Also, here is how to fix this: minimum requirements.

Dwarves must have STR 9, period. So they are ON AVERAGE stronger than humans, but nobody is picking a dwarf to get extra strength.

Quote from: tenbones on October 10, 2022, 12:08:47 PM
Magic items for me are not gifts to the players. They're items for me to use to kill them or further the machinations of the NPC's. If the PC's *kill* the NPC's/Monsters and take them... what they do with them.

I recognize people walk into games with different styles and agendas. Good GMing is incentivizing the play you want at the player/PC level. Recognize the players who want more social interaction and built their PC's to facilitate that need - FEED THEM. Recognize the Power Gamers that want to crack skulls and pillage gold with their Int 6 Fighter with 20+ Str. FEED THEM.

And then it's further your GM job to make your setting react with utmost fidelity to those actions to represent itself to the party. And the consequences of their choices should matter at all times. Reward/punish them accordingly.

How do you feed both when they're opposing desires though? Or if it's the type of player that just wants to show up and "be" there? Do you have a way to draw those in?

Quote from: Eric Diaz on October 10, 2022, 03:34:49 PM
Also, here is how to fix this: minimum requirements.

Dwarves must have STR 9, period. So they are ON AVERAGE stronger than humans, but nobody is picking a dwarf to get extra strength.

That is true, but nobody really ever minmaxes a race just to get a bonus -- it's to max out the bonus they're already high in. So chances are anyone picking a dwarf is already going to have very high Strength, for instance, and just wants to top it off with more Strength. Someone with low Strength would not pick a dwarf but pick a race that boosts some other attribute like Dexterity that they're already high in.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on October 10, 2022, 07:14:51 PM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on October 10, 2022, 03:34:49 PM
Also, here is how to fix this: minimum requirements.

Dwarves must have STR 9, period. So they are ON AVERAGE stronger than humans, but nobody is picking a dwarf to get extra strength.

That is true, but nobody really ever minmaxes a race just to get a bonus -- it's to max out the bonus they're already high in. So chances are anyone picking a dwarf is already going to have very high Strength, for instance, and just wants to top it off with more Strength. Someone with low Strength would not pick a dwarf but pick a race that boosts some other attribute like Dexterity that they're already high in.

As I understand it, that's the point of this fix. By having racial minimums but not modifiers, it avoids players trying to optimize their characters by boosting their highest stat by choice of race. Mininums and maximums is what Star Wars D6 does, for example. Fantasy Hero has race-based maximums but not minimums.

I think it's a better approach precisely because it avoids picking race just to boost your highest stat.

As a critique, though, from the view of in-game-world logic, it's harder to justify minimums compared to maximums. Logically, for any race, there will be individuals with abilities going down towards effectively zero. Weak dwarves might be less common than weak humans, but they should still exist. There are lots of reasons for low ability - youth, old age, malnutrition, debilitating disease, congenital disability, accidents, etc.

How does using minimums affect race selection in Star Wars? I feel like you would end up with lots of unorthodox combinations instead of thematic ones.

Quote from: jhkim on October 10, 2022, 07:20:45 PM
As I understand it, that's the point of this fix. By having racial minimums but not modifiers, it avoids players trying to optimize their characters by boosting their highest stat by choice of race. Mininums and maximums is what Star Wars D6 does, for example. Fantasy Hero has race-based maximums but not minimums.

I think it's a better approach precisely because it avoids picking race just to boost your highest stat.

Woah, woah, woah, woah. Back up the truck. Is it any better if instead it encourages you to set your highest stat according to race?

Granted, I never played or ran Star Wars each and every week for 10 years straight or anything like that. And I never ran for a party of wookies. But every time I have played or run the game and someone played a wookie, they maxed out Strength. Every time. It seems that having that higher min--or rather the higher max--did in fact incentivize players to putting as many points as possible into that stat.

Likewise, in 1E, the other races differ in not just minimums, but also maximums. A dwarf gets +1 to CON and is allowed to have 19 CON. So if you roll an 18, pick a dwarf, you get that 19 CON which humans can't get. If I translate it to a point-buy system where there are no racial adjustments, instead I just increase Dwarf's min CON by one and allow that 19 for max, then I think players will be just as encouraged to buy their CON up to 19 as they would be to choose a Dwarf after rolling a CON of 18.

I think it's simply incorrect to take the position that this solves anything.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on October 10, 2022, 07:59:01 PM
How does using minimums affect race selection in Star Wars? I feel like you would end up with lots of unorthodox combinations instead of thematic ones.

