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How Less Choices Make RPG Play Better

Started by RPGPundit, June 06, 2023, 10:16:37 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

Aglondir

Quote from: Chris24601 on June 09, 2023, 11:40:59 PM
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.

Chris,

Which edition do you like? (Not being sarcastic, I'm just not sure from the criteria you provided.)

Chris24601

#76
Quote from: Aglondir on June 11, 2023, 06:07:41 PM
Quote from: Chris24601 on June 09, 2023, 11:40:59 PM
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.

Chris,

Which edition do you like? (Not being sarcastic, I'm just not sure from the criteria you provided.)
The hated and reviled one. The one so many claim isn't even D&D at all... i.e. 4th Edition.

It was the first edition ever where I didn't need a bunch of homebrew and house-ruling to play the type of characters I enjoyed... martial heroes who didn't require magic items to keep up with the spellcasters. Wizards who could let loose with minor spells at-will just like you see them do in most fantasy novels not deliberately spun off of D&D. Warlords to inspire and urge the PCs to keep fighting without needing some pagan warpriest (another thing you literally only see in D&D spin-off media) in the party for healing.

It also had a cosmology that wasn't needless symmetry based on alignment, but of primordials (elementals) vs. gods (astral beings) and light (fey) vs. darkness (shadow)... that was actually usable in play (i.e. no elemental plane of endless 3d10 fire damage per round or negative energy plane that drains a level every round from you... but an Elemental Chaos where the elements all blended together in weird ways that meant even lower tier adventurers could journey into it and a Shadowfell and Feywild that you could accidentally step into at the wrong crossroads just as happened in many myths and legends about fairyland and the lands of the dead. It had its own Titanomachy and eschatology and a more cohesive establishment of the various races and monsters than the Great Wheel had ever provided me.

It wasn't perfect; if it was I'd have never bothered building my own system to take the best parts of it and merge it with elements that worked better; but it was the closest any edition of D&D ever came to providing me with what I enjoyed out of the box (the next closest for me would be 1e Palladium Fantasy; ETA - and it should be noted that we almost immediately house-ruled into something resembling an array for attributes for all the Palladium stuff we played).

Grognard GM

Look, whether you're an enlightened being of higher intelligence, that realizes that more control over char creation can only aid player immersion; or crusty old luddites, sticking with lame old rules just because that's how they did things in dinosaur times, there's something I think we can all unite on...

Namely relentlessly insulting and mocking Chris for liking 4e.
I'm a middle aged guy with a lot of free time, looking for similar, to form a group for regular gaming. You should be chill, non-woke, and have time on your hands.

See below:

https://www.therpgsite.com/news-and-adverts/looking-to-form-a-group-of-people-with-lots-of-spare-time-for-regular-games/

Chris24601

Quote from: Grognard GM on June 11, 2023, 06:47:06 PM
Look, whether you're an enlightened being of higher intelligence, that realizes that more control over char creation can only aid player immersion; or crusty old luddites, sticking with lame old rules just because that's how they did things in dinosaur times, there's something I think we can all unite on...

Namely relentlessly insulting and mocking Chris for liking 4e.
I'm a Conservative Catholic Heterosexual Caucasian Male... I'm used to being insulted and mocked for my beliefs. ;D

Grognard GM

Quote from: Chris24601 on June 11, 2023, 08:06:22 PM
Quote from: Grognard GM on June 11, 2023, 06:47:06 PM
Look, whether you're an enlightened being of higher intelligence, that realizes that more control over char creation can only aid player immersion; or crusty old luddites, sticking with lame old rules just because that's how they did things in dinosaur times, there's something I think we can all unite on...

Namely relentlessly insulting and mocking Chris for liking 4e.
I'm a Conservative Catholic Heterosexual Caucasian Male... I'm used to being insulted and mocked for my beliefs. ;D

4e is a worse hill to die on than Hill 937.
I'm a middle aged guy with a lot of free time, looking for similar, to form a group for regular gaming. You should be chill, non-woke, and have time on your hands.

See below:

https://www.therpgsite.com/news-and-adverts/looking-to-form-a-group-of-people-with-lots-of-spare-time-for-regular-games/

Aglondir

Quote from: Chris24601 on June 11, 2023, 06:39:34 PM
Quote from: Aglondir on June 11, 2023, 06:07:41 PM
Quote from: Chris24601 on June 09, 2023, 11:40:59 PM
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.

