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Maybe it's me and this is simply a case of yelling at clouds, but I started noticing a curious trend in recent years: younger players seem to be heavily averse to everything that requires mechanics/game principles slightly more complex than a couple of (single) dice rolls and single digit sums.
In the more extreme cases, even that is regarded as "too much"; just to make a couple of memorable examples from r/rpg: one guy lamenting that Savage Worlds is "an extremely math heavy system" (roll two dice, keep the highest and if it's 4 or more you're good, with modifiers rarely going over a single digit is apparently the new defition of "math heavy") and another proclaiming that the Witcher TTRPG crafting system is "extremely crunchy" (the system being find or buy a recipe, find the correct materials and then roll one d10 plus one number against a fixed difficulty).

Anyone else noticed the trend or am I imagining things ?

Maybe regarding the math, but my impression is that a lot of players now demand huge amounts of complexity regarding character options and rules for action resolution. Just look at how many people find something like 5e too loosey-goosey (despite being way more complicated than your average OSR game) and recommend Pathfinder 2e as an alternative. I always see people complaining about being forced to make a ruling instead of having a meticulously outlined procedure to follow. I know that's not the same as number crunching, but to my mind is far more complex.

A little bit of column A, same with column B.

People are generally aware of what they do and do not like.  They are much less capable of understanding why, and the exact particulars.  It's easy to blame things that aren't really the root of the problem.  Complexity diminishes somewhat with use, and that in turn relates to what complexity you've dealt with in other areas.  Those of us old enough to have spent most of our math classes not being allowed to use a calculator, or only use it for limited things, have had far more opportunities to make some math rote--almost reflex.  Then we played games that used those same skills, and honed them accordingly. 

Then there's a learning curve associated with understanding those whys and particulars of what makes a game hum and what doesn't.  It's not a straight line, either.  It's easy to forget all the dead ends we went down learning this stuff.  There's always been people that had a bad understanding of complexity in general.  When you've been through that discussion N times, N+1 starts to look a little stupid, and you might want to yell at clouds. :D

Also, people who complain about THAC0 because subtraction is *hard*.

My general experience is that:

(1) My younger players like the complexity of character creation (e.g. 5E over 1E D&D)

(2) My younger players equate rules mastery with game mastery. (They feel like they are supposed to know the rules and knowing better than each other becomes a thing of which they are proud.)

Quote from: cavalier973 on April 14, 2023, 07:47:14 AM
Also, people who complain about THAC0 because subtraction is *hard*.

THAC0 just sucked balls and calculating the number needed to hit someone in HERO/Champions was not far behind.

Those designers just loved making combat matrices because of reasons. The only resolution matrix that I've seen as absolutely necessary and actually followed logarithmic logic is the CHART in Ascendant (and even then, I had to have multiple people, including the author, explain the math behind the numbers.)

You might be right about the trend.

I'm not exactly a "young" player, but I used to play GURPS and all kinda of games and now I only play simpler stuff (well, my own B/X neoclone, which is slightly fiddlier than B/X itself).

All my players have jobs and families and we are not into fiddly rules anymore, nobody got time for that.

We tried 5e and everybody forgot half their features by level 10.

OTOH... 5e and PF2 are still very popular.

Also, I agree that most of the old school charts are completely useless and made obsolete by Target 20, etc.

I complain about THAC0 because I dislike descending AC and do like consistency. Bigger bonus is better bonus not do I want high or low this time. Not hard, but an unnecessary extra.

I do find players abstinent to learning new systems and insisting on mastering their favored rule system while struggling to answer "what do you do" unless looking for the biggest bonus on the character sheet.

And no, I do not consider d20 +1 scavenger hunt, recalculating anything Mekton, or resolving a turn in Car Wars to be fun. Roleplaying is about making decisions not computing the same calculation over and over again. I have a machinery design textbook for that,

When the old game systems were king, with all of them being the first to define the hobby or try new mechanics, people were willing to embrace byzantine subsystems, multitude of charts, and complicated mechanisms. Over time, the evolution of game design has shown us that all those fiddly bits don't make for a better game and aren't necessary to produce satisfying results. So a newer player, much later to the hobby, reasonably sees no need to put up with having a different chart and a different mechanic for each of six Thief skills or across various game situations. We older gamers, who grew up on AD&D and loved the options of ICE's chart-o-rama supplements when they were new, have enough familiarity to not be bothered by it.

I have gamed since about 1980, and picked up OSE the other day and flipped through the character classes and saw the various different ways that different skills/powers/features work, and said "Hell, no," and put it back down. I am not incapable of playing these games, I just see no reason to do so. I know from 40 years of gaming experience that AD&D's hit matrices and elaborate Thief skills charts are unnecessary crunch that add little to nothing to a d20 task resolution system.

Young people aren't dumb, just less tolerant. And with so many games and so many other gaming options, why should they be willing to be otherwise? And my players and I, all of whom are busy professionals with careers and families, don't want to spend the time in-game looking up rules and charts and relearning some of this stuff. Neither do young people.

Games like DCC are sort of the exception-that-proves-the-rule, because while it is chart heavy, those charts add most of the game's flavor and are a brilliant exercise in creativity. Absent that, why should I want charts for everything my character wants to do?

Quote from: GamerforHire on April 14, 2023, 09:18:05 AM
When the old game systems were king, with all of them being the first to define the hobby or try new mechanics, people were willing to embrace byzantine subsystems, multitude of charts, and complicated mechanisms. Over time, the evolution of game design has shown us that all those fiddly bits don't make for a better game and aren't necessary to produce satisfying results. So a newer player, much later to the hobby, reasonably sees no need to put up with having a different chart and a different mechanic for each of six Thief skills or across various game situations. We older gamers, who grew up on AD&D and loved the options of ICE's chart-o-rama supplements when they were new, have enough familiarity to not be bothered by it.

I have gamed since about 1980, and picked up OSE the other day and flipped through the character classes and saw the various different ways that different skills/powers/features work, and said "Hell, no," and put it back down. I am not incapable of playing these games, I just see no reason to do so. I know from 40 years of gaming experience that AD&D's hit matrices and elaborate Thief skills charts are unnecessary crunch that add little to nothing to a d20 task resolution system.

Young people aren't dumb, just less tolerant. And with so many games and so many other gaming options, why should they be willing to be otherwise? And my players and I, all of whom are busy professionals with careers and families, don't want to spend the time in-game looking up rules and charts and relearning some of this stuff. Neither do young people.

I think this is a sound theory.

I'd add that games have evolved by simplifying or dropping mechanics that are unnecessarily complicated. This is a slow process because you needs lots of people play testing the system to figure out what's unnecessary.

I like crunch where it matters, but I also have enough experience to tell when a game is being crunchy for the sake of being crunchy. Do I really need to roll 3 skill checks to cook a pot of stew, The Dark Eye? Was there really no simpler way to do this?

A lot of system complexity is a case of "If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter." It takes years of play testing in the wild to figure it out.

Younger players won't know this from experience, but perhaps they bring fresh eyes and "We've always done it this way" does not resonate with them.

Quote from: Palmer Eldritch on April 14, 2023, 05:56:29 AM
Maybe regarding the math, but my impression is that a lot of players now demand huge amounts of complexity regarding character options and rules for action resolution. Just look at how many people find something like 5e too loosey-goosey (despite being way more complicated than your average OSR game) and recommend Pathfinder 2e as an alternative. I always see people complaining about being forced to make a ruling instead of having a meticulously outlined procedure to follow. I know that's not the same as number crunching, but to my mind is far more complex.

Could not have said it better. The general trend in mainstream RPG design has been towards less math, but more rules and options. The history of the 5 AD&D Editions would be a great illustration of that, but there are other examples, as well.

Funny thing is I do think there are demographic trends in RPG preference, but I think the determining factor is not patience or mathematical ability. It's free time.

Young gamers (highschool through late 20s, roughly) tend to have a lot of free time (and disposable income) to devote to their hobbies, so they're happy to spend hours pouring over supplements and splat books, picking their build out of all the hundreds of options. D&D 3rd, 4th and 5th, Pathfinder, WFRP 4th, etc. are all great for them.

Gamers in their "prime" (30s and 40s) tend to be much busier. They have full-time jobs, mortgages, kids etc. They don't want complex math or lots of options to account for, they just want to get the most out of their play time. A lot of them seem to favor very rules light games, whether it's the PBTA/Blades-in-the-Dark school, or the Black Hack/ICRPG/BoL school.

Older gamers (say 50s and up) are back to having free time. Their kids are probably grown, they're more comfortable in their jobs, a lot of them are even retired. So, they're ready to go back to complex games, and they're more likely to go for things like AD&D or Hackmaster. 

Obviously this is just trends, and I might be projecting (since I'm right in that middle category), but that's my theory.

Quote from: Vestragor on April 14, 2023, 05:42:38 AM
Maybe it's me and this is simply a case of yelling at clouds, but I started noticing a curious trend in recent years: younger players seem to be heavily averse to everything that requires mechanics/game principles slightly more complex than a couple of (single) dice rolls and single digit sums.
In the more extreme cases, even that is regarded as "too much"; just to make a couple of memorable examples from r/rpg: one guy lamenting that Savage Worlds is "an extremely math heavy system" (roll two dice, keep the highest and if it's 4 or more you're good, with modifiers rarely going over a single digit is apparently the new defition of "math heavy") and another proclaiming that the Witcher TTRPG crafting system is "extremely crunchy" (the system being find or buy a recipe, find the correct materials and then roll one d10 plus one number against a fixed difficulty).

Anyone else noticed the trend or am I imagining things ?

I'm an older gamer (over 50) and I'm against "math heavy" systems. A lot depends on the group. The people I play with all tend to really, really like the role-playing aspect. They like the roll-playing part too, but don't want them to get in the way of each other.

It isn't that the math is too difficult - it is that it slows everything down and/or it is too much like work. Playing VTT helps a lot to keep it from slowing stuff down. But everyone role-plays in combat too. And if the mechanics require too much attention, they get in the way of that.

All of us can do the math. My wife is a bioinformatician. I'm a software developer with bioinformatics/statistics training. We have a logistics person, a scientific publisher, and similar in the group. We do math for a living.

We don't want to do math for fun.

Sounds like I need to get our homebrew polished and published. Everything is single die opposed rolls, using the 4 though 20 sided dice. Sizes go up and down depending on things. (We use percentiles for random stuff - I'm collecting XXX. Are there any XXX in the room? GM rolls percentile. You try to meet or beat the roll.)

Quote from: finarvyn on April 14, 2023, 08:27:32 AM
My general experience is that:
(1) My younger players like the complexity of character creation (e.g. 5E over 1E D&D)

Do they like the complexity or the ability to create exactly the character they want?

Generally, I've seen people like the extremes. I have a concept, and I want to play that concept. Or, I have a concept I'm going to try for, but I'm playing Traveller, so who knows what I'll end up with?

I like both. The middle is sometimes restrictive, unless you house rule or buy one of the bazillion splat books for whatever system that adds some extra class setup that is closer to what you want.

As I've said elsewhere, the longer I play, the more I demand a payoff for the complexity.  I'm picky about it.  Since I'm usually a GM, that demand extends to what makes my life easier when working with the players, too--a big part of which is when they manage their characters.  If X is a thing that takes the typical player in my games 2 minutes to navigate, then I'm not only comparing it to some simple scale but also what else that player could be doing with that 2 minutes that would better serve the game. 

Then consider that some complexity is providing a great payoff--in ways that my particular group doesn't value.  So nothing wrong with it, per se, it's just not a good choice for us.  Other options might flip that.  The majority of my players want certain types of customization for their characters in the mechanics, and they are willing to invest some attention into that.  Note that it has to be the kind of customization that they value, not just any old thing.  5E was a moderately inadequate fit in that regard.  Lots of choices complicating the thing for which they had no interest. 

Quote from: Vestragor on April 14, 2023, 05:42:38 AM
Maybe it's me and this is simply a case of yelling at clouds, but I started noticing a curious trend in recent years: younger players seem to be heavily averse to everything that requires mechanics/game principles slightly more complex than a couple of (single) dice rolls and single digit sums.
In the more extreme cases, even that is regarded as "too much"; just to make a couple of memorable examples from r/rpg: one guy lamenting that Savage Worlds is "an extremely math heavy system" (roll two dice, keep the highest and if it's 4 or more you're good, with modifiers rarely going over a single digit is apparently the new defition of "math heavy") and another proclaiming that the Witcher TTRPG crafting system is "extremely crunchy" (the system being find or buy a recipe, find the correct materials and then roll one d10 plus one number against a fixed difficulty).

Anyone else noticed the trend or am I imagining things ?

Yes I am seeing the trend as well.   

It's crazy to say that Savage Worlds is too much.  It's the easiest to learn and easiest system to teach people.   I have taught tons of people who have never used the system how to use it.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on April 14, 2023, 08:52:52 AM
You might be right about the trend.

I'm not exactly a "young" player, but I used to play GURPS and all kinda of games and now I only play simpler stuff (well, my own B/X neoclone, which is slightly fiddlier than B/X itself).

All my players have jobs and families and we are not into fiddly rules anymore, nobody got time for that..

