PC existed before the game began.

From my point of view, this is really a question of what flaws you're willing to tolerate. D&D-paradigm games all enable power-difference between player characters. If you roll for stuff, it's an exercise in gambling. If you use a set option like point-buy or a set array, then power-gaming becomes an issue...but power gaming was always going to become an issue. You give the power-gamer 3-5 level ups and yeah, their character may have been RNG at the start, but that's not true, anymore.

And then there's the question of sub-par roleplay because players don't want to leave their shells. Meh. Roleplay is a skill players learn with time and effort, so just throwing them into a completely alien character probably won't help them learn. It could, but it could also be counter-productive. It's not something where one size fits all, but I can see one size fitting set applications well, and even in the case of generics, one size can fit most players comfortably.

Quote from: RPGPundit on June 09, 2023, 09:32:13 PMRandomization adds an outside factor. It is God playing dice with the universe. It forces us to have to adjust to things we wouldn't have thought up. So it is much more liberating. It  liberates you from your own smallness.

Chutes and Ladders: The Enlightened Mans RPG.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on June 09, 2023, 10:40:00 PM

Quote from: RPGPundit on June 09, 2023, 09:32:13 PMRandomization adds an outside factor. It is God playing dice with the universe. It forces us to have to adjust to things we wouldn't have thought up. So it is much more liberating. It  liberates you from your own smallness.

Chutes and Ladders: The Enlightened Mans RPG.

Okay, admittedly that was rather hilarious.

Still, RPGs without randomization tend to be either raw tactical exercises or left entirely to the whims of whatever the DM/collaborative storygroup/author feels like today. Or at least that's my understanding based on what I can think of satisfying that premise at the moment.

Quote from: jhkim on June 09, 2023, 07:01:54 PM

On the one hand, sure, nearly everyone could broaden their tastes by trying a greater variety of games. But taken too far, this argument is a generic defense of any game feature. i.e. People who say they don't like classes just haven't played the right class-based game for them. Or people who say they don't like point-buy just haven't played the right point-buy game for them. etc.

I'd say most people have a decent handle on their own tastes in games. I'll sometimes pitch things like "c'mon, give it a try" - but I don't push very hard.

It's not about "like".  It's about whether something can work or not.  I don't much "like" generic systems anymore, for various reasons not germane to this topic.  I've never said that generic systems can't work for other people.  Just that they don't work for me, for reasons. 


It's exactly the same way that some people confuse "I don't like armor as hit avoidance" with "armor as hit avoidance is this horribly stupid thing that nobody should ever use, and anyone that says that they do is mistake or outright lying or some caught up in nostalgia that they can't see what they really don't like". 

3.5 is the version of D&D I have most familiarity with.

Really, take my opinions with a grain of salt. D&D is not a system I have spent a lot of time with and my advice would cut VERY deeply into the system, enough that you would have to make sweeping changes. What I would make  is arguably no longer D&D, and it would probably be easier to build from scratch than to build with the D&D foundation.

The core problem with D&D is that it takes absolutely no regard for the time it takes to implement a mechanic at the table. Ttable time is the biggest opportunity cost there is, so every saving throw and missed attack and confirmed crit roll which didn't need to happen burns time which players could have spent roleplaying out of combat or in another encounter. This is why all editions of D&D are at least somewhat slow. With this in mind, I would discard most saving throws in favor of forfeiting actions. You wouldn't be "on fire" and need to roll to save, you would have "tier 3 fire" and need to spend a major action to clear it or a minor action to reduce it to tier 2 fire. Because this both gets rid of the saving roll and the player loses actions to reduce or remove the effects, the system's speed will notably increase. I would say that saving throws should be for spectacular and memorable events, like death saves. If it doesn't make sense to penalize the actor at least a minor action just to make the save, it doesn't make sense to make a saving roll.

I make no secret I absolutely revile having both ability scores and modifiers, but I really don't know what to do about that because WotC baked both of them into the game so deeply. If the game used ability scores properly you wouldn't need modifiers at all and vice versa.

But the bottom line I have is to just not let players play with dice needlessly because it burns up too much time.
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3rd edition added so much needless complexity that chewed up time. I agree with that, having run and played quite a bit of it. It is one of many reasons why I prefer B/X as my favorite version of D&D. The original game designed combat to move and be resolved quickly so that exploration and interaction could resume. By the time 3rd edition came around the whole idea and basis of the game with treasure won providing the bulk of XP had been ditched in favor of XP for combat encounters being the center of play. At the same time combat was being made the core of play about a hundred different things were added to make that process more complicated and chew up more game time. Set piece encounters became the norm and at higher levels an entire gaming session was easily spent on a single combat encounter.