Chris,

Which edition do you like? (Not being sarcastic, I'm just not sure from the criteria you provided.)
The hated and reviled one. The one so many claim isn't even D&D at all... i.e. 4th Edition.

It was the first edition ever where I didn't need a bunch of homebrew and house-ruling to play the type of characters I enjoyed... martial heroes who didn't require magic items to keep up with the spellcasters. Wizards who could let loose with minor spells at-will just like you see them do in most fantasy novels not deliberately spun off of D&D. Warlords to inspire and urge the PCs to keep fighting without needing some pagan warpriest (another thing you literally only see in D&D spin-off media) in the party for healing.

It also had a cosmology that wasn't needless symmetry based on alignment, but of primordials (elementals) vs. gods (astral beings) and light (fey) vs. darkness (shadow)... that was actually usable in play (i.e. no elemental plane of endless 3d10 fire damage per round or negative energy plane that drains a level every round from you... but an Elemental Chaos where the elements all blended together in weird ways that meant even lower tier adventurers could journey into it and a Shadowfell and Feywild that you could accidentally step into at the wrong crossroads just as happened in many myths and legends about fairyland and the lands of the dead. It had its own Titanomachy and eschatology and a more cohesive establishment of the various races and monsters than the Great Wheel had ever provided me.

It wasn't perfect; if it was I'd have never bothered building my own system to take the best parts of it and merge it with elements that worked better; but it was the closest any edition of D&D ever came to providing me with what I enjoyed out of the box (the next closest for me would be 1e Palladium Fantasy; ETA - and it should be noted that we almost immediately house-ruled into something resembling an array for attributes for all the Palladium stuff we played).

I wasn't sure if Pundit's most hated edition was 5E (due to Woke) or 4E (due to... 4E... LOL)

I agree that there was much to like about 4E. I prefer 4E's planes over the Great Wheel. The pantheon and the Dawn War is my favorite setup of any edition or setting. "Points of Light" is an excellent premise regardless of the system used. And tactical combat hums like a well-tuned machine.

But the thing that bothered me is that combats took forever. I only played a few games, but if I were to return to it, my instinct would be to halve the HP amounts and healing surges. But that might create unforeseen problems.

Chris24601

Quote from: Aglondir on June 11, 2023, 11:54:34 PM
Quote from: Chris24601 on June 11, 2023, 06:39:34 PM
Quote from: Aglondir on June 11, 2023, 06:07:41 PM
Quote from: Chris24601 on June 09, 2023, 11:40:59 PM
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.

Chris,

Which edition do you like? (Not being sarcastic, I'm just not sure from the criteria you provided.)
The hated and reviled one. The one so many claim isn't even D&D at all... i.e. 4th Edition.

It was the first edition ever where I didn't need a bunch of homebrew and house-ruling to play the type of characters I enjoyed... martial heroes who didn't require magic items to keep up with the spellcasters. Wizards who could let loose with minor spells at-will just like you see them do in most fantasy novels not deliberately spun off of D&D. Warlords to inspire and urge the PCs to keep fighting without needing some pagan warpriest (another thing you literally only see in D&D spin-off media) in the party for healing.

It also had a cosmology that wasn't needless symmetry based on alignment, but of primordials (elementals) vs. gods (astral beings) and light (fey) vs. darkness (shadow)... that was actually usable in play (i.e. no elemental plane of endless 3d10 fire damage per round or negative energy plane that drains a level every round from you... but an Elemental Chaos where the elements all blended together in weird ways that meant even lower tier adventurers could journey into it and a Shadowfell and Feywild that you could accidentally step into at the wrong crossroads just as happened in many myths and legends about fairyland and the lands of the dead. It had its own Titanomachy and eschatology and a more cohesive establishment of the various races and monsters than the Great Wheel had ever provided me.

It wasn't perfect; if it was I'd have never bothered building my own system to take the best parts of it and merge it with elements that worked better; but it was the closest any edition of D&D ever came to providing me with what I enjoyed out of the box (the next closest for me would be 1e Palladium Fantasy; ETA - and it should be noted that we almost immediately house-ruled into something resembling an array for attributes for all the Palladium stuff we played).