Totally agree.  Used to play and run complicated systems (including the Hero System, the mother of complicated math driven systems) but like you with the little time I have to game, I want to get the most out of that time.

Give me Advanced Squad Leader!

Quote from: Cathode Ray on April 14, 2023, 10:47:02 AM
Give me Advanced Squad Leader!

When I was in high school, ASL and SFB were my go-to games. Chivalry & Sorcery was my ideal RPG, but I usually settled on AD&D with all the combat options. Making characters with Champions and robots/spaceships with GURPS was a fun lunchtime activity. MERP was too simple, so I replaced most of it with Rolemaster. Literally the more complex the system, the more interested in it I was. Maybe it was the calculus classes or something.

Now, IDGAF, I just want to play something simple. I don't have time for all that complexity...devoting my brain power to figuring out 6502 and Z80 assembler right now.

Regarding "games have grown simpler now, and new players don't need mathematic complexity, or rules memorization." To play Devil's Advocate, what we may be seeing is an actual different 'breed' of gamers.

I'd argue that the rules-lite roleplaying style of modern games actually attracts a different kind of player to the older systems. I know that, for me, complexity, and mastery of that complexity, were lures rather than put-offs.

I love to fine tune a character to a fine edge (no that's not min-maxing, I purposefully avoid the system breaking) so that my Face is a charming MF, and no-one tosses around Goblins like my barbarian. I love systems like Ars Magica or Mutant Year Zero, where there are downtime management aspects.

For an analogy, there are people that enjoy the theater AND the movies, symphonies AND rock concerts. But there are also people who only enjoy one or the other. So if your local venue goes from mostly Beethoven to mostly Bon Jovi, don't be surprised if the people alongside you in the crowd change.

We're seeing this a lot with I.P.s being terraformed to appeal to women. Often they change core elements to the point that they no longer appeal to the previous male fanbase (and the women who also like it the old way.) I'd call D&D 5e a prime example.

Quote from: Grognard GM on April 14, 2023, 12:17:54 PM
We're seeing this a lot with I.P.s being terraformed to appeal to women. Often they change core elements to the point that they no longer appeal to the previous male fanbase (and the women who also like it the old way.) I'd call D&D 5e a prime example.

I'm not sure I totally agree regarding 5e. I think it's a lot more cosmetic than people seem to think (combined with the fact that Wotc didn't have the guts to clearly state their intentions or go all the way). If you actually use all of the exploration rules, etc. that they scattered everywhere throughout the DMG, enforce ammo and encumbrance tracking like you're supposed to, and lean into the "rulings over rules"/natural language ethos that they claim was in back of 5e (as a response to 4e), it actually plays like a more high-powered B/X to me. Granted, they utterly bungled the presentation, so everyone plays it way different, and they seem to have noticed which way the wind is blowing with later supplements and amplified the sucky parts even further. But if you embrace its design philosophy and use the right optional rules (and not others), it still feels like D&D at its core. At least to me (and I'm not a massive 5e fan by any stretch).

56 years old grognard here, it's not that THAC0 is too complicated or that subtraction is hard, like others have said it's the inconsistency. I can play/run older D&D editions just fine but in MY own homebrew it's ALWAYS roll above target, so AAC.

Because it's easier to teach new players how to play.

I have free time, but I don't want to spend it building a character (hi Hero!) worst if it can die in chargen (traveller/cepheus). Not because "Math is hard derp!", because it takes too fucking long!

I think that's why I don't wander outside of class/level based systems anymore, and why I'm WORKING on hammering a class/level thing into a system I like but that's point buy.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on April 14, 2023, 01:09:34 PMI think that's why I don't wander outside of class/level based systems anymore, and why I'm WORKING on hammering a class/level thing into a system I like but that's point buy.

We humans are so amazing in our diversity of likes. I hate rolled characters, and love point spend, and am not terribly crazy about classes (unless they have plenty of variants.) Putting rolls and classes INTO a point spend open system would be anathema to me.

Vive la différence!

Quote from: Grognard GM on April 14, 2023, 01:28:51 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on April 14, 2023, 01:09:34 PMI think that's why I don't wander outside of class/level based systems anymore, and why I'm WORKING on hammering a class/level thing into a system I like but that's point buy.

We humans are so amazing in our diversity of likes. I hate rolled characters, and love point spend, and am not terribly crazy about classes (unless they have plenty of variants.) Putting rolls and classes INTO a point spend open system would be anathema to me.

Vive la différence!

To me it's about speeding up chargen and getting to play faster. I see no difference between that and handing pregens to your HERO table players.

A class is nothing but a collection of skills, bonus and penalties, take the system you like and build a lot of pregens to fill different niches, there's still room to personalize them if you leave some skills for the player to choose from, think AD&D2e you choose your race, class and then your proficiencies and buy your equipment. The real difference is the time spent in chargen.

Quote from: GamerforHire on April 14, 2023, 09:18:05 AM

Young people aren't dumb, just less tolerant. And with so many games and so many other gaming options, why should they be willing to be otherwise? And my players and I, all of whom are busy professionals with careers and families, don't want to spend the time in-game looking up rules and charts and relearning some of this stuff. Neither do young people.

Here I disagree.

When I show someone under thirty the simple algebra in Classic Traveller and they recoil in horror, that tells me that their Math education was inadequate. When I show a teenager the simple algebra in Classic Traveller and they become interested, that tells me that I am sharing something that they are not being taught in school. It is as if Math, Science, and Critical Thinking are subversive forbidden subjects not taught in school and it fascinates them to get this glimpse behind the Wizard's curtain.

The games are getting dumbed down because the target audience for those games are not being taught the necessary skills in school to play them if they are not dumbed down.

Quote from: jeff37923 on April 14, 2023, 01:46:08 PM
Here I disagree.

When I show someone under thirty the simple algebra in Classic Traveller and they recoil in horror, that tells me that their Math education was inadequate. When I show a teenager the simple algebra in Classic Traveller and they become interested, that tells me that I am sharing something that they are not being taught in school. It is as if Math, Science, and Critical Thinking are subversive forbidden subjects not taught in school and it fascinates them to get this glimpse behind the Wizard's curtain.

The games are getting dumbed down because the target audience for those games are not being taught the necessary skills in school to play them if they are not dumbed down.

There's no time to teach math and science, need to spend that time at critically important drag shows.

Quote from: jeff37923 on April 14, 2023, 01:46:08 PM

Quote from: GamerforHire on April 14, 2023, 09:18:05 AM

Young people aren't dumb, just less tolerant. And with so many games and so many other gaming options, why should they be willing to be otherwise? And my players and I, all of whom are busy professionals with careers and families, don't want to spend the time in-game looking up rules and charts and relearning some of this stuff. Neither do young people.

Here I disagree.

When I show someone under thirty the simple algebra in Classic Traveller and they recoil in horror, that tells me that their Math education was inadequate. When I show a teenager the simple algebra in Classic Traveller and they become interested, that tells me that I am sharing something that they are not being taught in school. It is as if Math, Science, and Critical Thinking are subversive forbidden subjects not taught in school and it fascinates them to get this glimpse behind the Wizard's curtain.

The games are getting dumbed down because the target audience for those games are not being taught the necessary skills in school to play them if they are not dumbed down.

Greetings!

Hey Jeff! Yeah, I forgot what study I read about, but the research showed that Americans have lost *2 Standard Deviations* from our average IQ score compared to just 20 years ago. TWO STANDARD DEVIATIONS. That's like, what, 10 or 15 points lower than just 20 years ago? We really *are* getting dumber as a people.

I've also seen research that shows Americans, currently, have actually *lost* significant capability in vocabulary. Our current vocabulary--even among adults--is lower, cruder, or more simplified than 20, 40 years ago. There is also numerous studies that have shown that are attention span has been drastically shortened, our long term memory has decreased, and our functional ability to read has also suffered significantly.

I think all of that erosion and degradation of our educational system really *is* showing up on a mass scale now. In previous years it could be dismissed or hidden away, by saying "Well, that's just an isolated school." Now, the corruption, the rot, the absolute failures of our educational system is so widespread now, it cannot be hidden or denied any longer. EVERYONE around, in normal life, not just particular academics--all know that people everywhere are just dumber and less educated than in previous generations.

What makes that fact especially difficult to swallow, is the knowledge that more people now are spending more years in school, and spending more money on school than ever before--and yet, we are overall less educated than previous generations. This of course is a huge political struggle, with Teacher's Unions crying--but they of course don't want to take any responsibility, nor do the school administrations. It seems like the failure of our schools and education system is in the paper everyday now, as it should. But this corruption has been going on for a long time, with school administrations and teachers and professors all involved with absolute lying about all of this, and gaslighting parents and citizens alike. So sad, and infuriating.

This corruption of our education system and schools actually doing less, teaching less, and students learning less, and actually becoming dumber, less read, less articulate, with every passing year. I'd also say that when these factors are combined, even people's *capacity* to learn is also damaged, and lowered. If you can't think properly, can't read properly, can't write properly, and don't have the attention span to actually do more than the minimum--then your capacity for learning, for actually increasing in functional ability, is therefore short-circuited. That's the deeper tragedy here, is that our dysfunctional education system--and the administrations and teachers that have been a part of running it all--have permanently damaged our population. Entire generations of our people are no doubt intellectually stunted and crippled, permanently, because far too many school administrators and school teachers were mental midgets and absolute cowards.

These enormous effects in our education system have also surely had an impact on the gamers involved in our RPG hobby, as well as the game designers and writers themselves.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Math is not hard in that if an rpg system either crunchy or complex or both so expect a certain part off and reward for either or. More often than not it's neither. When one has existing rpgs thst can do both with less time and Easter to run well I can under the reluctance of both older and newer gamers to embrace both.

I recently tried making a character with Palladium Rifts and Fantasy and each time all it gave me was a pounding migraine. The flipping all over the place for rules. Is the bonus 5% or 4%. I started looking at Savage Rifts and never looked back.

In the end gamers have shown they are not interested in overly crunch systems such as Gurps or Hero in large numbers as the second is in life support and the first survived on the good graces of Munchkin profitability. Even Battlelords has a Savage Worlds conversion at this point.

As for math is hard it's an excuse used by those who rather than actually acknowledge the flaws of their favored rpg to blame players for not wanting that kind of complexity.

Quote from: cavalier973 on April 14, 2023, 07:47:14 AM
Also, people who complain about THAC0 because subtraction is *hard*.

AMEN

I see a lot of folks online complaining about complexity.  Not so much, even the kids, in real life.  The kids I've seen deal with complexity in RPGs just shrugged, did it, and seemed to like it.

My experience may not be typical though.  I live in a upscale exurb of a university town, with a lot of professors, professionals, etc around, and the high school is almost as challenging as the one I attended, which is saying a lot. 

Quote from: Mishihari on April 14, 2023, 02:43:25 PM
I see a lot of folks online complaining about complexity.  Not so much, even the kids, in real life.  The kids I've seen deal with complexity in RPGs just shrugged, did it, and seemed to like it.

My experience may not be typical though.  I live in a upscale exurb of a university town, with a lot of professors, professionals, etc around, and the high school is almost as challenging as the one I attended, which is saying a lot.

This.   This makes me wonder if the people complaining are A) Actually part of the hobby and B) whether they have actually tried something other than D&D,   What happens online doesn't seem to translate to real life.

Hell, people whined about J.K Rollings online and said to boycott the Hogwarts game.  It ended up making $850 million in the first two weeks and now she is part of the new Harry Potter series that is being worked on.

Most SJW warriors online are really just trolls with no lives.

Quote from: Abraxus on April 14, 2023, 02:22:46 PM
Math is not hard in that if an rpg system either crunchy or complex or both so expect a certain part off and reward for either or. More often than not it's neither. When one has existing rpgs thst can do both with less time and Easter to run well I can under the reluctance of both older and newer gamers to embrace both.

I'm having trouble understanding you here. Could you rephrase this so I can?

Quote from: Abraxus on April 14, 2023, 02:22:46 PM
I recently tried making a character with Palladium Rifts and Fantasy and each time all it gave me was a pounding migraine. The flipping all over the place for rules. Is the bonus 5% or 4%. I started looking at Savage Rifts and never looked back.

This sounds more like poor layout of the Palladium books than a Math problem.

Quote from: Abraxus on April 14, 2023, 02:22:46 PM
In the end gamers have shown they are not interested in overly crunch systems such as Gurps or Hero in large numbers as the second is in life support and the first survived on the good graces of Munchkin profitability. Even Battlelords has a Savage Worlds conversion at this point.

Overly crunch systems do not equal Math and Science heavy systems. The problem with GURPS and Hero are rules bloat, especially for character creation. Now, if you are saying that the addition and subtraction required for character creation is too Math heavy, then your Math skills are inadequate for the task and you have reinforced my argument.

Quote from: Abraxus on April 14, 2023, 02:22:46 PMAs for math is hard it's an excuse used by those who rather than actually acknowledge the flaws of their favored rpg to blame players for not wanting that kind of complexity.

Cute.

Now explain how Traveller is flawed and too complex but has survived for 46 years, 7 publishers, and 11 editions so far.

Quote from: jeff37923 on April 14, 2023, 03:16:37 PMThe problem with GURPS and Hero are rules bloat, especially for character creation. Now, if you are saying that the addition and subtraction required for character creation is too Math heavy, then your Math skills are inadequate for the task and you have reinforced my argument.