First of all, I think I know what you're getting at by opposing "unorthodox" with "thematic", but I think it's telling. (I'll talk more about it below as I reply to Lunamancer about halfling paladins.) The opposite of "unorthodox" is "orthodox". To my mind, a halfling mounted warrior character patterned after Bullroarer Took would be very thematic, and in keeping with Tolkien who originated halflings. However, it is also thematic. But going back to the point about Star Wars --

I've only played short adventures of Star Wars D6 rather than any extended campaigns. It worked fine for me, but I prefer for theme and orthodoxy to be primarily handled by the GM and the group, rather than by character creation mechanics. I'll run games with pretty different themes under the same mechanics, and overall I think trying to handle both orthodoxy and game balance in the same mechanic makes both worse.

1) If an RPG makes character creation such that orthodox standards are more powerful, then players have a choice "make a stronger character or a more unorthodox one". A simple example would be some interpretations of GURPS' "Unusual Background" advantage, where the player has to pay more based on how rare the background is rather than how powerful.

2) The trade-off of power vs unorthodoxy has different effect on different players. If I run it, I could get all-orthodox parties where the players all care about optimization, or all-unorthodox if the players aren't optimizing, or a mix where the non-optimized players walk by in the shadow of the more powerful optimized players. I don't prefer how that trade-off works.

3) Personally, as a GM, if I don't really like how unorthodox the PCs are, I'm not going to say "OK, you can play those but only if you're a little less powerful." I'm going to ask the players to change their concepts to fit together better either with each other or with the game world. To me, that is a different question than making the characters balanced.

4) Even in the same game world, campaigns can vary in theme a lot. There can be dark gritty Star Wars, and there can be light-hearted kidsy Star Wars, and many variations thereof.

Quote from: Lunamancer on October 08, 2022, 12:05:56 AM
I have to admit that I am glad you asked me about halfling paladins. If you had instead asked me about the why's of pineapple pizza, you would have had me stumped. But this one's easy.

It's a violation of canon. To me, the greatest offender was dwarf mages. Mind you, I play other fantasy RPGs where you can play spell-slinging dwarfs. I don't have a problem with the concept at all. But 3E tied the rules to setting, and made the default setting World of Greyhawk, which is one of the settings out there that is near and dear to me. Even if you were doing magic-using dwarfs in your homebrew all along, Greyhawk had it's own canon. Dwarfs not being magic-users was part of that.

1) I asked you about halfling paladins in general - and you replied about specific to the World of Greyhawk. It sounds like you were annoyed that 3rd edition changed canon about the World of Greyhawk, but I think the point about unorthodox characters is wider than that.

2) If certain character types don't exist in a game-world, then they shouldn't be an option at all. The rule should be that in that setting, the option isn't available. That's very different from how to balance ability adjustments. Unorthodox characters are ones that don't fit a stereotype and might be rare in the game-world, but are still possible.

3) A better example of an unorthodox character might be gnome cleric. This isn't allowed in AD&D, but exists in the game-world.

4) As an aside, I always felt the 1E rule of human-only for paladin and monk seemed like a meta-game hack. The paladin and the monk aren't from Tolkien - they're from European myth and Hong Kong movies. So there aren't demi-humans in their source material. But logically in a setting like Greyhawk, there isn't an overarching lawful good Christian god who prefers humans over demi-humans. There are polytheistic pantheons and non-human deities are equal to human deities. So why should lawful good and human be the only possible choice of god-touched warrior? Dragon magazine had a bunch of variant paladins and anti-paladins to address this, but they weren't canon, of course.

Quote from: Lunamancer on October 08, 2022, 12:05:56 AM
The point is, if you did something similar, without question the description of things the halfling would be doing and how the human would be described performing the same act in a game mechanics sense (I attack) would be completely different. Presumably, halflings would find a way to use their smaller size to their advantage, which isn't going to look like standing toe to toe facing their opponent head on. To some that could make the halfling appear to lack courage. However, if the halfling just ignored their size advantage, to some that could make the halfling appear to be stupid or unclever. And the paladin is expected to embody all the virtues. Not just pick and choose some.

I'm not saying it's impossible for a halfling to live up to that. I'm just saying I'd have to see it first.

At least in my D&D games, I've had human paladins who would face giants head on, and would look courageous doing so. Given this, it seems consistent that halfling paladins would still face human-size opponents head-on. I rationalize it that size isn't as important in the fantasy world as it is in real life. Otherwise dragons would simply be unstoppable.