I wasn't sure if Pundit's most hated edition was 5E (due to Woke) or 4E (due to... 4E... LOL)

I agree that there was much to like about 4E. I prefer 4E's planes over the Great Wheel. The pantheon and the Dawn War is my favorite setup of any edition or setting. "Points of Light" is an excellent premise regardless of the system used. And tactical combat hums like a well-tuned machine.

But the thing that bothered me is that combats took forever. I only played a few games, but if I were to return to it, my instinct would be to halve the HP amounts and healing surges. But that might create unforeseen problems.
Halving healing surges just halves your adventuring day. Unlike 5e's hit dice which are extra healing, 4E's healing surges are a CAP on healing that only applies to PC's (if you have 7 surges you can only receive healing (for a bit over a quarter of your hit points) seven times between long rests.

Halving hit points would make fights more deadly, however, depending on when you checked out of 4E it may not be the problem you think it as since right around year two/Dark Sun they did a total revamp on monster hit points and damage towards less hit points but more damage and combat expectations from 5 rounds originally to about 3 rounds by the time Dark Sun rolled around.

However, the biggest issue I found to be slowing down combats in 4E was actually something that ties directly into this topic about less choice making play better. Specifically, in play option paralysis.

It's not so bad at first level where you've got two at-will attacks, a once/encounter power, a once/day power, a feat, and probably a class-based feature (like the Paladin's or Ranger's marking feature).

However, by level ten you're up to three different encounter powers, three daily powers, three added utility powers and 5 more feats... so you've gone from keeping track of about 6 exceptions to the normal rules (powers and feats) to 18 things... well beyond what your short term memory can retain, meaning people are constantly having to reference sheets or power cards (and those who refuse to write it down go and flip through the books).

By level 16 you've got a fourth encounter power, two more utilities, four more feats and three paragon path features on top... and in my experience that's where nearly every campaign I've ever played of 4E effectively broke down. A few were able to drag themselves to the end of paragon tier, but it was only sheer determination in the face of too many options to track that got us there.

A related element in the option paralysis that slowed things down was Minor and Triggered actions. Imagine the option paralysis of having to pick through all those options above the first time. Now add in several of them being minor actions (meaning you can do it in addition to your standard and move actions) and triggered (i.e. they happen when another action or effect triggers them).

Players often wasted more time trying to make sure they weren't wasting their minor action each turn than they did in making their standard action, because minors were typically 1/encounter powers so you both wanted to use them, but didn't want to waste the use either.

Now, to be fair to 4E the entire point of Essentials was to correct this. It's classes were more stripped down (more abilities baked into the regular stats instead of being situational) and there were genuinely simple classes like the Knight, Slayer, Thief, Scout, Hunter, Executioner and Elementalist (an actual "I hit it with my spell" simple caster) that had a basic attack, 1-4 uses per encounter of a "power attack" and a few utilities.

But Essentials came too late to save 4E. Only it's diehards were still playing it by then and didn't appreciate the simpler builds... and so were annoyed with WotC over it (only to be thrown under a bus by WotC a year and a half later with "D&DNext/5e" and deliberate mischaracterizations*).

Cutting way back on the option paralysis of so many choices was one of the first things I did with my own system... both by chopping the levels down to 15, reducing the options per level to 1 new thing at a time (4E averaged about 1.5 new things per level), and making many of the options you gain modifications to things you already have.

I also gave every class a default at-will minor action that players could default to if they didn't have a more appropriate one for the situation. This meant most players wouldn't flip through their stack of minor action cards five times... they'd maybe look once at any limited options then go to their default without fretting they were wasting an action they could have taken.

The point is, yes, 4E had its issues, but a lot of the issues were being dealt with (and some were not caused by things that would be assumed) and many successor projects are based on removing those issues entirely.

* One of the most memorable examples being Mike Mearls ragging on 4E for allowing Warlords to "shout people's hands back on." Except 4E had zero rules for dismemberment related to hit point loss... so a Warlord couldn't actually reattach someone's severed hand; at least not without using a magic healing ritual to do it.