What you call rules bloat with Hero char creation, is simply a degree of granularity and complexity beyond what you consider necessary. Some people disagree with you, which is why it still has a die-hard cult following.

Personally I think it's a bit much, which is why I only ever run a stripped down version via Dark Champions, but I think it's subjective rather than objective. It's a game for people in to extreme simulationism.

Quote from: GhostNinja on April 14, 2023, 03:08:11 PM

Quote from: Mishihari on April 14, 2023, 02:43:25 PM
I see a lot of folks online complaining about complexity.  Not so much, even the kids, in real life.  The kids I've seen deal with complexity in RPGs just shrugged, did it, and seemed to like it.

This.   This makes me wonder if the people complaining are A) Actually part of the hobby and B) whether they have actually tried something other than D&D,   What happens online doesn't seem to translate to real life.

Most SJW warriors online are really just trolls with no lives.

Can't say that observation tracks with mine.

Most of the people I see online complaining that games are too complicated are OSR/Grognard types leveling the accusation at 3rd-5th edition, Pathfinder, etc. As far as I've seen, the Nu-School complaint against the old school is more about it being too restrictive, rather than too complicated. Hell, aside from the endless and pointless debate around THAC0, and this specific thread, I rarely even see people arguing about how hard the math is in a game. Even this thread is a grognard vs. grognard  argument, not an old vs. new school one.  Plus just logically, why would you complain about one game being too complicated if you weren't comparing it to another?

Quote from: ForgottenF on April 14, 2023, 04:37:35 PM

Quote from: GhostNinja on April 14, 2023, 03:08:11 PM

Quote from: Mishihari on April 14, 2023, 02:43:25 PM
I see a lot of folks online complaining about complexity.  Not so much, even the kids, in real life.  The kids I've seen deal with complexity in RPGs just shrugged, did it, and seemed to like it.

This.   This makes me wonder if the people complaining are A) Actually part of the hobby and B) whether they have actually tried something other than D&D,   What happens online doesn't seem to translate to real life.

Most SJW warriors online are really just trolls with no lives.

Can't say that observation tracks with mine.

Most of the people I see online complaining that games are too complicated are OSR/Grognard types leveling the accusation at 3rd-5th edition, Pathfinder, etc. As far as I've seen, the Nu-School complaint against the old school is more about it being too restrictive, rather than too complicated. Hell, aside from the endless and pointless debate around THAC0, and this specific thread, I rarely even see people arguing about how hard the math is in a game. Even this thread is a grognard vs. grognard  argument, not an old vs. new school one.  Plus just logically, why would you complain about one game being too complicated if you weren't comparing it to another?

IME both things are true at the same time, don't ask me which is more prevalent.

I've seen plenty of new players complain about THAC0 because "it's too math involved", TBF I've also seen not so new players level the same criticism.

IMHO the ONLY thing that makes THAC0 (and the games that use it) more complex is the need to remember when rolling low is good or bad, which is why I prefer games with a single logic, either rolling low is always good or it is always bad.

AC was created for naval war games trying to emulate naval combat, there they imported the naval idea that 1 was better than a bigger number, from there it got imported to D&D and remained as gospel because "that's how we have always done it!".

AAC is simpler not because of the math involved, but because as humans we think bigger is better, and because if your system is roll => target number for most things then making it the same to hit lowers the learning curve. So a modifier with a + is always good and one with a - is always bad, or vice-versa IDGAF, just have it be consistent.

One of the good things the OSR did was to backport some modern design ideas like AAC IMHO.

My experience is that younger players like the complexity in RPGS whereas older players, while not necessarily against rules-complex RPGS, are happy to play less complex versions and maybe even prefer them.  Now, board games are where I notice a real difference.  Guys my age are happy playing playing Kingmaker or Civilization or a hex-and-counter wargame for ten hours at a stretch, just as we did in our youth, while it's hard to get younger people nowdays to commit to any board game that takes longer than thirty minutes and has four pages of rules.  Of course you can't pin this on every individual person, but it's definitely a trend I've noticed.

Quote from: I on April 14, 2023, 06:02:25 PM
My experience is that younger players like the complexity in RPGS whereas older players, while not necessarily against rules-complex RPGS, are happy to play less complex versions and maybe even prefer them.

Every old fart I associate with loves getting in to the guts of a system, whereas the younger ones can't wrap their heads around rules. It's not a regional thing either, as I play online.

It's weird, the disconnect between experiences of people here.

Quote from: Grognard GM on April 14, 2023, 06:06:50 PM

It's weird, the disconnect between experiences of people here.

We've seen this disconnect before on other subjects, like the Satanic Panic.  [We all deplored it, but some of us barely noticed it at the time while others had traumatic experiences].  I guess we just have to chalk it up to the fact that it's a big world out there and that individual experiences will vary.

Complex is not the same as complicated. Moreover, it seem natural to assume system consistency, so if it takes a substantial amount of time to build a character, how long would one expect resolving an action to take? Thus, if the former is was not enjoyable, the latter will be assume to not be enjoyable.

Wrenching on a classic all weekend and going for a Sunday drive are not the same experience even though both involve fun mobiles, but that we get to people who can't open the hood or even understand the concept.

I can enjoy solving a complex problem and fine tuning a build, but when I have only a few hours to play with friends I want to spend more time playing and less time building. Both action figures and constructor sets can be fun, but one generally plays with one and builds the other. The latter may involve building something to play with, but the building part is not the playing part.

Some are incapable of understanding, others resent restrictions on their selfish fantasies, some like a detailed simulation, while others like to play fast without slowing down for things out side of the imagined space.

I find building Mektons more fun then running them, and playing non combat parts of d20 more than I like building characters or the nitty gritty of combat. I could do either, but I prefer one or the other, while thanks to whatever it is schools are doing these days some of the yoof are incapable of one or both.

Quote from: Wisithir on April 14, 2023, 08:29:40 PM
Complex is not the same as complicated. Moreover, it seem natural to assume system consistency, so if it takes a substantial amount of time to build a character, how long would one expect resolving an action to take? Thus, if the former is was not enjoyable, the latter will be assume to not be enjoyable.

And herein the HERO issue arises. Yes, it is complex to build a character, but not complicated as everything is extremely consistent All powers follow the same rules, the same math, etc. However, the game system itself is almost instantaneous to run. I mean that. 3D6 under a target number for pretty much everything, rolling damage, be it physical, mental, whatever, is exactly the same every time. So really, you spend 95% of the investment in the system to make your character, and playing the game is fassssssst. Like insanely fast. HERO is one of those games that looks ridiculous, but really is excellent in every way EXCEPT for the fact that there are so many fucking options the average gamer is just dissuaded from ever even attempting to play it. GURPS is like this to some degree. So then you get a system like Savage Worlds which does about 90% of what HERO can do, in about 1/10th the time. But sometimes you feel like something is lacking. If you're going to "build" a character, don't you want every conceivable option available? Is that 10% worth 10X the work?

Sometimes, yes. The 10% IS sometimes worth the effort, in many things. Excellence is often spending a ton of time on polish...what seems like drudgery means quality. The layout of some books, for instance. Layout is annoying and boring and lame and frustrating, but it MATTERS. You can be the best writer in the world, but with a poor layout no one will read your stuff. So that 10% that takes longer than writing the books matters. But if you're playing pickup basketball, it doesn't. You don't need the fancy jerseys and marketing of the NBA to have fun. Who is the audience?

D&D allows shortcuts. The OSR is complex enough to be interesting, and simple enough to be accessible. Sometimes you need that complex stuff, like when you're a college student with copious amounts of free time and you spend literally days mapping out dungeons and world maps and campaigns and whatever else. And sometimes you have kids and a wife and a job and get a 4 hour window during the week to play, so you say fuck all that garbage we need to start playing now and get on with the show. D&D and OSR games allow you to do that. But sometimes you still want to make HERO characters.

I don't think there's a real answer to this, honestly.

When it comes to hard build easy run games for new players, I believe the answer is customized pregens with a disconnected introductory adventure. New to system players give the GM or veteran helper a character concept and get handed a mostly built character. Over the course of the introductory adventure the builds are expert fine tuned while the player is learning how to run the character.  Then, in game time moves forward, the build is finalized, and the real adventure begins. The vehicular analogue is that one does not need to know of to rebuild an engine, and could get ways with not knowing how to change a tire, to go drive said car and cruise with friends. Nor would anyone teach someone to drive by starting with preforming an oil change.

Quote from: cavalier973 on April 14, 2023, 07:47:14 AM
Also, people who complain about THAC0 because subtraction is *hard*.

People complain about THAC0 because it's convoluted, counterintuitive nonsense that's complicated for the sake of being complicated without adding anything else to the game.

But you keep beating on that strawman, while simultaneously praising older editions of D&D, cuz newer editions are too hard.

Greetings!

Do people still defend THHACO? I started with the game back in the day, and played for years. I still love AD&D.

However, AD&D and OD&D or whatever, aren't perfect. Ascending AC, I would think, would be seen as obviously superior. Clearer, more intuitive, and easier. Fucking math doesn't have fuck to do with it. Just working with positive, ascending numbers is easier and more intuitive. Why the fuck would anyone want to desperately cling to more awkward, convoluted systems and mechanics when the game has clearly made progress in a number of areas? I love Gygax, but having said that, again, in some areas, with some mechanics, there are better ways to do things, and clearer ways to explain them.

I like ascending AC, updated weapon damages, getting rid of awkward weapon-speed rules, and also a clear and flexible Race and separate Class system. Fuck "Race as Class." As mentioned, there have been clear improvements in mechanics, systems, presentation, explanation, and layout. That's just the way it is.

And I love AD&D, and the OSR, but geesus. Defending or championing the OSR and AD&D doesn't mean the old systems are perfect, or cannot be improved. Newer editions HAVE introduced some improvements in all the areas I mentioned. That should be celebrated, not vilified or disparaged. And I'm also all in favour of re-embracing "Old School" gaming and games, such as the case may be. Doing so doesn't mean that we have to slavishly or blindly embrace every particular rule, system, or mechanic.

Some of these arguments seem obtuse and pointless to me, really. It reminds me of someone proclaiming "But, we should use the 1875 Lever Action Rifle!"

These people need to get out and touch grass. Realize that we have access to AR-15's in 2023.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: SHARK on April 15, 2023, 12:11:48 AM
Greetings!

Do people still defend THHACO? I started with the game back in the day, and played for years. I still love AD&D.

However, AD&D and OD&D or whatever, aren't perfect. Ascending AC, I would think, would be seen as obviously superior. Clearer, more intuitive, and easier. Fucking math doesn't have fuck to do with it. Just working with positive, ascending numbers is easier and more intuitive. Why the fuck would anyone want to desperately cling to more awkward, convoluted systems and mechanics when the game has clearly made progress in a number of areas? I love Gygax, but having said that, again, in some areas, with some mechanics, there are better ways to do things, and clearer ways to explain them.

I like ascending AC, updated weapon damages, getting rid of awkward weapon-speed rules, and also a clear and flexible Race and separate Class system. Fuck "Race as Class." As mentioned, there have been clear improvements in mechanics, systems, presentation, explanation, and layout. That's just the way it is.

And I love AD&D, and the OSR, but geesus. Defending or championing the OSR and AD&D doesn't mean the old systems are perfect, or cannot be improved. Newer editions HAVE introduced some improvements in all the areas I mentioned. That should be celebrated, not vilified or disparaged. And I'm also all in favour of re-embracing "Old School" gaming and games, such as the case may be. Doing so doesn't mean that we have to slavishly or blindly embrace every particular rule, system, or mechanic.

Some of these arguments seem obtuse and pointless to me, really. It reminds me of someone proclaiming "But, we should use the 1875 Lever Action Rifle!"

These people need to get out and touch grass. Realize that we have access to AR-15's in 2023.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Speaking strictly in terms of mechanics, 2014 5e is a better designed game than AD&D. I just don't like the play style 5e is designed to facilitate as much, and it has steadily evolved in the opposite direction of the play style I prefer.

Quote from: Festus on April 15, 2023, 01:27:55 AM

Quote from: SHARK on April 15, 2023, 12:11:48 AM
Greetings!

Do people still defend THHACO? I started with the game back in the day, and played for years. I still love AD&D.

However, AD&D and OD&D or whatever, aren't perfect. Ascending AC, I would think, would be seen as obviously superior. Clearer, more intuitive, and easier. Fucking math doesn't have fuck to do with it. Just working with positive, ascending numbers is easier and more intuitive. Why the fuck would anyone want to desperately cling to more awkward, convoluted systems and mechanics when the game has clearly made progress in a number of areas? I love Gygax, but having said that, again, in some areas, with some mechanics, there are better ways to do things, and clearer ways to explain them.

I like ascending AC, updated weapon damages, getting rid of awkward weapon-speed rules, and also a clear and flexible Race and separate Class system. Fuck "Race as Class." As mentioned, there have been clear improvements in mechanics, systems, presentation, explanation, and layout. That's just the way it is.