How would a human paladin fight a giant in your games? Would they avoid going head-on because they were smaller?

Quote from: Lunamancer on October 11, 2022, 12:09:46 AM

Quote from: jhkim on October 10, 2022, 07:20:45 PM
As I understand it, that's the point of this fix. By having racial minimums but not modifiers, it avoids players trying to optimize their characters by boosting their highest stat by choice of race. Mininums and maximums is what Star Wars D6 does, for example. Fantasy Hero has race-based maximums but not minimums.

I think it's a better approach precisely because it avoids picking race just to boost your highest stat.

Woah, woah, woah, woah. Back up the truck. Is it any better if instead it encourages you to set your highest stat according to race?

Granted, I never played or ran Star Wars each and every week for 10 years straight or anything like that. And I never ran for a party of wookies. But every time I have played or run the game and someone played a wookie, they maxed out Strength. Every time. It seems that having that higher min--or rather the higher max--did in fact incentivize players to putting as many points as possible into that stat.

OK, that's a fair point. I have a lot more experience with Fantasy Hero than with Star Wars D6. In Fantasy Hero, maxing out prime attributes isn't as important as in D&D. I've seen a fair number of mid-strength fighters, because other talents and abilities can be almost as good as strength.

It's possible that maxing out attributes is overly powerful in Star Wars D6 character generation. If so, then they should fix attribute cost. I've only played in short adventures, and a number of those had premade PCs.

In modern point-buy D&D, though, stats don't have linear cost -- which is good, because they shouldn't if 16->18 is worth more than 10->12. In principle, the point cost of a high stat should reflect its utility.

Quote from: jhkim on October 11, 2022, 01:07:43 AM
1) I asked you about halfling paladins in general - and you replied about specific to the World of Greyhawk. It sounds like you were annoyed that 3rd edition changed canon about the World of Greyhawk, but I think the point about unorthodox characters is wider than that.

Well, I think the issue of canon as such is much wider than a single instance of canon being violated. And I'm not sure there's a way to jettison it in the discussion and just speak in the generic tense.

It's one of the things that drive me crazy when people say the old school class/level limits were about game balance. They can even pull a Gygax quote and squeal, "he said it!" And it's like, you gotta use some common sense. You don't go through the trouble of differentiating races in all these ways--different abilities, different class choices, different ways to combine classes, different level limits, different sizes, appearances, predilections, different attribute mins and maxes, and yes, different attribute adjustments--just to arrive at game balance. Game balance could have been much more easily achieved by making them all the same, or at least more similar. Grey goo is peak balance.

No. There's a specific vision driving these things, and that vision is given higher priority than game balance is given. If different DMs have their own vision they want to follow, that's great. Order that pineapple and anchovies pizza. But you don't call up the pizza place and say, "Yes, I would like topping." Going in with no vision at all and just allowing players to mix and match things all willy nilly isn't just another separate and equal version of "muh preferences." It's just generic.

Quote2) If certain character types don't exist in a game-world, then they shouldn't be an option at all. The rule should be that in that setting, the option isn't available. That's very different from how to balance ability adjustments. Unorthodox characters are ones that don't fit a stereotype and might be rare in the game-world, but are still possible.

Yeah, that definitely worked in the AD&D days. You've got Dragonlance and Dark Sun as fine examples of completely different game worlds with difference races, classes, and race/class combos. They allow things that aren't allowed in the Greyhawk setting. But they also disallow things that are allowed in Greyhawk. And we didn't bicker and argue about it. The premise was clear. Different worlds, different rules.

But once you hit 3E and the floodgates were opened, this becomes easier said than done. It can be like trying to get the toothpaste back into the tube. They even said at the time, "If you like the old class/level limits, no one's stopping you from imposing them." Sounds well in good on a message board in theory. It goes over a little differently when players show up excited to try out their new character idea of Tiefling Paladin/Assassin.

Quote3) A better example of an unorthodox character might be gnome cleric. This isn't allowed in AD&D, but exists in the game-world.

It is a feature of the world that certain spiritual leaders do not adventure. Nothing's stopping you from playing non-adventurers. You could run a game where PCs play things like the friendly neighborhood blacksmith. I'm not sure that would be fun for most people. There's no need to green light this in the rules. That's something for the esoteric DM to hash out. I'd done some homebrew stuff for doing that sort of thing myself. Never really had any takers on it. But you can still find remnants in my campaign. Instances where upon reaching a certain (generally low) level, or accomplishing some deed, PCs would be offered an NPC post. Can't really go adventuring anymore after that point. You've got too many duties at home. It's just not for most players.