But that wouldn't let them crap on 4E to appeal to all the players who'd left for Pathfinder... either that or Mearls was an idiot who didn't even know the system he was in charge of... sorta like how Ed Greenwood when he was briefly brought on for 5e tried to present "Passive Perception" as some new idea for streamlining the game experience when it had been part of 4E from its launch.

Armchair Gamer

Quote from: Chris24601 on June 11, 2023, 08:06:22 PM
Quote from: Grognard GM on June 11, 2023, 06:47:06 PM
Look, whether you're an enlightened being of higher intelligence, that realizes that more control over char creation can only aid player immersion; or crusty old luddites, sticking with lame old rules just because that's how they did things in dinosaur times, there's something I think we can all unite on...

Namely relentlessly insulting and mocking Chris for liking 4e.
I'm a Conservative Catholic Heterosexual Caucasian Male... I'm used to being insulted and mocked for my beliefs. ;D

  I am a Conservative Catholic Cishet White Male who also likes 4E ... and AD&D 2nd Edition, which is nearly as despised. We are not alone. :D

Eirikrautha

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on June 12, 2023, 08:53:18 AM
Quote from: Chris24601 on June 11, 2023, 08:06:22 PM
Quote from: Grognard GM on June 11, 2023, 06:47:06 PM
Look, whether you're an enlightened being of higher intelligence, that realizes that more control over char creation can only aid player immersion; or crusty old luddites, sticking with lame old rules just because that's how they did things in dinosaur times, there's something I think we can all unite on...

Namely relentlessly insulting and mocking Chris for liking 4e.
I'm a Conservative Catholic Heterosexual Caucasian Male... I'm used to being insulted and mocked for my beliefs. ;D

  I am a Conservative Catholic Cishet White Male who also likes 4E ... and AD&D 2nd Edition, which is nearly as despised. We are not alone. :D
Yes... yes you are...
"Testosterone levels vary widely among women, just like other secondary sex characteristics like breast size or body hair. If you eliminate anyone with elevated testosterone, it's like eliminating athletes because their boobs aren't big enough or because they're too hairy." -- jhkim

Omega

I have tried alot of methods and I still like O and BX's system of shuffling points around after rolling.

Alot of bitching about later editions conveniently ignores this little fact. From the start players had some control over chargen.
 
Roll and assign works perfectly fine as you have more freedom of choice. But are still at the whims of fate.
 
Array and point buy work when playing online and I want everyone on the same page. 5e's system works for making the players work to get those big stats.

6e looks to be heading towards appeasing the complainers and now every race will just be generic assign where you want racial bonuses.

Exploderwizard

Quote from: Chris24601 on June 11, 2023, 06:39:34 PM

The hated and reviled one. The one so many claim isn't even D&D at all... i.e. 4th Edition.

It was the first edition ever where I didn't need a bunch of homebrew and house-ruling to play the type of characters I enjoyed... martial heroes who didn't require magic items to keep up with the spellcasters. Wizards who could let loose with minor spells at-will just like you see them do in most fantasy novels not deliberately spun off of D&D. Warlords to inspire and urge the PCs to keep fighting without needing some pagan warpriest (another thing you literally only see in D&D spin-off media) in the party for healing.

It also had a cosmology that wasn't needless symmetry based on alignment, but of primordials (elementals) vs. gods (astral beings) and light (fey) vs. darkness (shadow)... that was actually usable in play (i.e. no elemental plane of endless 3d10 fire damage per round or negative energy plane that drains a level every round from you... but an Elemental Chaos where the elements all blended together in weird ways that meant even lower tier adventurers could journey into it and a Shadowfell and Feywild that you could accidentally step into at the wrong crossroads just as happened in many myths and legends about fairyland and the lands of the dead. It had its own Titanomachy and eschatology and a more cohesive establishment of the various races and monsters than the Great Wheel had ever provided me.

It wasn't perfect; if it was I'd have never bothered building my own system to take the best parts of it and merge it with elements that worked better; but it was the closest any edition of D&D ever came to providing me with what I enjoyed out of the box (the next closest for me would be 1e Palladium Fantasy; ETA - and it should be noted that we almost immediately house-ruled into something resembling an array for attributes for all the Palladium stuff we played).