And I love AD&D, and the OSR, but geesus. Defending or championing the OSR and AD&D doesn't mean the old systems are perfect, or cannot be improved. Newer editions HAVE introduced some improvements in all the areas I mentioned. That should be celebrated, not vilified or disparaged. And I'm also all in favour of re-embracing "Old School" gaming and games, such as the case may be. Doing so doesn't mean that we have to slavishly or blindly embrace every particular rule, system, or mechanic.

Some of these arguments seem obtuse and pointless to me, really. It reminds me of someone proclaiming "But, we should use the 1875 Lever Action Rifle!"

These people need to get out and touch grass. Realize that we have access to AR-15's in 2023.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Speaking strictly in terms of mechanics, 2014 5e is a better designed game than AD&D. I just don't like the play style 5e is designed to facilitate as much, and it has steadily evolved in the opposite direction of the play style I prefer.

Doesn't mean one can't (and many have) backport the mechanics into a game with the play style you prefer.

I'm into the 3rd year of an AD&D2e campaign (as a player), I still think the OSR did good by using AAC, a single ST like in White Box FMAG and other mechanics, our own Erick Diaz made a feats thingy for the OSR, using advantage and disadvantage isn't hard to implement either.

BTW Eric, when are you doing a modern-ish feats for the OSR?

I agree with getting rid of race as class.

Quote from: SHARK on April 15, 2023, 12:11:48 AM
Greetings!

Do people still defend THHACO? I started with the game back in the day, and played for years. I still love AD&D.

However, AD&D and OD&D or whatever, aren't perfect. Ascending AC, I would think, would be seen as obviously superior. Clearer, more intuitive, and easier. Fucking math doesn't have fuck to do with it. Just working with positive, ascending numbers is easier and more intuitive. Why the fuck would anyone want to desperately cling to more awkward, convoluted systems and mechanics when the game has clearly made progress in a number of areas? I love Gygax, but having said that, again, in some areas, with some mechanics, there are better ways to do things, and clearer ways to explain them.

I like ascending AC, updated weapon damages, getting rid of awkward weapon-speed rules, and also a clear and flexible Race and separate Class system. Fuck "Race as Class." As mentioned, there have been clear improvements in mechanics, systems, presentation, explanation, and layout. That's just the way it is.

And I love AD&D, and the OSR, but geesus. Defending or championing the OSR and AD&D doesn't mean the old systems are perfect, or cannot be improved. Newer editions HAVE introduced some improvements in all the areas I mentioned. That should be celebrated, not vilified or disparaged. And I'm also all in favour of re-embracing "Old School" gaming and games, such as the case may be. Doing so doesn't mean that we have to slavishly or blindly embrace every particular rule, system, or mechanic.

Some of these arguments seem obtuse and pointless to me, really. It reminds me of someone proclaiming "But, we should use the 1875 Lever Action Rifle!"

These people need to get out and touch grass. Realize that we have access to AR-15's in 2023.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Shark, you're usually right on with your comments, but not this time.  Most of that stuff is purely subjective.  You don't like race as class; others do.  There's no objective standard to say one is better than the other.  One could just as well say that classes are yesterday's design and skill based is the new hotness.  That's my view, but it's just what I like, not something provably better.  "Rising AC is more intuitive."  To you, buddy, and admittedly to a fair number of others as well.  Not to me - to me it makes no difference at all.  I'm reminded of the Europeans who tell us we should switch to metric because it's easier.  It's only easier to learn in the first place.  For everyday use it makes no difference at all. 

I've only every found one objective rule for game complexity:  if there are two ways to do exactly the same things, the better one is the one that involves less work.

Quote from: Mishihari on April 15, 2023, 02:49:07 AMShark, you're usually right on with your comments, but not this time.  Most of that stuff is purely subjective.  You don't like race as class; others do.  There's no objective standard to say one is better than the other.  One could just as well say that classes are yesterday's design and skill based is the new hotness.  That's my view, but it's just what I like, not something provably better.  "Rising AC is more intuitive."  To you, buddy, and admittedly to a fair number of others as well.  Not to me - to me it makes no difference at all.  I'm reminded of the Europeans who tell us we should switch to metric because it's easier.  It's only easier to learn in the first place.  For everyday use it makes no difference at all. 

I've only every found one objective rule for game complexity:  if there are two ways to do exactly the same things, the better one is the one that involves less work.

The term "class" in RPGs essentially means "profession/role" and serves as a template to track a character's ability progression, and the idea that someone's race is their profession, or that it should be the basis for their ability development is nonsense, and at the risk of sounding like a SJW almost racist. You may prefer that for some unfathomable reason, but there's nothing subjective about pointing out how ridiculous the idea that race should be such a fundamental component to your ability development or possible role in the game.

And before someone points it out, no, race as class is not some magical method of achieving perfect game balance. I've often heard/read that asserted into existence by people defending race as class, but I've yet to see a convincing explanation for how building a class that's essentially a fighter, but with infravision and some stonework analysis ability then calling it a "dwarf" somehow achieves game balance.

Similarly, rolling a d20 then adding a modifier and comparing it to a target difficulty number (whether that represents "Armor Class" or the difficulty of some task) is objectively more intuitive, less convoluted and way more straightforward (to the point that simply looking at your roll's result automatically tells you what AC you "hit" or task difficulty you surpassed) than tracking a number you need to "hit" an AC that NOBODY has, then having to calculate which AC you actually hit, instead of just using the total result you actually rolled and going with it.

I find race as a class to be a matter of setting. If elves are slender pointy ear tree hugging humans, then restricting all player elves to one class makes no sense. However, if elves are mysterious, insular, semi magical creatures that rarely interreact with humans, then the few adventuring elves that do join a human party going to have strong similarities so class restrictions makes sense, and can be restricted down to one.

To me there is a rough distinction between two class design approaches:

class = archetype: With this approach race as class makes perfect sense. It absolutely reinforces a theme or setting.

class = profession: With this approach race as class makes no sense at all. A character's profession shouldn't be determined by their race. This is exactly where those who complain about race as class being "racist" start their arguments.

If one really cared to defuse the whole race as class kerfuffle, the smart move IMO would be to ditch the word "class" and not the word "race". Use a more specific term - "archetype" or "profession" - that fits that system's design approach and "problem" solved.

Quote from: Wisithir on April 15, 2023, 08:03:56 AM
I find race as a class to be a matter of setting.

Bingo. Race-as-class carries with it some pretty heavy setting implications. It implies that Dwarves, Elves, etc. are not really "people", and I mean that in the sense that they're metaphysically different, and perhaps don't have the same free will that humans do. That's the most apparent explanation for why every member of each race would have such reliably similar attitudes and aptitudes. Basically, it makes them the good-aligned equivalent of orcs. This is possibly intentional, since that is kind of how they are treated in both Lord of the Rings and Three Hearts and Three Lions which we know were big influences on the implementation of demi-humans in original D&D. Race-as-class works well if you're trying to run that kind of fairy-tale/metaphysical setting.

Problem is that in my experience, the majority of people including old-schoolers don't run demi-humans that way. They run them like Star Trek aliens, i.e., humans with a few cosmetic and cultural quirks. And I actually think there's a good reason for that. Namely, it makes them more fun to play. There are more players that want their elf to be able to get hammered at the tavern and hook up with the halfling bartender, than there are that want to play a serene, wise, detached elf sage for any length of time. It also gives the DM more to do with them in terms of NPCs. Let's be honest, neither Tolkien's or Anderson's elves are hugely deep and interesting as characters (with some exceptions, obviously). In that setting, I don't really think race-as-class serves much purpose.

Personally, I think the best approach to race-as-class is the one employed by Talislanta (and to a certain extent ACKS and FH&W) where its more Race+Occupation=Class, or where the demi-humans have their own class lists. That seems to me to be the best balance of keeping the non-humans different from humans, while still having variation within the non-human species. A halfling fighter should be very different from a human fighter, but that doesn't mean all halflings should have to be fighters.

It's interesting to see this idea floated, because I am a relatively young player (and game designer) and often find myself aggressively simplifying and consolidating things - and just in general breaking standing rules - to see how they work and to try to make the game run faster. It's sort of like the opposite of Chesterton's Fence: fuck around and find out, game design edition. I actually have a particularly pertinent example here.

I wasn't introduced to RPGs via D&D or any of the big-name systems; I started by playing a friend's custom-built homebrewed games and later moved to Dead Simple Roleplaying's one-page systems for the first few campaigns I ran. DSR Fantasy didn't use 3-to-18 attribute scores. It was on a 1 to 4 (or 5?) scale. When I started reading retroclones and D&D, I started asking myself what the point of having the ability score and the ability score modifier was, if not just for a matter of tradition (and a holdover from when they were scores that you rolled under, in the case of D&D).

Well, in my earliest home-made fantasy systems, I kept the ability score modifiers but dropped the scores themselves. And after years of playtesting, design, and tweaking, I can say with some certainty that the ability scores do serve a handful of interesting purposes that the modifiers can't. Specifically, their range is bigger, and it's also never negative. Modifiers go -4 to +4 (or -3 to +3 if you're using the weird scaling that a lot of retroclones do) and scores go 3 to 18. You can't roll anything except a d4 against a modifier because it's such a small range. Increasing or decreasing a modifier by d4 is like doing the same to a raw ability score by d8, and it's even worse with the smaller -3 to +3 range. Also, it's a pain to generate the modifier range by itself if your system doesn't have a concept of the score. Can you say "3d6/2-5" six times in a row? It's just not as fast as 3d6 and then convert.

So after a couple of years of experimentation, I'm thinking I might re-introduce it. Things that last a long time are probably solid design. That extra number sitting on the sheet hurts nobody and has a lot of weird non-obvious uses for your game design space. But I'm going to keep breaking things until I figure out how everything works. In this sense, I am probably averse to complexity, but specifically needless complexity. I want everything to be as fluid and elegant as possible, and it can be complex if the topic deserves it. That doesn't mean I always know what's useful and what's not; that's why I've been experimenting in private and not on a live system, ha ha.  ::)

As far as others go, I only have anecdotal experiences to state. Most of the circles I play with skew heavily young (nobody over 30), and they're more or less fine with complexity in system design. Some of my players have chastised me for my attempts to streamline systems, actually, and sometimes they've been right (but it is experimentation, after all). But my circles also mostly shun 5e, so it's all but a given that we're outliers.

There's more to it than complexity.

D&D3E/PF1E were wildly popular, and still see a lot of play. That rightly gets attributed to the OGL, but people misunderstand how the OGL made this system popular. We tend to focus on how the OGL allowed 3rd party content to be published, but ignore the fact that most players used little to no 3rd party material. The biggest impact the OGL had on the popularity of Dungeons & Dragons was making the rules easy to find. There were a lot of games coming out at that time which were far simpler and easier to play than D&D, but you couldn't just go to d20srd.org and find all the rules you needed to play.

It's okay for a game to be complicated if you can easily find the rules.

While I frequently roll eyes at the Seattle natives, it is certainly the case that Pathfinder (moreso than D&D) allowed you to easily make pretty much any character idea you had in your head. Unlike D&D3E, it didn't require complicated multiclassing to do it, either. This is something that D&D5E has largely succeeded at. We can criticize many of these character concepts as furry bullshit and complain that modern players don't seem to understand that every character isn't appropriate for every game and setting, but those are separate issues. It is still a strength for these systems that, no matter what character concept you have, you can open up one of the books and point to it.

Then there are the rules themselves. Just like players enjoy having a lot of options for what to play, they also enjoy having a lot of options for how to play. Sure, a GM can simply issue rulings when the PCs do things that aren't clearly defined in the published rules, but that encounters a problem that a lot of GMs don't like to talk about. There is an inherent conflict of interest between the GM's role as an arbiter or judge of what happens in game, and the GM's role as the pilot of the antagonists. To what degree can the players trust the GM to fairly adjudicate the game when the GM is making up the rules?

You might think it's really cool that the party dies in this encounter, and I might not think that's cool at all. You might think it's cool for PCs to have the risk of death and failure and all of these other things hanging over their heads to provide a challenge, and I might not want my character to die. You might have lengthy, multiple paragraph arguments about how PC death is good for the hobby, and I might think PC death is not very good for my plans for this game. Your carefully thought out philosophy on PC mortality might have some merit, but it's also running counter to my desire for my character to live, and it may be making it difficult to trust you as an arbiter of the rules. So, players might prefer to have a lot of interactions defined under the rules in order to limit the GM's ability to engage in Kung Fu Treachery.

Quote from: Mishihari on April 15, 2023, 02:49:07 AM

Quote from: SHARK on April 15, 2023, 12:11:48 AM
Greetings!

Do people still defend THHACO? I started with the game back in the day, and played for years. I still love AD&D.

However, AD&D and OD&D or whatever, aren't perfect. Ascending AC, I would think, would be seen as obviously superior. Clearer, more intuitive, and easier. Fucking math doesn't have fuck to do with it. Just working with positive, ascending numbers is easier and more intuitive. Why the fuck would anyone want to desperately cling to more awkward, convoluted systems and mechanics when the game has clearly made progress in a number of areas? I love Gygax, but having said that, again, in some areas, with some mechanics, there are better ways to do things, and clearer ways to explain them.