Quote4) As an aside, I always felt the 1E rule of human-only for paladin and monk seemed like a meta-game hack. The paladin and the monk aren't from Tolkien - they're from European myth and Hong Kong movies. So there aren't demi-humans in their source material.

Well, I really don't think any of it came from Tolkien. When Gary was asked why he stole dwarfs from Tolkien, he responded, "I didn't. I stole them from Norse mythology. Same place Tolkien stole them from." D&D's elfs, however, are very different from Tolkien's elfs, and Gary had once mentioned they were inspired by French myths. The Ranger class was just an elite version of the medieval Forester profession. (Forester is listed as a secondary skill in the 1E DMG, btw.) We didn't have non-humans in real life. But lo and behold, he does allow for half-elf rangers. And then later in UA elfs got the ranger class which I was not happy about. But that's a whole separate side bar.

QuoteBut logically in a setting like Greyhawk, there isn't an overarching lawful good Christian god who prefers humans over demi-humans. There are polytheistic pantheons and non-human deities are equal to human deities. So why should lawful good and human be the only possible choice of god-touched warrior? Dragon magazine had a bunch of variant paladins and anti-paladins to address this, but they weren't canon, of course.

Cue weeping warrior being asked where on this doll God touched him. I don't think god-touched warrior is the correct abstraction for what the Paladin is. Rather the point is that it's some paragon of virtue. And virtue is not just some thing that can be placed in the generic tense and put on the alignment wheel as if to say, "Well, we have good virtues, and we have evil virtues.." No. That's not how alignment worked in 1E. The defining difference between good and evil is good upheld the three enumerated "human" rights whereas for evil, purpose is determinant--you'd step on your own grandmother to get what you were after.

And so Good characters faced more restrictions than Evil characters. Wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction. And there's a lot of truth to that. In almost everything, it's easier to do something wrong than to do something right. It's usually easier to lose at a game than to win. Easier to write a bad story than it is a good story. Easier to sing badly than sing well. Easier to be a bad friend than a good one. But this is, I guess you could say "balanced" by 1E's loyalty system, which had bonuses for being lawful, and bonuses for being good, and they did stack. And the opposite for Chaotic and Evil. And it makes sense. It's a lot harder to trust someone whose ethos is that it's okay to kill you in your sleep.

Here's the upshot. If you're playing a Paladin, and you have to be lawful good, there's two loyalty bonuses right there. And then you're only allowed to associate on the regular with other good characters. There's another bonus for alignment similarity. Another big loyalty bonus for having at least a 17 Charisma. There's a loyalty bonus if at any time you heal one of your men. Paladins got that daily lay on hands. Easy bonus to grab right there. And a bonus for treating your men well and fairly. There are also racial preference modifiers. And humans get the most favorable overall preference ratings on the race preference table.

It all stacks, and it adds up to the fact that a 1E Paladin can very quickly gain henchmen and retainers who are fanatically loyal, and will even remain fanatically loyal--their morale having no chance of breaking--even after they witness the Paladin himself die in combat. They remain fanatically loyal well beyond the grave.

You don't get that when you allow Paladins of all alignments. You don't get that when you allow paladins of all races. You don't get that when you swap out the good guy heal power for the bad guy hurt power. You don't get that from a Paladin who is mean because he was touched by the god of meanie-heads. You don't get that from an evil paladin who's allowed to hang out with good-aligned characters because they're schmucks that can be taken advantage of. So it's not just a philosophical take. There are existing BtB game mechanics reinforcing the very narrow path the Paladin must follow.

Just how touched by their God could these other mock paladins really be if they can't inspire the same fanaticism as the real deal? I mean, when God kissed them, was it just a peck on the cheek or was it full on, open mouth, with tongue. Have the alternative Paladins all been friend-zoned?

QuoteAt least in my D&D games, I've had human paladins who would face giants head on, and would look courageous doing so. Given this, it seems consistent that halfling paladins would still face human-size opponents head-on. I rationalize it that size isn't as important in the fantasy world as it is in real life. Otherwise dragons would simply be unstoppable.

How would a human paladin fight a giant in your games? Would they avoid going head-on because they were smaller?

David faced Goliath head on and delivered a precision strike between the eyes. Interesting that the original meaning of the word "sin" was to miss the mark. David fought the giant without sin, that's for sure. He also didn't try to run between Goliath's legs and Super Mario punch him in the junk. Just bear in mind that by teh rulez, dwarfs, gnomes, and halflings get defensive bonuses against giants because it's assumed they are doing those types of hijinks.