All of that baggage and wasted time is why I like B/X . Character generation takes about 15 minutes and play moves quickly, not weighed down with feats, long skill lists, tons of action types in combat and npc statblocks that are a pain to prepare. I suppose it would be called D&D lite these days but back when learned how to play it it was simply D&D.

Quote from: RPGPundit on June 09, 2023, 09:32:13 PM
Randomization adds an outside factor. It is God playing dice with the universe.

"God does not play dice with the universe." - Albert Einstein

Not everyone is looking to be "liberated" from their preferences, particularly when they've lived long enough to figure out what their preferences are by doing enough of everything to figure out what you do and don't like.

Because I've tried all the RNG I've cared to over four decades and found little to no enjoyment in any variety. I've looked at what you consider enjoyable and would honestly prefer sitting alone at home watching reruns to your "liberation."

My experience tells me RNGs don't encourage creative anything... players just pick whichever class best fits the results and if they really can't stand the PC they suicide them at the earliest opportunity for another spin on the RNG lotto machine... which just wastes everyone's precious time when you've only got a few hours a week to actually run or play something because of everyone's real lives.

There's nothing creative in "my Intelligence is my highest score, I guess I have to play a wizard again." Having a PC you don't have any investment in because you had no real decisions to make in creating them isn't going magically make people invest themselves further into a game.

It works for you, and I'm happy it works for you, but its not for me. Not everyone likes the same things. There is no one size fits all method of gaming that will appeal to everyone.

I've got four decades of gaming under my belt so don't bother with any sort of appeal to my inexperience... "real socialismRNG character generation hasn't been tried yet." Uh huh, sure.

The OSR playstyle is not for me. It wasn't 35 years ago and it certainly isn't now. There's only one edition of D&D that ever truly spoke to me (martial heroes in light armor with codified mechanics for doing more than "I hit it with my sword"? Spellcasters whose magic works like it does in most fantasy stories? Yes please) and its the one I know you most hate.

That alone should be proof enough that people are so different that your claim to having some revealed truth that will be a panacea to all gamers if they'd just try it is just silly.

Quote from: KindaMeh on June 09, 2023, 10:51:16 PM

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on June 09, 2023, 10:40:00 PM

Quote from: RPGPundit on June 09, 2023, 09:32:13 PMRandomization adds an outside factor. It is God playing dice with the universe. It forces us to have to adjust to things we wouldn't have thought up. So it is much more liberating. It  liberates you from your own smallness.

Chutes and Ladders: The Enlightened Mans RPG.

Okay, admittedly that was rather hilarious.

Still, RPGs without randomization tend to be either raw tactical exercises or left entirely to the whims of whatever the DM/collaborative storygroup/author feels like today. Or at least that's my understanding based on what I can think of satisfying that premise at the moment.

You can have randomization in play without requiring it in character generation.

Personally, as a GM, I like to have my players talk out what they're going to play amongst themselves and encourage them to create connections between their PCs to give context to why the party is together (I always start with the group already formed) and what they might hope to accomplish by adventuring together.

Random generation is pretty anathema to that approach, particularly if the players hit upon a concept they mutually like... like one group decided they would all be travelling entertainers. Another was they'd all be non-magic human members of an urban gang trying to grow their territory (this was 4E so the warlord was available as a class for hit point recovery and enough options among fighter, ranger, rogue and warlord for all five players to define themselves as individuals.

Quote from: Brad on June 09, 2023, 07:58:08 PM
Basically what I've learned from this thread is that some people cannot differentiate blatant hyperbole in jest to illustrate a point from 100% pure seriousness, and also that RPGs are not just games, but a raison d'etre. Those two views seem to have a massive amount of overlap.

I AM the 3d6 straight down!

Nah. I'm not that cool.

I think Pundit makes a lot of good points in the video. I enjoy both the more random-class based approach and the more point build approach. I see them as both perfectly functional so long as you are aware of the limits, strengths and downsides of each. But I have often found people will sometimes dismiss randomness or dismiss classes as limiting, when the limits are what make them good (much more so than they are of point buy). That may just be the waters I travel in. Not sure what attitudes would look like if you took a poll

Both more choices and fewer choices has its pros and cons. Even OS D&D lets you choose race and class (with some limitations). And it is not impossible to "change your stats" in real life with training, study, etc. - although there are soem obvious limitations.

It is fun to play a PC out of your comfort zone and its also fun to play exactly the PC you want.

I do think players are a bit spoiled and sometimes unable to try the first option, however.