I like ascending AC, updated weapon damages, getting rid of awkward weapon-speed rules, and also a clear and flexible Race and separate Class system. Fuck "Race as Class." As mentioned, there have been clear improvements in mechanics, systems, presentation, explanation, and layout. That's just the way it is.

And I love AD&D, and the OSR, but geesus. Defending or championing the OSR and AD&D doesn't mean the old systems are perfect, or cannot be improved. Newer editions HAVE introduced some improvements in all the areas I mentioned. That should be celebrated, not vilified or disparaged. And I'm also all in favour of re-embracing "Old School" gaming and games, such as the case may be. Doing so doesn't mean that we have to slavishly or blindly embrace every particular rule, system, or mechanic.

Some of these arguments seem obtuse and pointless to me, really. It reminds me of someone proclaiming "But, we should use the 1875 Lever Action Rifle!"

These people need to get out and touch grass. Realize that we have access to AR-15's in 2023.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Shark, you're usually right on with your comments, but not this time.  Most of that stuff is purely subjective.  You don't like race as class; others do.  There's no objective standard to say one is better than the other.  One could just as well say that classes are yesterday's design and skill based is the new hotness.  That's my view, but it's just what I like, not something provably better.  "Rising AC is more intuitive."  To you, buddy, and admittedly to a fair number of others as well.  Not to me - to me it makes no difference at all.  I'm reminded of the Europeans who tell us we should switch to metric because it's easier.  It's only easier to learn in the first place.  For everyday use it makes no difference at all. 

I've only every found one objective rule for game complexity:  if there are two ways to do exactly the same things, the better one is the one that involves less work.

Greetings!

Good Morning, Mishihari! Yes, I understand that you love AD&D. I do as well.

Have I misinterpreted the argument though? I was reacting to the argument--or the implication--that "people that reject THACO are just morons that can't do math!."

And, of course, much of all of this is subjective. I certainly believe that people have their own preferences. That is an interesting idea though--you don't believe there have been any improvements in systems, mechanics, presentation, layout, in the last 40-plus years since AD&D was introduced? AD&D is the perfect game, caught in amber as it were, and therefore no changes or adjustments are necessary for anything? I suppose there are a few people around that embrace that, my friend.

Who was it, D&D Bro? BroD&D or something? On our boards here, Aaron, I think, from Australia is also a strict AD&D fan. Maybe DungeonDelver, too. I admit, the obstinate, Tyrannosaurus Rex attitude appeals to me. My Girlfriend has said to me routinely that I'm an "Old School Tyrannosaurus Rex." I do like what I see as being some improvements though. Like with Ascending AC, just seems entirely more intuitive to me.

Maybe I have misunderstood the argument?

And yes, I hate the European Metric system! To hell with that! I like the old Imperial system that we use here in America. It is what I was born with, and raised with, all the days of my life. Pounds, ounces, inches, yards, and miles, damnit. MILES. Like the Roman Legions created allover the empire. ;D

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Corolinth on April 15, 2023, 11:29:00 AM
There's more to it than complexity.

D&D3E/PF1E were wildly popular, and still see a lot of play. That rightly gets attributed to the OGL, but people misunderstand how the OGL made this system popular. We tend to focus on how the OGL allowed 3rd party content to be published, but ignore the fact that most players used little to no 3rd party material. The biggest impact the OGL had on the popularity of Dungeons & Dragons was making the rules easy to find. There were a lot of games coming out at that time which were far simpler and easier to play than D&D, but you couldn't just go to d20srd.org and find all the rules you needed to play.

It's okay for a game to be complicated if you can easily find the rules.

While I frequently roll eyes at the Seattle natives, it is certainly the case that Pathfinder (moreso than D&D) allowed you to easily make pretty much any character idea you had in your head. Unlike D&D3E, it didn't require complicated multiclassing to do it, either. This is something that D&D5E has largely succeeded at. We can criticize many of these character concepts as furry bullshit and complain that modern players don't seem to understand that every character isn't appropriate for every game and setting, but those are separate issues. It is still a strength for these systems that, no matter what character concept you have, you can open up one of the books and point to it.

Then there are the rules themselves. Just like players enjoy having a lot of options for what to play, they also enjoy having a lot of options for how to play. Sure, a GM can simply issue rulings when the PCs do things that aren't clearly defined in the published rules, but that encounters a problem that a lot of GMs don't like to talk about. There is an inherent conflict of interest between the GM's role as an arbiter or judge of what happens in game, and the GM's role as the pilot of the antagonists. To what degree can the players trust the GM to fairly adjudicate the game when the GM is making up the rules?

You might think it's really cool that the party dies in this encounter, and I might not think that's cool at all. You might think it's cool for PCs to have the risk of death and failure and all of these other things hanging over their heads to provide a challenge, and I might not want my character to die. You might have lengthy, multiple paragraph arguments about how PC death is good for the hobby, and I might think PC death is not very good for my plans for this game. Your carefully thought out philosophy on PC mortality might have some merit, but it's also running counter to my desire for my character to live, and it may be making it difficult to trust you as an arbiter of the rules. So, players might prefer to have a lot of interactions defined under the rules in order to limit the GM's ability to engage in Kung Fu Treachery.

Greetings!

Thoughtful and salient commentary, Corolinth! Also, a strong defense of 5E as well! I also enjoy the kind of complexity and class specialization and options you describe. That has definitely been one of my favorite aspects of 5E.

In the other direction though, perhaps a paradox, is that I also very much appreciate simplicity, accessibility, ease of use, and speed.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: SHARK on April 15, 2023, 12:19:25 PM

Quote from: Corolinth on April 15, 2023, 11:29:00 AM
There's more to it than complexity.

D&D3E/PF1E were wildly popular, and still see a lot of play. That rightly gets attributed to the OGL, but people misunderstand how the OGL made this system popular. We tend to focus on how the OGL allowed 3rd party content to be published, but ignore the fact that most players used little to no 3rd party material. The biggest impact the OGL had on the popularity of Dungeons & Dragons was making the rules easy to find. There were a lot of games coming out at that time which were far simpler and easier to play than D&D, but you couldn't just go to d20srd.org and find all the rules you needed to play.

It's okay for a game to be complicated if you can easily find the rules.

While I frequently roll eyes at the Seattle natives, it is certainly the case that Pathfinder (moreso than D&D) allowed you to easily make pretty much any character idea you had in your head. Unlike D&D3E, it didn't require complicated multiclassing to do it, either. This is something that D&D5E has largely succeeded at. We can criticize many of these character concepts as furry bullshit and complain that modern players don't seem to understand that every character isn't appropriate for every game and setting, but those are separate issues. It is still a strength for these systems that, no matter what character concept you have, you can open up one of the books and point to it.

Then there are the rules themselves. Just like players enjoy having a lot of options for what to play, they also enjoy having a lot of options for how to play. Sure, a GM can simply issue rulings when the PCs do things that aren't clearly defined in the published rules, but that encounters a problem that a lot of GMs don't like to talk about. There is an inherent conflict of interest between the GM's role as an arbiter or judge of what happens in game, and the GM's role as the pilot of the antagonists. To what degree can the players trust the GM to fairly adjudicate the game when the GM is making up the rules?

You might think it's really cool that the party dies in this encounter, and I might not think that's cool at all. You might think it's cool for PCs to have the risk of death and failure and all of these other things hanging over their heads to provide a challenge, and I might not want my character to die. You might have lengthy, multiple paragraph arguments about how PC death is good for the hobby, and I might think PC death is not very good for my plans for this game. Your carefully thought out philosophy on PC mortality might have some merit, but it's also running counter to my desire for my character to live, and it may be making it difficult to trust you as an arbiter of the rules. So, players might prefer to have a lot of interactions defined under the rules in order to limit the GM's ability to engage in Kung Fu Treachery.

Greetings!

Thoughtful and salient commentary, Corolinth! Also, a strong defense of 5E as well! I also enjoy the kind of complexity and class specialization and options you describe. That has definitely been one of my favorite aspects of 5E.

In the other direction though, perhaps a paradox, is that I also very much appreciate simplicity, accessibility, ease of use, and speed.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Not a paradox - I love both simplicity and lots of PC options too. Which is why I play  a simplified B/X... with feats!

5e has some cool options, but I feel it is needlessly complex. Too many features to keep track of. I'd cut half the skills and probably give everyone prof in all saves (and all weapons; doesn't break anything). But I've ran some 5e campaigns and it went fine for the first levels.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on April 15, 2023, 02:26:04 PM

Quote from: SHARK on April 15, 2023, 12:19:25 PM

Quote from: Corolinth on April 15, 2023, 11:29:00 AM
There's more to it than complexity.

D&D3E/PF1E were wildly popular, and still see a lot of play. That rightly gets attributed to the OGL, but people misunderstand how the OGL made this system popular. We tend to focus on how the OGL allowed 3rd party content to be published, but ignore the fact that most players used little to no 3rd party material. The biggest impact the OGL had on the popularity of Dungeons & Dragons was making the rules easy to find. There were a lot of games coming out at that time which were far simpler and easier to play than D&D, but you couldn't just go to d20srd.org and find all the rules you needed to play.

It's okay for a game to be complicated if you can easily find the rules.

While I frequently roll eyes at the Seattle natives, it is certainly the case that Pathfinder (moreso than D&D) allowed you to easily make pretty much any character idea you had in your head. Unlike D&D3E, it didn't require complicated multiclassing to do it, either. This is something that D&D5E has largely succeeded at. We can criticize many of these character concepts as furry bullshit and complain that modern players don't seem to understand that every character isn't appropriate for every game and setting, but those are separate issues. It is still a strength for these systems that, no matter what character concept you have, you can open up one of the books and point to it.

Then there are the rules themselves. Just like players enjoy having a lot of options for what to play, they also enjoy having a lot of options for how to play. Sure, a GM can simply issue rulings when the PCs do things that aren't clearly defined in the published rules, but that encounters a problem that a lot of GMs don't like to talk about. There is an inherent conflict of interest between the GM's role as an arbiter or judge of what happens in game, and the GM's role as the pilot of the antagonists. To what degree can the players trust the GM to fairly adjudicate the game when the GM is making up the rules?

You might think it's really cool that the party dies in this encounter, and I might not think that's cool at all. You might think it's cool for PCs to have the risk of death and failure and all of these other things hanging over their heads to provide a challenge, and I might not want my character to die. You might have lengthy, multiple paragraph arguments about how PC death is good for the hobby, and I might think PC death is not very good for my plans for this game. Your carefully thought out philosophy on PC mortality might have some merit, but it's also running counter to my desire for my character to live, and it may be making it difficult to trust you as an arbiter of the rules. So, players might prefer to have a lot of interactions defined under the rules in order to limit the GM's ability to engage in Kung Fu Treachery.

Greetings!

Thoughtful and salient commentary, Corolinth! Also, a strong defense of 5E as well! I also enjoy the kind of complexity and class specialization and options you describe. That has definitely been one of my favorite aspects of 5E.

In the other direction though, perhaps a paradox, is that I also very much appreciate simplicity, accessibility, ease of use, and speed.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Not a paradox - I love both simplicity and lots of PC options too. Which is why I play  a simplified B/X... with feats!

5e has some cool options, but I feel it is needlessly complex. Too many features to keep track of. I'd cut half the skills and probably give everyone prof in all saves (and all weapons; doesn't break anything). But I've ran some 5e campaigns and it went fine for the first levels.

How about making a new book for OSR feats? Have it go from western/victorian to Pulp to modernish?

Quote from: GeekyBugle on April 15, 2023, 02:32:33 PM
How about making a new book for OSR feats? Have it go from western/victorian to Pulp to modernish?

(I'll answer here too)

Sounds like a cool idea, but it is unlikely that I'll write that, TBH.

My books usually start with ideas I want to add to my own games, and lately I've been playing nothing but a D&Dish sandbox.

Coincidentally, I have a friend (Jens, from the disoriented ranger) that is writing both a pulp version of B/X and an old-schoolish western games. I think they are far from finished but I'll share the news when he publishes it, FWIW.

(ALSO... now that I think of it, it wouldn't be hard to make a modern B/X, with feats - especially if you have no "spells". You'd need maybe three classes only - warrior / expert / scholar, and then some feats to turn them into boxers, snipers, doctors, sibarites, etc. I might try something like that if I ever run another horror campaign. But there are a couple of interesting books on the matter, that I've read briefly: Silent Legions and Ghastly Affair. There is also Gangbusters and Tall Tales. I do not know if any of them has feats, however).

EDIT: there is also a current discussion about Microlite in these forums - a very minimalist game with lots of options / feats.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on April 15, 2023, 03:04:44 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on April 15, 2023, 02:32:33 PM
How about making a new book for OSR feats? Have it go from western/victorian to Pulp to modernish?

(I'll answer here too)

Sounds like a cool idea, but it is unlikely that I'll write that, TBH.

My books usually start with ideas I want to add to my own games, and lately I've been playing nothing but a D&Dish sandbox.

Coincidentally, I have a friend (Jens, from the disoriented ranger) that is writing both a pulp version of B/X and an old-schoolish western games. I think they are far from finished but I'll share the news when he publishes it, FWIW.