So what about halflings? Well, halfings are really good with slings. So we're off to a good start. If a player playing a halfling wanted to step forward and say, "Hey, I forego the defense bonus I get versus giants. I want to face that giant forthrightly," and with his 4th-6th level cap as a fighter and no chance for exceptional strength managed to triumph, I'd be impressed. And if he was LG, played the character very paladinly up to that point, and otherwise had the stat requirements, I'd let him be a Paladin if that's what he wanted. As I said, I'm not 100% opposed to the idea. It just needs to be proven to me first.

Quote from: jhkim on October 11, 2022, 01:15:23 AM
OK, that's a fair point. I have a lot more experience with Fantasy Hero than with Star Wars D6. In Fantasy Hero, maxing out prime attributes isn't as important as in D&D. I've seen a fair number of mid-strength fighters, because other talents and abilities can be almost as good as strength.

It's possible that maxing out attributes is overly powerful in Star Wars D6 character generation. If so, then they should fix attribute cost. I've only played in short adventures, and a number of those had premade PCs.

In modern point-buy D&D, though, stats don't have linear cost -- which is good, because they shouldn't if 16->18 is worth more than 10->12. In principle, the point cost of a high stat should reflect its utility.

In Star Wars, I don't think the problem is generically one of maxing out your best stat is the key to victory. It's because Strength is used as the stat to resist damage. For the most part it works fine. Damage resistance systems tend to work well in the mid and even low ranges. The problem is when it gets high enough to a certain point, it goes hyperbolic and the character becomes nigh invulnerable. The upper end of the starting Wookie strength range seems to do that while the lower end is just tough but within the range of normal.

But it's still a good example of a game to have on the table. Because in AD&D, most of the benefits for high stats are stacked on the high upper ends, whereas in general the difference between having a  7 and having a 14 is minimal. And of course there's exceptional strength. Those bonuses dwarf the bonuses in the non-exceptional range. So STR kind of does go hyperbolic in AD&D as well.

WotC D&D on the other hand, the benefits are evenly distributed. Every two points. Like clockwork. It's not clear that 16->18 is intrinsically worth more than 10->12 the way it is in AD&D.

I'm at a loss as to why you believe so strongly that mid-strength fighters don't work in D&D.

3d6 in AD&D places 80% of stats in the 7-14 range. I think that helps players get used to normal.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on October 10, 2022, 07:13:58 PMHow do you feed both when they're opposing desires though? Or if it's the type of player that just wants to show up and "be" there? Do you have a way to draw those in?

Ohhh Lordy... I could regale you with *hours and hours* of me dealing with pathologically passive players. I used to think that you could draw any player into the game, even the most passive players. I've done it... but I now realize that some people are just not meant to play certain kinds of games. I also believe now that there are people that are not meant to play TTRPG's. They're there for other reasons...

Let me caveat this (with tacit understanding some people reading this will *not* take this kindly, often on purpose) - *I* don't run simple games. While it may seem that way in moments, my games are not meant for those that just want to show up and throw dice and socialize. This doesn't mean that we're not doing that, but it means that my games have complexity and challenge that **demands** players make choices for themselves and the party that will reveal the PC to the Player in ways they probably never conceived of.

So when players that are passive, show up to my games, sit in the background thinking they're just going to be "the support guy" without any personality beyond the bewildered player when I put the spotlight on them, it can get weird. My goal is always to have the player have that realization of "who their PC actually is in play" vs. what they think the PC is on paper. Words, Actions, Deeds - those things will define your character in my games. But it stuns me how little players connect to their characters conceptually, that when put in the crucible of my settings, how they realize little they thought shit through. Which is *fine* the issue becomes how you adapt to that circumstance.

I have passive players that totally *lock the fuck up*. And I realize, they're simply not built to play my games. It's not them - it's both of us. I'm running MLB Major League games, they're T-Ball Little-League players that have zero intention to ever rise above that. And THAT IS OKAY - I'm just not the GM for them because unless I'm shifting my gears downward I'm not running games for them. I have a close friend that enjoys games I've run for my 12-year old nephews and nieces and simply *cannot* play games with my regular group which consists of his closest friends. It's too much pressure for him.