I had many issues with 4th edition but gave it a good try. I ran a campaign using 4E and at first it was not too bad. Then the hard drive that I had the offline GM tools on died. By that time they were not available for re installation and only the online crap was available. I got a subscription briefly but it was horrible compared to the fairly decent original tools. I run a lot of sandbox homebrew content and found that creating the stats & mechanical bits for that content was just too much like work to be fun. I remember B/X and AD&D adventure prep was fun. At that point I decided my criteria for a tabletop rpg included the ability to prep homebrew content without special software or even a computer to do so, and that game prep should be almost as fun as playing the game. I do enough work at work. I don't need my hobbies to feel like work as well. This meant that a return to old school systems was the fix. I found that 5E was fairly easy to prepare homebrew content for also after giving it a try and we still play that as well as OSR games. Not everyone who is a fan of older systems likes them because they refuse to try anything new.
Quote from: JonWakeGamers, as a whole, are much like primitive cavemen when confronted with a new game. Rather than \'oh, neat, what\'s this do?\', the reaction is to decide if it\'s a sex hole, then hit it with a rock.

Quote from: Old Geezer;724252At some point it seems like D&D is going to disappear up its own ass.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;766997In the randomness of the dice lies the seed for the great oak of creativity and fun. The great virtue of the dice is that they come without boxed text.

Chris24601

Quote from: Exploderwizard on June 12, 2023, 10:57:01 AM
Not everyone who is a fan of older systems likes them because they refuse to try anything new.
I've never claimed otherwise.

I have however had people try to explain how I just haven't tried 'proper' OSR play as if I'd never tried Basic or AD&D before.

Steven Mitchell

#87
Quote from: Omega on June 12, 2023, 10:04:38 AM
I have tried alot of methods and I still like O and BX's system of shuffling points around after rolling.


Of the existing D&D editions, that's my favorite method.  The only thing I didn't completely like about it was that isn't something that necessarily translates well to another edition, with the assumptions it makes about the scale of the attributes. 

When I did my own game, I used something similar for awhile.  Then I discovered I could get 90% of what I really liked about it by allowing the player to swap any two scores after rolling.  It's not perfect, and it leaves some nuance out--but it is so easy to explain to new players, I'm wiling to make that trade.

In the larger subject about choices, this is another thing that matters to me.  I like simple choices with big implications.  It's a lot of control over the kind of character you are going to play while still getting most of the benefits of randomized character ability scores. 

The other two things I address is an equally simple rule for unplayable characters that makes them playable, and the related fact that I have a system for ability score improvements as an integral part of the design.  A big part of the gripe with the randomization is it mattering and being stuck with it.  Make it matter a bit less, and not being stuck, it's a lot more palatable.

Shrieking Banshee

In terms of actual editions of D&D and not spinoff/inspired products: 4e is the best.

If I wanted to run something OD&D-inspired, I would use Kevin's stuff from Sine Nominee. I feel those actually make randomized character creation fun through the use of carrot and not stick. Because it presents it's reasoning for why doing so may be fun and interesting, instead of puffing up the idea as "Liberating you from your smallness".

jhkim

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on June 12, 2023, 11:33:08 AM
Quote from: Omega on June 12, 2023, 10:04:38 AM
I have tried alot of methods and I still like O and BX's system of shuffling points around after rolling.

Of the existing D&D editions, that's my favorite method.  The only thing I didn't completely like about it was that isn't something that necessarily translates well to another edition, with the assumptions it makes about the scale of the attributes. 

When I did my own game, I used something similar for awhile.  Then I discovered I could get 90% of what I really liked about it by allowing the player to swap any two scores after rolling.  It's not perfect, and it leaves some nuance out--but it is so easy to explain to new players, I'm wiling to make that trade.

In the larger subject about choices, this is another thing that matters to me.  I like simple choices with big implications.  It's a lot of control over the kind of character you are going to play while still getting most of the benefits of randomized character ability scores.

What do you see as the benefits of randomization?

I personally prefer randomization when I don't want to have a lot of control over my character. When I want a lot of control over my character, then I'll use non-random methods.

Not that I agree with him - but that's also Pundit's point in the video of the OP. He suggests that not having control over the character is vital to immersion. I just see random-roll as a flavor I sometimes prefer. I'm curious about Pundit's own Lords of Olympus, which is diceless not only for character creation but also for play.