(ALSO... now that I think of it, it wouldn't be hard to make a modern B/X, with feats - especially if you have no "spells". You'd need maybe three classes only - warrior / expert / scholar, and then some feats to turn them into boxers, snipers, doctors, sibarites, etc. I might try something like that if I ever run another horror campaign. But there are a couple of interesting books on the matter, that I've read briefly: Silent Legions and Ghastly Affair. There is also Gangbusters and Tall Tales. I do not know if any of them has feats, however).

EDIT: there is also a current discussion about Microlite in these forums - a very minimalist game with lots of options / feats.

Okay, thanks!

Don't forget video games as a factor. Younger players grew up on computer RPGs automating a lot of math and mechanics for them. They haven't built up the 'mental muscle' to take on that load themselves.

Shark's comment about the metric system gets at exactly why I prefer THAC0: it's what I grew up with, so it makes perfect sense to me. Ascending AC may be more logical, better design, etc., but those arguments do not make me want to use ascending AC, just like I don't want to use the metric system. Irrational? Maybe. This isn't a deal breaker for me. I've played in ascending AC games before. And if players were especially insistent, I'd use it as a DM too. But my default, for ye olde D&D and clones anyway, is always going to be THAC0.

Quote from: dungeonmonkey on April 15, 2023, 06:10:21 PM
Shark's comment about the metric system gets at exactly why I prefer THAC0: it's what I grew up with, so it makes perfect sense to me. Ascending AC may be more logical, better design, etc., but those arguments do not make me want to use ascending AC, just like I don't want to use the metric system. Irrational? Maybe. This isn't a deal breaker for me. I've played in ascending AC games before. And if players were especially insistent, I'd use it as a DM too. But my default, for ye olde D&D and clones anyway, is always going to be THAC0.

Likewise, 100%!  I even dislike having to use the metric system when I travel abroad, which is fairly often.  As for Shark's question about whether or not there have been any mechanics invented in the past 40 years to improve upon D&D, I'd answer "No, unless one considers the single saving throw adopted by Swords & Wizardry."  Which is why we've moved to primarily playing Swords & Wizardry these days after trying lots of these new fangled games with their "modern mechanics," raft of DEI races (or ancestries or whatever the snowflakes call them these days) and their flashy, color art.  Don't want it, don't need.  Gimme a handful of dice, a two-sided character sheet, and a pencil and I'm good to go!

Quote from: Shipyard Locked on April 15, 2023, 05:37:39 PM
Don't forget video games as a factor. Younger players grew up on computer RPGs automating a lot of math and mechanics for them. They haven't built up the 'mental muscle' to take on that load themselves.

It reminds me of something a math teacher said a long time ago. In the old days homework would consist of only a few problems because students would have to use tables and a slide rule to evaluate the answer. Now there are more questions because its less work per questions. The value of problem solving is in knowing how to set up the equation to be evaluated, not in the number crunching.

I like enough of a barrier to entry to deter non comital casuals that can't make it through one arc of a year long campaign, but I am not looking to do finite element analysis by hand every time the GM calls for a check either.

I spend more time in the rule than I do imagining the fiction is a real concern, while unspecified complaining about "too hard" is not. Some people want the payoff with no effort and for it to feel rewarding, which is just self contradictory.

Quote from: saki on April 15, 2023, 10:53:09 AM
It's interesting to see this idea floated, because I am a relatively young player (and game designer) and often find myself aggressively simplifying and consolidating things - and just in general breaking standing rules - to see how they work and to try to make the game run faster. It's sort of like the opposite of Chesterton's Fence: fuck around and find out, game design edition. I actually have a particularly pertinent example here.

I wasn't introduced to RPGs via D&D or any of the big-name systems; I started by playing a friend's custom-built homebrewed games and later moved to Dead Simple Roleplaying's one-page systems for the first few campaigns I ran. DSR Fantasy didn't use 3-to-18 attribute scores. It was on a 1 to 4 (or 5?) scale. When I started reading retroclones and D&D, I started asking myself what the point of having the ability score and the ability score modifier was, if not just for a matter of tradition (and a holdover from when they were scores that you rolled under, in the case of D&D).

Well, in my earliest home-made fantasy systems, I kept the ability score modifiers but dropped the scores themselves. And after years of playtesting, design, and tweaking, I can say with some certainty that the ability scores do serve a handful of interesting purposes that the modifiers can't. Specifically, their range is bigger, and it's also never negative. Modifiers go -4 to +4 (or -3 to +3 if you're using the weird scaling that a lot of retroclones do) and scores go 3 to 18. You can't roll anything except a d4 against a modifier because it's such a small range. Increasing or decreasing a modifier by d4 is like doing the same to a raw ability score by d8, and it's even worse with the smaller -3 to +3 range. Also, it's a pain to generate the modifier range by itself if your system doesn't have a concept of the score. Can you say "3d6/2-5" six times in a row? It's just not as fast as 3d6 and then convert.

So after a couple of years of experimentation, I'm thinking I might re-introduce it. Things that last a long time are probably solid design. That extra number sitting on the sheet hurts nobody and has a lot of weird non-obvious uses for your game design space. But I'm going to keep breaking things until I figure out how everything works. In this sense, I am probably averse to complexity, but specifically needless complexity. I want everything to be as fluid and elegant as possible, and it can be complex if the topic deserves it. That doesn't mean I always know what's useful and what's not; that's why I've been experimenting in private and not on a live system, ha ha.  ::)

As far as others go, I only have anecdotal experiences to state. Most of the circles I play with skew heavily young (nobody over 30), and they're more or less fine with complexity in system design. Some of my players have chastised me for my attempts to streamline systems, actually, and sometimes they've been right (but it is experimentation, after all). But my circles also mostly shun 5e, so it's all but a given that we're outliers.

Your invocation of Chesterton's Fence is apropos.  Once you have a measurement of a character's dexterity that ranges between 3 and 18, you can easily test that dexterity by asking a player to roll under on 1d20.  Were you to create a modifier-based roll, or any other roll based on 2 linear spread of values, you would not have the same probability of results as a linear d20 versus a number generated by 3d6 (which has a bell curve).  So your player with an 18 does not have the effectively small increase in success chance (5% per point difference), as the 18 dexterity was far less probable to be rolled in the first place.  The 18 is far more powerful than just 10% more success than a sixteen, because the 18 was far harder to generate in the first place (0.46% vs 2.77%).

Once again, the more that you investigate the original rules of the first few iterations of D&D, the more you find layers of utility that you never expected.  Only the foolish discard them without carefully considering the purpose of the original rules...

Quote from: saki on April 15, 2023, 10:53:09 AM
It's interesting to see this idea floated, because I am a relatively young player (and game designer) and often find myself aggressively simplifying and consolidating things - and just in general breaking standing rules - to see how they work and to try to make the game run faster. It's sort of like the opposite of Chesterton's Fence: fuck around and find out, game design edition. I actually have a particularly pertinent example here.

I wasn't introduced to RPGs via D&D or any of the big-name systems; I started by playing a friend's custom-built homebrewed games and later moved to Dead Simple Roleplaying's one-page systems for the first few campaigns I ran. DSR Fantasy didn't use 3-to-18 attribute scores. It was on a 1 to 4 (or 5?) scale. When I started reading retroclones and D&D, I started asking myself what the point of having the ability score and the ability score modifier was, if not just for a matter of tradition (and a holdover from when they were scores that you rolled under, in the case of D&D).

Well, in my earliest home-made fantasy systems, I kept the ability score modifiers but dropped the scores themselves. And after years of playtesting, design, and tweaking, I can say with some certainty that the ability scores do serve a handful of interesting purposes that the modifiers can't. Specifically, their range is bigger, and it's also never negative. Modifiers go -4 to +4 (or -3 to +3 if you're using the weird scaling that a lot of retroclones do) and scores go 3 to 18. You can't roll anything except a d4 against a modifier because it's such a small range. Increasing or decreasing a modifier by d4 is like doing the same to a raw ability score by d8, and it's even worse with the smaller -3 to +3 range. Also, it's a pain to generate the modifier range by itself if your system doesn't have a concept of the score. Can you say "3d6/2-5" six times in a row? It's just not as fast as 3d6 and then convert.

So after a couple of years of experimentation, I'm thinking I might re-introduce it. Things that last a long time are probably solid design. That extra number sitting on the sheet hurts nobody and has a lot of weird non-obvious uses for your game design space. But I'm going to keep breaking things until I figure out how everything works. In this sense, I am probably averse to complexity, but specifically needless complexity. I want everything to be as fluid and elegant as possible, and it can be complex if the topic deserves it. That doesn't mean I always know what's useful and what's not; that's why I've been experimenting in private and not on a live system, ha ha.  ::)

As far as others go, I only have anecdotal experiences to state. Most of the circles I play with skew heavily young (nobody over 30), and they're more or less fine with complexity in system design. Some of my players have chastised me for my attempts to streamline systems, actually, and sometimes they've been right (but it is experimentation, after all). But my circles also mostly shun 5e, so it's all but a given that we're outliers.

In my current design project I did away with ability scores and switched to modifiers too, though I didn't start from D&D as a baseline.  I haven't had a single problem with it.  Are there any specific issues I should be looking out for?

And d6 minus d6 gives a nice -5 to +5 distribution, if you want a simple way to do it.

Quote from: Vestragor on April 14, 2023, 05:42:38 AM
Maybe it's me and this is simply a case of yelling at clouds, but I started noticing a curious trend in recent years: younger players seem to be heavily averse to everything that requires mechanics/game principles slightly more complex than a couple of (single) dice rolls and single digit sums.
In the more extreme cases, even that is regarded as "too much"; just to make a couple of memorable examples from r/rpg: one guy lamenting that Savage Worlds is "an extremely math heavy system" (roll two dice, keep the highest and if it's 4 or more you're good, with modifiers rarely going over a single digit is apparently the new defition of "math heavy") and another proclaiming that the Witcher TTRPG crafting system is "extremely crunchy" (the system being find or buy a recipe, find the correct materials and then roll one d10 plus one number against a fixed difficulty).

Anyone else noticed the trend or am I imagining things ?

You are seeing some of the tendrils of the Storygamer "movement" as they push this to this day.

Over on Reddit the occasional glances through and like once a week I see someone, often several spouting off about how hard 1+1 is. I forget the thread but one person was advocating for dumbing down 5e more because one of his players, a trained doctor, could not do basic math.

The problem may be that our schools are not actually teaching the basics anymore? Then again I saw one schools idea of how to do basic math and it was like 4 steps to get 10-20?
https://intellectualtakeout.org/2016/04/how-the-new-math-is-ruining-education/ (https://intellectualtakeout.org/2016/04/how-the-new-math-is-ruining-education/)
(https://intellectualtakeout.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2022/03/common-core-math-frustration-confusion.jpg)

But there is a definite trend going on of people just unable to grasp Roll die and add 3.

Quote from: Mishihari on April 16, 2023, 04:11:46 AM

In my current design project I did away with ability scores and switched to modifiers too, though I didn't start from D&D as a baseline.  I haven't had a single problem with it.  Are there any specific issues I should be looking out for?

That's kind of a tricky question, because it's one of those things where if you aren't using it, you might as well take it out.  OTOH, if you have it in, you might find yourself using it. 

As an example, I kept it in my main home brew because I wanted to generate the ability score, and 3d6 (and a chart) gave me the progression I specifically wanted.  If you want your modifiers to mostly be between -3 and +3, even if the system allows for some room outside that (exactly outliers), 3d6 will give you a good spread.  Even though my modifiers don't match old or current D&D in assignment, the spread was close enough, and thus the reasons 3d6 was handy.

Having decided that, I built my "Ability Improvement" mechanic around it.  A character gets selective improvement based on other choices they make.  When they get one, they roll d20, trying to get higher than the score.  If they do not, it's 1 point in the score.  If they do, they roll a d6, with 1-3 being +2 points, 4-5 being +3 points, and 6 being +4 points.  In normal D&D, that'd be too generous.  In my system, it works exactly as intended because of that skewed chart.  It means anyone with a really lousy score is guaranteed to get rid of at least 1 modifier minus in 2 improvements, and highly likely to do it in 1 improvement.  Whereas upper scores take dedicated effort to move.

Now, all of the improvement stuff could have been done without the scores, sort of.  It's just math and a track, after all. Having the scores, I used them for the track.  And given the range, the d20/d6 thing made a very simple way for players to implement some intuitive but mildly tricky math.  In other words, I put some complexity in the design specifically to take out the complexity for the players.  The upshot is that players that get unlucky rolling their 3d6 down the line during character generation get considerably better improvements than the players that are lucky early.  They also have more control over which scores improves.  Which is also as intended.

I have some magic that gives bonuses to the scores, not directly to the modifiers. Again, that's deliberately using the track to make some magic more appealing to certain characters, and lets me introduce minor magic early.  +1 to your Might modifier is a significant increase.  +1 to your Might score will only help select characters, and that will change as their ability scores improve.  So it is highly likely that a non-melee caster, for example, could end up with a minor Might ring, just for the health improvements that go with it.  It's not implemented yet, but I also intend to have some curses and blessings situated around scores.

BTW, with my creatures, I don't bother.  I use only the modifiers to keep the listing short as possible.  It's up to the GM to decide what the track might be under that score, since most such creatures aren't going to stick around very long.  If one does stay around (e.g. pet wolf), then I set the track at average for the modifier, and start tracking from there.