So if you have those players you need to recognize that, and ask yourself: do I need to be burning energy investing in these people at my table? It sounds harsh, but I cannot cannot cannot (three times!) stress to you as a GM - cut them from your group, or you need to change your game to their level. It's that simple. But you need to be able to recognize those players that can rise to your game and those that can't - and it might not be apparent even after many games and campaigns. And yes, it can get personal.

You have to curate your group for players that really want to play what you're serving up, or you will just be banging your head against the wall for those players and frankly, friendships aside, they're not worth it. Now... all that said, some people equate TTRPG's to being their "social outlet" and they find this idea that casting their friends out of their group to be mean or whatever. Again... *I* am different in that matter. My weekly games are my bowling league - I'm playing for the love of the game, not the love of my friends. I can easily segregate the two and I have. I have close friends that have gotten *really* upset when after years of being the passive player that have dragged games repeatedly get extremely upset when I didn't invite them to the next campaign and replaced them with someone new. And I want to be clear (this might be worthy of another thread!) I don't simply just cut them from the group - I have talks with them constantly outside of the game, emails, DM's etc. I do my due diligence to try and get them to raise their game - but for various reasons they simply don't.

But I insist my friendship with people is *not* contingent on them playing in my TTRPG group. I still invite them over for get-togethers, grilling or whatever, but my TTRPG weekly is my sport and I'm playing to have big games that go for months and years with high-octane fare. It is entirely different than most people's TTRPG experiences, and I do recognize that. Only you as a GM can set the standard of your table when it comes to pathologically passive players.

OKAY... ALL THAT SAID...

When it comes to players that are good for your game that want to do more social stuff than your good players that want to go on Monster Safari... ALL of this has to be handled in "the setup". If you know that you have players that lean hard on doing social activities more than combat, when you set your game up, are you prepared to have intrigue for your game that deals with lots of social interaction? If not... then you need to explain to that player what the gist of the starting point of your game is. Because I run big sandboxes this is not really a problem for me because Murderhoboism isn't really a thing in my games per se. Because I enforce *some* general assumptions of civilization(tm). This doesn't mean I don't have players that make PC's that are Absolute Units of killing mayhem, it means my players understand (through years of gaming with me) that unless they plan on living like a wildman in the woods, the PC's will be living in some socially ordered place where dealing with authorities and other people that aren't adventuring types will be normal. Of course this is a general statement.

And my games *will* have social interaction being a big part of the game, though it might come only between big adventuring spurts, when the PC's make it back for R&R, you better bet your ass I will turn up the social intrigue and players that have PC's built for it, will get it coming to them in spades, ready or not.

Edit: When it comes to drawing players in my routine is the same for all player types: what is their PC built for? What exists in the game I'm about to run that will feed that need? If I'm running some bog-standard fantasy game and one player is PC that wants to be the Social guy, I always do the setup for their characters with them so they have *clear* backgrounds on what function they serve at the point where the game starts. A Bard that is newly graduated and serves as a local entertainer in a frontier town looking for adventures to write new songs and ballads. A Cleric who is newly released novitiate might already have connections (albeit highly dependent on the characters social class/background) in the location where the campaign starts. Their "job" will always be first and foremost to further the aims of their creed and religion. In other words: no player makes contact with the campaign at the start without having "hooks" into the game from the outset. This will all be established at Session Zero. When Session One has started, I'll have paved the road for that character based on the things discussed and negotiated in Session Zero with Chargen. I do this for *everyone*.

So this is an issue of scale - and I recognize not all GM's have the bandwidth for it, especially if you're running dungeon-crawls, or modules etc. The only way to reasonable deal with this dichotomy of player style is to run a sandbox that can encompass all these modes of play. Otherwise you're always going to have dissatisfied players. It's a lot to ask for, I know, but if the GM isn't happy, no one is happy. And I am pretty firm that the GM has to set the tone for the games they want to run and any GM that is skimping on themselves to run games for others is doing everyone a disservice (and let's be real - who *really* enjoys doing something half-assed?).

TL/DR So you either gotta raise your game, or lower it to the level of your players that you can tolerate. And you gotta curate your group.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on October 10, 2022, 07:13:58 PM

Quote from: tenbones on October 10, 2022, 12:08:47 PM
Magic items for me are not gifts to the players. They're items for me to use to kill them or further the machinations of the NPC's. If the PC's *kill* the NPC's/Monsters and take them... what they do with them.

I recognize people walk into games with different styles and agendas. Good GMing is incentivizing the play you want at the player/PC level. Recognize the players who want more social interaction and built their PC's to facilitate that need - FEED THEM. Recognize the Power Gamers that want to crack skulls and pillage gold with their Int 6 Fighter with 20+ Str. FEED THEM.