I'm not using the ability scores for anything else in the main mechanics.  It's all about that skewed track, in one way or another.  If I didn't have the ability scores, I'd need something else for the track.  I could come up with something simpler than a separate track for each ability score, if I wanted.  In fact, I did for my previous system.  But it's six familiar items on the sheet that gives the players an intuitive sense of where they are on the track, even the ones that are lousy at probabilities. 

The math question is very much a case of two things being true at the same time. My father is not entirely wrong when he grouses about how kids can't make change anymore. There is something real at the heart of his complaint. Schools in the US do a piss poor job of teaching mathematics. His complaints fall on deaf ears because making change is an obsolete skill in the United States.

There is definitely a need to change mathematics education, because we no longer need to train humans to be cash registers. Computers can do this job far more quickly and accurately. It may very well be that, despite the insistence of some advocates, mathematics is not as important as it once was for most people. It's important for the advancement of society and technology, but maybe it's not terribly important for day-to-day life. It may be a lot like physical exercise. People in developed countries don't need to be in excellent physical condition to navigate the world, but they do need it for the health benefits. So, we have to do wasteful physical tasks in order to keep our bodies in good condition so that we don't have heart attacks and other maladies. Likewise, we may need to do wasteful mental tasks in order to keep our brains in good condition. Games (tabletop, video, or otherwise) may actually serve a useful purpose for our long-term health.

What if games are how we actually learn math in this brave new world?

Quote from: Omega on April 16, 2023, 09:03:23 AM

Quote from: Vestragor on April 14, 2023, 05:42:38 AM
Maybe it's me and this is simply a case of yelling at clouds, but I started noticing a curious trend in recent years: younger players seem to be heavily averse to everything that requires mechanics/game principles slightly more complex than a couple of (single) dice rolls and single digit sums.
In the more extreme cases, even that is regarded as "too much"; just to make a couple of memorable examples from r/rpg: one guy lamenting that Savage Worlds is "an extremely math heavy system" (roll two dice, keep the highest and if it's 4 or more you're good, with modifiers rarely going over a single digit is apparently the new defition of "math heavy") and another proclaiming that the Witcher TTRPG crafting system is "extremely crunchy" (the system being find or buy a recipe, find the correct materials and then roll one d10 plus one number against a fixed difficulty).

Anyone else noticed the trend or am I imagining things ?

You are seeing some of the tendrils of the Storygamer "movement" as they push this to this day.

Over on Reddit the occasional glances through and like once a week I see someone, often several spouting off about how hard 1+1 is. I forget the thread but one person was advocating for dumbing down 5e more because one of his players, a trained doctor, could not do basic math.

The problem may be that our schools are not actually teaching the basics anymore? Then again I saw one schools idea of how to do basic math and it was like 4 steps to get 10-20?
https://intellectualtakeout.org/2016/04/how-the-new-math-is-ruining-education/ (https://intellectualtakeout.org/2016/04/how-the-new-math-is-ruining-education/)
(https://intellectualtakeout.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2022/03/common-core-math-frustration-confusion.jpg)

But there is a definite trend going on of people just unable to grasp Roll die and add 3.

How does 12 - 3 equal 15? Where does the three come from, in the problem?

Quote from: Omega on April 16, 2023, 09:03:23 AMI forget the thread but one person was advocating for dumbing down 5e more because one of his players, a trained doctor, could not do basic math.

What do you have against women being in the medical field?

(https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.giphy.com%2Fmedia%2FeKxbwNP7kt8ty%2Fgiphy.gif&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=fb7677f7edb7fae33b79650998d08b83d64e897290f256e08f0015e2fd71afea&ipo=images)

Quote from: Omega on April 16, 2023, 09:03:23 AM

Quote from: Vestragor on April 14, 2023, 05:42:38 AM
Maybe it's me and this is simply a case of yelling at clouds, but I started noticing a curious trend in recent years: younger players seem to be heavily averse to everything that requires mechanics/game principles slightly more complex than a couple of (single) dice rolls and single digit sums.
In the more extreme cases, even that is regarded as "too much"; just to make a couple of memorable examples from r/rpg: one guy lamenting that Savage Worlds is "an extremely math heavy system" (roll two dice, keep the highest and if it's 4 or more you're good, with modifiers rarely going over a single digit is apparently the new defition of "math heavy") and another proclaiming that the Witcher TTRPG crafting system is "extremely crunchy" (the system being find or buy a recipe, find the correct materials and then roll one d10 plus one number against a fixed difficulty).

Anyone else noticed the trend or am I imagining things ?

You are seeing some of the tendrils of the Storygamer "movement" as they push this to this day.

Over on Reddit the occasional glances through and like once a week I see someone, often several spouting off about how hard 1+1 is. I forget the thread but one person was advocating for dumbing down 5e more because one of his players, a trained doctor, could not do basic math.

The problem may be that our schools are not actually teaching the basics anymore? Then again I saw one schools idea of how to do basic math and it was like 4 steps to get 10-20?
https://intellectualtakeout.org/2016/04/how-the-new-math-is-ruining-education/ (https://intellectualtakeout.org/2016/04/how-the-new-math-is-ruining-education/)
(https://intellectualtakeout.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2022/03/common-core-math-frustration-confusion.jpg)

But there is a definite trend going on of people just unable to grasp Roll die and add 3.

I agree with your conclusion.

Quote from: cavalier973 on April 16, 2023, 12:20:31 PM

Quote from: Omega on April 16, 2023, 09:03:23 AM

Quote from: Vestragor on April 14, 2023, 05:42:38 AM
Maybe it's me and this is simply a case of yelling at clouds, but I started noticing a curious trend in recent years: younger players seem to be heavily averse to everything that requires mechanics/game principles slightly more complex than a couple of (single) dice rolls and single digit sums.
In the more extreme cases, even that is regarded as "too much"; just to make a couple of memorable examples from r/rpg: one guy lamenting that Savage Worlds is "an extremely math heavy system" (roll two dice, keep the highest and if it's 4 or more you're good, with modifiers rarely going over a single digit is apparently the new defition of "math heavy") and another proclaiming that the Witcher TTRPG crafting system is "extremely crunchy" (the system being find or buy a recipe, find the correct materials and then roll one d10 plus one number against a fixed difficulty).

Anyone else noticed the trend or am I imagining things ?

You are seeing some of the tendrils of the Storygamer "movement" as they push this to this day.

Over on Reddit the occasional glances through and like once a week I see someone, often several spouting off about how hard 1+1 is. I forget the thread but one person was advocating for dumbing down 5e more because one of his players, a trained doctor, could not do basic math.

The problem may be that our schools are not actually teaching the basics anymore? Then again I saw one schools idea of how to do basic math and it was like 4 steps to get 10-20?
https://intellectualtakeout.org/2016/04/how-the-new-math-is-ruining-education/ (https://intellectualtakeout.org/2016/04/how-the-new-math-is-ruining-education/)
(https://intellectualtakeout.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2022/03/common-core-math-frustration-confusion.jpg)

But there is a definite trend going on of people just unable to grasp Roll die and add 3.

How does 12 - 3 equal 15? Where does the three come from, in the problem?

Welcome to the "New Math" being taught in schools that parents have been fighting against. Brought to you by the same people who believe in CRT and Climate Change who want it taught. Political indoctrination instead of learning how to be critical thinkers.

(Sorry if that leans too far into the political, but it does definitely affect the target audience of gamers in this TTRPG hobby. )

Quote from: Corolinth on April 16, 2023, 11:08:34 AM
The math question is very much a case of two things being true at the same time. My father is not entirely wrong when he grouses about how kids can't make change anymore. There is something real at the heart of his complaint. Schools in the US do a piss poor job of teaching mathematics. His complaints fall on deaf ears because making change is an obsolete skill in the United States.

There is definitely a need to change mathematics education, because we no longer need to train humans to be cash registers. Computers can do this job far more quickly and accurately. It may very well be that, despite the insistence of some advocates, mathematics is not as important as it once was for most people. It's important for the advancement of society and technology, but maybe it's not terribly important for day-to-day life. It may be a lot like physical exercise. People in developed countries don't need to be in excellent physical condition to navigate the world, but they do need it for the health benefits. So, we have to do wasteful physical tasks in order to keep our bodies in good condition so that we don't have heart attacks and other maladies. Likewise, we may need to do wasteful mental tasks in order to keep our brains in good condition. Games (tabletop, video, or otherwise) may actually serve a useful purpose for our long-term health.

What if games are how we actually learn math in this brave new world?

Then we had better start getting the kids to play a lot more Traveller.

I ran Dark Champions recently, and it has what I would call an easy-moderate attack mechanic.

11- on 3d6, but you add your OCV and attack bonus, and subtract a number I give you.

So say you have 9 with OCV and bonus, minus 6 for enemy DCV. So that's a remainder of 3. 11+3 = 14, roll 14- to hit.

The combats took ffoorreeevvveeerrr, even with me constantly chipping in calculations for the players. Some players simply couldn't do it.

Quote from: Corolinth on April 16, 2023, 11:08:34 AM
The math question is very much a case of two things being true at the same time. My father is not entirely wrong when he grouses about how kids can't make change anymore. There is something real at the heart of his complaint. Schools in the US do a piss poor job of teaching mathematics. His complaints fall on deaf ears because making change is an obsolete skill in the United States.

There is definitely a need to change mathematics education, because we no longer need to train humans to be cash registers. Computers can do this job far more quickly and accurately. It may very well be that, despite the insistence of some advocates, mathematics is not as important as it once was for most people. It's important for the advancement of society and technology, but maybe it's not terribly important for day-to-day life. It may be a lot like physical exercise. People in developed countries don't need to be in excellent physical condition to navigate the world, but they do need it for the health benefits. So, we have to do wasteful physical tasks in order to keep our bodies in good condition so that we don't have heart attacks and other maladies. Likewise, we may need to do wasteful mental tasks in order to keep our brains in good condition. Games (tabletop, video, or otherwise) may actually serve a useful purpose for our long-term health.

What if games are how we actually learn math in this brave new world?

It's not just math; it's number sense.  I've taught at both the high school and college level (presently teaching physics at the high school level... and sponsor of the school RPG club).  It's not that kids can't add or subtract (which is true.  There are a number of reasons for this, including "new" math, calculators, and standardized test prep in lieu of teaching, but this isn't the thread for it).  They don't even have a "feel" for how numbers work.  A student can mess up a calculation and then report that the bowling ball they just measured was moving at 32,000 m/s.  Nothing in their brains connects the number to reality.  And this isn't just a case of unfamiliar metrics (they do the same if you are measuring in feet or miles).  This lack of number sense bleeds over into RPG "math" as well.  They don't know what percentages are really telling them, what their odds are, how difficult things are to hit, not to mention have trouble calculating bonuses or adding.  And this isn't just "lower level" kids.  While I've taught my fair share of remedial-level classes, I'm teaching AP-level students in a program that recruits the best math and science students in the county.  The average kid in my classes is in AP Calculus BC or Linear Algebra.  And they'll be the first to tell you that they can integrate by parts, but can't add in their heads.  I'm Gandalf to them because I can glance at ten divided by point zero one and instinctively answer one thousand... the majority of the kids have no clue how I got there.

Don't get me wrong, there are some kids who remind me of the kids in my youth.  But there are a lot of them who are mathematically illiterate, even when they have all of the course-work and credentials...

Kind of off-topic, but a resource we use with the tax deductions is a math curriculum called "Life of Fred". It goes from preschool (where it focuses on reading) up to calculus. The titular Fred is a five year old Russian kid who teaches at an imaginary university in Kansas. Apparently, there is a story woven throughout the series. Our kids would fight over who got to go through the next book when it arrived in the mail.

It should be supplemented with a lot of math worksheets.

I'm looking at the books, and they deal with fractions, decimals and percents, pre-algebra 1 & 2, beginning algebra, advanced algebra, geometry, and trigonometry. There may be other books, as well.

I have definitely noticed an increase in math-aversion in my groups, but it isn't exclusive to the younger players. Older players who have jobs often come to the table tired enough that they don't want to do mental arithmetic. Anything can feel difficult when you're tired, and many people feel chronically fatigued.

With the younger generation it's more an attention-span thing. They are used to near constant dopamine-hits from their smartphones and when games fail to deliver that, their attention starts to wander.

As to the new math; I understand the theory, but disagree with the execution. The idea is to modify the numbers to make the problem easier to work. The problem is that this is a matter of opportunism, not a formula you can consistently follow to find the fastest and lowest-effort approach. The real solution is to teach kids math with a slide-rule and not a calculator, as a slide-rule is an easy tool to use, but requires you to keep track of the decimal point, so you develop an intuition for what the number should be, which is a skill that transfers to using a calculator later in education.

College professor here and I've switched all my undergrad classes to be out of 500 or 1000 points because students were utterly baffled by the concept of weighted percentage grades.  As in certain assignments are worth 20% of the total, others 10%, etc.  But yet, even having done this, many students are baffled and cannot calculate what grade they might need on a final (out of 100) to achieve a certain grade in the class, which is on a straight point system.  The math failure is real.  But their reading and writing skills are just as bad so I've pretty much lost all hope for the future of this country. 