And then it's further your GM job to make your setting react with utmost fidelity to those actions to represent itself to the party. And the consequences of their choices should matter at all times. Reward/punish them accordingly.

How do you feed both when they're opposing desires though? Or if it's the type of player that just wants to show up and "be" there? Do you have a way to draw those in?

I've got an answer somewhat different than tenbones.  It's not because I disagree with anything he said, either.  Rather, my goals are different, so the actions I need to take to satisfy them are different.  Overall, I'd say that on the continuum of "run your game for anyone that wants to do that game" versus "run a game your friends like", I'm closer to the latter than he is, but probably still closer to the former than most people are.  Which means I'm wiling to make compromises and even cater to casual players--but only up to a point.

A big way that I do so is to set up a game that deliberately allows for casual play and larger parties.  Heck, sometimes a player may be controlling multiple characters.  For most players, an ally (mostly) under your control is going to be slightly more casual than your main PC. So if some of the players are doing the same thing with their PCs, it isn't a killer, usually.  On the other hand, in any game, you only get out of it what you put into it.  In a sandbox that's even more true.  In a game where casual play is tolerated, it's also more true.  So in a mostly sandbox that tolerates casual play up to a point, you can do the math. 

Second, tolerating casual play in some aspects is not necessarily tolerating casual play in all aspects.  The GM has to find their non-negotiable lines, and enforce those.  A line pulled back a ways from hardcore is still a line.  In some ways, it's a harder line to navigate, because players can think binary on such questions--either anything goes or nothing does.  It is difficult to explain to a new player that, "You can screw around this much and get away with it, but you screw around a tiny bit more, sooner or later you are going to get bit."  Worse, most casual players are also even worse than the average person at risk assessment in games, both at understanding the odds and putting them into some kind of context.  So they will take incorrect lessons from both crazy stuff that shouldn't have worked but does and also wild failures that usually would have worked.

If I have a really oddball quirk in this respect, it's that I don't particularly enjoy holding the hands of casual players outside my non-negotiable lines, but I am willing to build an environment with some guard rails and training wheels where they can learn, as long as the more serious players are willing to cheerfully and enthusiastically do most of the day to day lifting on that.  That is, I don't mind at all "training" an experienced player in how to do what I want in that respect, and then seeing that they get something they want out of the process.  All the casual players have to accept is that they may get yanked around some due to not paying attention.  You run your tricycle out past the guard rails into traffic, the world is going to happen the way it would for any other person that did that.  But then, I enjoy the kind of game where a band of misfits somehow triumph despite screwing up a lot. 

All of that probably sounds worse to most serious gamers than it is in practice.  People do get better over time.  It's just slow compared to people who are dedicated.  To extend tenbones bowling league analogy, it doesn't produce topnotch amateur teams where everyone has to stay north of 250 on a score to even stay on the team, and everyone on it is aiming higher than that.  It does get people doing considerably better than the 150-180 that you might get from a moderately coordinated person just messing around.  The big difference is that no one on our team is ever going to even sniff a perfect 300, but we might enjoy hitting some peaks approaching 250.  As it happens, this analogy really suits me, because I was that in-between bowler--capable of sniffing the bottom of the dedicated amateur range when I hung out with those kind of players but not dedicated enough to quite stay in their lanes.  I guess there wasn't a league for me then--too good for the true mucking around, not good enough for the dedicated bowlers, and some of that has translated to what I enjoy in other games.

I can get down with this, Steven.

Somewhere on this forum, years ago, I put a not-kidding-but-amusing analogy of player-types that I still believe very much in.

You can see it HERE

Where I define player-types based on Classic Star Trek bridge crew as archetypes (with Jayne Cobb tossed in there as a sub-class of a Scotty, combat specialist)...

The problem is you can get different variations of power-gamer, social-gamer, PvPer, or whatever in any of these archetypes... but the passive player, the person that isn't *really* there to play, but for ulterior reasons... (and in many cases they themselves are not even aware of it) are the ones I'm *really* talking about. These are the Chekovs.

I can handle casual players - by casual I mean people that show up, aren't obtrusive, do the bare minimum of engagement required (and yes my standards are probably a little higher - but I do my damnedest to get those casuals to par for my course.) These are the Sulus of my gaming groups. The up-and-comers wanting to learn how to play deeper, but simply lack the experience and/or the GM that will let them.

Until I formed this group here where I live in TX, I'd never encountered this type of player: the ones recently identified by scientists that have NO CAPACITY to put themselves or imagine another persons circumstance. I shit you not. It's called Aphantasia, and I ended up with a couple of good friends that played with me, but it was like playing with two mannequins when it came to roleplaying.

Sure they knew the mechanics of a system, and they would roll dice etc. But whenever I tried to engage with them in terms of their characters, *no one* else in the group ever believed that was just Mike and John playing themselves. No matter how hard we tried. And it took *years* of me trying and trying different methods to pull them in - long discussions before the campaign, long discussions between sessions. Nothing worked.

It wasn't until I came upon this condition that I was like HOLY FUCK... that's THEM! Since then both of them have left my group - one I'm still really good friends with. But Jumping Galactus on a Pogo Stick, did they hold our campaigns down. It was like having the Justice League... and Bob from Accounting and Jim from Janitorial Services.

My games are the way they are because of my personal experiences and I'm pushing myself as a GM, it has *nothing* to do with the players per se. So I *fully* expect when I get new players (I have two now) to have eyebrows raised and be hopefully delighted at the freedom I allow, but the consequences can get steep when they walk in with the modern DnD mindset of how things go down. New players I get these days are minefield - they have odd videogame-like conceptions of in-game reality (like there is always a GM intention to anything that comes up in game, almost as if their own agency is invisible to them) Or that all NPC's have motives contrary to the party, or are morons or are to act in ways counter to what their PC's normally would react - because there is a gap between Player and PC engagement. Or they pretend that if they try to metagame I wouldn't notice... etc.

So it's a player experience issue - and I'm trying to give anyone that sits at my table "the next tier" experience, but I definitely moderate it based on what I perceive they can handle. So you're not incorrect in your assessment, we're probably a LOT closer than you might think.

Powergames? Murderhoboes? Passive gamers? Social-gamers. Min-Maxers? Bring them on. I'm a long-hauler, outside of passive players with real issues that have no business at my TTRPG table, I'll happily take them all and I'll make better gamers out of them (ideally) and we'll all have better games. For GM's that have issues with these particular types of powergamers and stat-maxers... I simply advise to try and extend the scope of your games where those proclivities do not give them any advantage and play deeply there AS WELL as in combat where they shine.

Hey, I remember that list!

I know a few people that you described who basically play themselves. Honestly I prefer it because the attempt to play other things end up painful and it's pretty funny half the time when they are themselves.

What about these "casual" players though? The ones you describe as Sulus. To me those are the ones that are there to play the game, but only want to put the bare minimum of investment to engage -- how do you make THEM engage more? I've tried a variety of tactics and strategies and they actively resist me, as if they literally come to play but don't want to play. All I can end up doing in the end is just playing "around" them, investing in the other players and letting them engage as much as they want while the rest of us get on with the game.

Nothing is more bland to a rpg or game when everyone is equal.  No one wants to play a game where an average halfling can beat an average orc at arm wrestling 50% of the time.  Having demi-humans having different stats than humans for instance, helps to break up munchkinism.  If a species gets a certain bonus that is useful but would be a bit broken for a class and they have bad stats for said class, it helps to work as a counter.  I personally like asymmetric  races.

The other thing to think of, this whole stink about stats for species came about by people who would look you square in the eye and tell you that you are a bigot for stating the Homo Sapiens were more intelligent while Neanderthals were stronger.  Those same nimrods does the exact same thing for D&D "races" because TSR removed the term demihumans and used race.  Race is not the proper term for the species in D&D.  If someone looks you in the eye and tells you a Tortle and a human are the same Species, please get them tested for Alzheimer's.

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on October 12, 2022, 01:20:14 AM
Nothing is more bland to a rpg or game when everyone is equal.  No one wants to play a game where an average halfling can beat an average orc at arm wrestling 50% of the time.  Having demi-humans having different stats than humans for instance, helps to break up munchkinism.  If a species gets a certain bonus that is useful but would be a bit broken for a class and they have bad stats for said class, it helps to work as a counter.  I personally like asymmetric  races.

The other thing to think of, this whole stink about stats for species came about by people who would look you square in the eye and tell you that you are a bigot for stating the Homo Sapiens were more intelligent while Neanderthals were stronger.  Those same nimrods does the exact same thing for D&D "races" because TSR removed the term demihumans and used race.  Race is not the proper term for the species in D&D.  If someone looks you in the eye and tells you a Tortle and a human are the same Species, please get them tested for Alzheimer's.

There isn't anything human about a tortle though, demi or otherwise.