As for the actual topic, another weird thing I've noticed with games like L5R and TOR is that they create a raft of "roleplaying" mechanics that are actually just tied to dice rolls, sometimes with specialty dice to boot.  Then they have these convoluted mechanisms for determining the success (often in degrees) of said actions.  Why not just roleplay that shit?  I think creative thinking is increasingly replaced by mechanics that give the illusion of choice and add false and unneeded layers of complexity to games.

1E had a few worthless classes, then Unearthed Arcana added more worthless classes and some unnecessary races. I think 5E added even more new classes and race options to appeal to the power gamer instinct and now from what I've read elsewhere it is this exact issue that makes it hard for DMs in 5E to keep up.

On the other hand difficult math/mechanics can be handled by your smart phone and the right dice rolling app.

The question I have is this:

Is there a real reason for some systems to be so complicated? Or were they putting it together and it became complicated?  Or were the designers making it complicated to be more realistic?  Or were the designers doing it to look cool?

Quote from: GhostNinja on April 17, 2023, 11:31:58 AM
The question I have is this:

Is there a real reason for some systems to be so complicated? Or were they putting it together and it became complicated?  Or were the designers making it complicated to be more realistic?  Or were the designers doing it to look cool?

People have different tastes. Some people really, legitimately, enjoy deep rules with complexity.

Quote from: Grognard GM on April 17, 2023, 12:07:04 PM
People have different tastes. Some people really, legitimately, enjoy deep rules with complexity.

That makes sense.  I guess there are gamers out there who have more time to deal with the complicated systems then people like me who have limited gaming time.

Quote from: cavalier973 on April 14, 2023, 07:47:14 AM
Also, people who complain about THAC0 because subtraction is *hard*.

Subtraction is hard, when the alternative is addition.  That's how human brains work, as far as we know!

THAC0 is absolutely indefensible. 
Calculate a number needed to roll
Ascending AC to calculate a hit number:  AC 30 - Attack 22 = 8.
Target 20 to calculate a hit number: 20 - ( Attack 22 + AC -10) = 8.
THAC0 for that same calculation: THAC0 -2 - AC -10 = 8.
THAC0 sucks here, always a subtraction, sometimes three minuses, and AC as the second term in subtraction is awful.
Target 20 is still better than THAC0, because there's two steps, and one of them is addition.  Even with the -10 AC, it's still easy because the second term is the only one that can go negative, and you are always subtracting from 20.
Ascending AC is the clear winner.  Target20 is ok.  THAC0 is dogshit.

Just make a roll and see if it hit
Ascending AC to see if the roll hit:  Roll 9 + Attack 22 = 31, 31 > 30, attack hits.
THAC0 to see if the roll hit:  THAC0 -2 - Roll 9 = -11, -11 < -10, attack hits
Target20 to see if the roll hit: Roll 9 + Attack 22 + AC -10 = 21, 21 > 20, attack hits.
Target20 adds that second addition step, but makes up some of that cognitively by having the comparison always be versus 20 at the end.  Ascending AC is also very good here, just being one simple addition and one medium comparison.  THAC0 is again, absolutely the worst.


There's no place in this world for an attack bonus that starts at 21 or 20 and slowly crawls down.  It's just terrible.  Attack bonuses, or effective fighter level, work fine.  No THAC0.  Then you can do ascending AC like in 3.X, 4ed, 5e, or (kinda) ACKS, or you can use descending AC with Target20.

No one has ever made a plausible case to defend THAC0 against Target20, and the only defense against ascending AC is preferring descending AC- which should leave you with Target20, not THAC0.

Quote from: Grognard GM on April 17, 2023, 12:07:04 PM

Quote from: GhostNinja on April 17, 2023, 11:31:58 AM
The question I have is this:

Is there a real reason for some systems to be so complicated? Or were they putting it together and it became complicated?  Or were the designers making it complicated to be more realistic?  Or were the designers doing it to look cool?

People have different tastes. Some people really, legitimately, enjoy deep rules with complexity.

As someone who enjoys both simple and complex rulesets, the main thing I look at is necessity. What does the game require and have attempts been made to implement the necessary rules elegantly.

If you oversimply your game and then tell me "just make shit up," don't waste my time. I know how to play minimal games, and I don't need to buy yours to make stuff up. The Paranoia box set was like this.

If you make your rules needlessly complicated, don't waste my time. Don't keep adding rules to cover off different situations. Mothership and The Troubleshooters managed to do this, and they are not even complicated systems. They both started with a simple iteration of d100 and kept adding twists and special cases until it was just a mess.

Quote from: rytrasmi on April 17, 2023, 12:46:07 PM
As someone who enjoys both simple and complex rulesets, the main thing I look at is necessity. What does the game require and have attempts been made to implement the necessary rules elegantly.

If you oversimply your game and then tell me "just make shit up," don't waste my time. I know how to play minimal games, and I don't need to buy yours to make stuff up. The Paranoia box set was like this.

If you make your rules needlessly complicated, don't waste my time. Don't keep adding rules to cover off different situations. Mothership and The Troubleshooters managed to do this, and they are not even complicated systems. They both started with a simple iteration of d100 and kept adding twists and special cases until it was just a mess.

I am not a just make shit up kind of person which is why I hate games like FATE, fudge and Risus.

I like rules that cover as much as they can and leave room for the GM to make the determination.

Well, one problem with the THACO argument is that on most old school character sheets you're not even doing a calculation.  You literally write the value needed to hit an AC.  So there's actually no math involved in the actual game.

Quote from: Persimmon on April 17, 2023, 01:32:08 PM
Well, one problem with the THACO argument is that on most old school character sheets you're not even doing a calculation.  You literally write the value needed to hit an AC.  So there's actually no math involved in the actual game.

I agree. THAC0 is the easiest!

Quote from: Venka on April 17, 2023, 12:31:26 PM

Quote from: cavalier973 on April 14, 2023, 07:47:14 AM
Also, people who complain about THAC0 because subtraction is *hard*.

Subtraction is hard, when the alternative is addition.  That's how human brains work, as far as we know!

THAC0 is absolutely indefensible. 
Calculate a number needed to roll
Ascending AC to calculate a hit number:  AC 30 - Attack 22 = 8.
Target 20 to calculate a hit number: 20 - ( Attack 22 + AC -10) = 8.
THAC0 for that same calculation: THAC0 -2 - AC -10 = 8.
THAC0 sucks here, always a subtraction, sometimes three minuses, and AC as the second term in subtraction is awful.
Target 20 is still better than THAC0, because there's two steps, and one of them is addition.  Even with the -10 AC, it's still easy because the second term is the only one that can go negative, and you are always subtracting from 20.
Ascending AC is the clear winner.  Target20 is ok.  THAC0 is dogshit.

Just make a roll and see if it hit
Ascending AC to see if the roll hit:  Roll 9 + Attack 22 = 31, 31 > 30, attack hits.
THAC0 to see if the roll hit:  THAC0 -2 - Roll 9 = -11, -11 < -10, attack hits
Target20 to see if the roll hit: Roll 9 + Attack 22 + AC -10 = 21, 21 > 20, attack hits.
Target20 adds that second addition step, but makes up some of that cognitively by having the comparison always be versus 20 at the end.  Ascending AC is also very good here, just being one simple addition and one medium comparison.  THAC0 is again, absolutely the worst.


There's no place in this world for an attack bonus that starts at 21 or 20 and slowly crawls down.  It's just terrible.  Attack bonuses, or effective fighter level, work fine.  No THAC0.  Then you can do ascending AC like in 3.X, 4ed, 5e, or (kinda) ACKS, or you can use descending AC with Target20.

No one has ever made a plausible case to defend THAC0 against Target20, and the only defense against ascending AC is preferring descending AC- which should leave you with Target20, not THAC0.

Seems like you gave an example here for very high level? That is going to have a bias.

One of the main benefits of THAC0 is that it has an intuitive "bounded" design. AC 10 is unarmoured, with AC 0 being basically as perfect an AC as possible without magic (best armor + shield + dex bonus). 5 AC is the most common armour Chainmail -- right in the middle.

Negative AC's then are strange mythical creatures, and adventures kited out with impressive magical armours.

The best AC in Fiend Folio is -8 Will-o-the-wisp. The best AC in the 1e AD&D MM is Demogorgon -8. Nothing has the AC -10 / 30 in your example in 1e AD&D.


Let's do a simple example for a low-level encounter. Because this is where gameplay starts:

Some men-at-arms in chainmail attack you. There ac is 5 / 15. Your THAC0 is 18 / attack bonus is +2

Calculate a number needed to roll
THAC0 -- 18 - 5 = 13
Ascending AC -- 15 - 2 = 13

A roll of 13 or above hits.

Just make a roll and see if it hit
Let's say you roll a 10.

THAC0 -- 18 - 10 = I hit AC 8. Miss
Ascending AC -- 10 + 2 = I hit AC 12. Miss


To me, the main benefit of THAC0 is that it encourages Calculate a number needed to roll so you do the math once. I also find it far easier to adjudicate as GM where the players are doing zero math. Just telling me what they rolled. 
My brain will skip the math here if I know it's impossible, whereas it feels compelled to always add the + for attack in an ascending AC system.

Quote from: Venka on April 17, 2023, 12:31:26 PM

Quote from: cavalier973 on April 14, 2023, 07:47:14 AM
Also, people who complain about THAC0 because subtraction is *hard*.

Subtraction is hard, when the alternative is addition.  That's how human brains work, as far as we know!

THAC0 is absolutely indefensible. 

So...THAC0 has an armor class of 10, then?

Quote from: Grognard GM on April 17, 2023, 12:07:04 PM

Quote from: GhostNinja on April 17, 2023, 11:31:58 AM
The question I have is this:

Is there a real reason for some systems to be so complicated? Or were they putting it together and it became complicated?  Or were the designers making it complicated to be more realistic?  Or were the designers doing it to look cool?

People have different tastes. Some people really, legitimately, enjoy deep rules with complexity.

I'll agree with ninja here. Well, both of you, with a caveat.

There is taste, of course, but there is also complexity for no purpose.

AD&D might have a reason for each polearm, but 5e definitely does NOT have a reason to have two identical ones.

B/X Halflings can hide in the woods with 90% chance of success. In dungeons, they can hide in cover or shadows with 2-in-6 chances. Thieves, OTOH, have 10% to 99% chance of hiding in shadows. So, for a similar activity, we have two different systems (1d6 and 1d100 - for the same class!) and two different "progressions" (static for the Halfling, progressive for the thief).

Holmes have different weapon speed that make no sense - daggers beat zweihanders in every possible way. Also, the "slow" tags serve no function in OSE, since two-handers are already not that great.

I don't have enough experience with the AD&D bard, but I'd bet its complexity serves no real purpose either.

So, as ninja says, the key is "Is there a real reason for some systems to be so complicated?"

https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2023/03/adding-skills-makes-osr-games-simpler.html

Yeah, THAC0 also works really well when you have one d20 die in the whole group, which the GM rolls.  Of course, the chart on the character sheet works even better for that, and wasn't a bad choice even when the group only had 2 or 3 d20s which got passed around.

It wasn't a bad choice for backwards compatibility from the simpler system, either.  It would have been a bad choice to keep it when doing a complete rewrite.  Things can be not a good fit for the current design and still have solid reasons for existence in their time. 

Quote from: Venka on April 17, 2023, 12:31:26 PM

Quote from: cavalier973 on April 14, 2023, 07:47:14 AM
Also, people who complain about THAC0 because subtraction is *hard*.

Subtraction is hard, when the alternative is addition.  That's how human brains work, as far as we know!

THAC0 is absolutely indefensible. 

THAC0 is trivial.  Back in the day I didn't even have to think about it.  I looked at the numbers and knew the answer.

I dislike THAC0, but it doesn't even need subtraction. Roll a d20, add AC, compare to THAC0 (as you mentioned, Target20 does something similar and I rpefer that - so I guess we partly agree).

Not great, but defensible IMO - and fits the saving throw scheme, very intuitive for people used to it.

You could say THAC0 can be superior to target 20 because requires just one step:

T20: 1d20+level(+modifiers)+AC
THAC0: 1d20+AC, just compare to the number in your sheet.

I'm starting up a game and made the decision to drop 5E.  Not for all the wotc junk but because of the mechanics.  So far it's 2 people who are veterans of gaming but 2 total noobs.  The complexity of the 3 systems I looked at didn't upset anyone and it took an explanation of how it works and it's not a problem.  The 5E "adv/disadv" system is just too basic and as long time dnd people from the box game days it didn't make sense with things like blindness/total darkness.  I think younger people can handle it if exposed to it and open to the system.  I do think math and just "thinking about hard things" were a part of education and life in general and today's generation hasn't done that as much, but some do (look at programming).  But hey I remember when learning to use a slide rule was part of math class and the basic function calculators were forbidden in math classes.

Quote from: Persimmon on April 17, 2023, 01:32:08 PM
Well, one problem with the THACO argument is that on most old school character sheets you're not even doing a calculation.  You literally write the value needed to hit an AC.  So there's actually no math involved in the actual game.

Your argument is basically that THAC0 not is not bad because old school character sheets made you pre-calculate and write in advance a complete break down of every AC in the game* and what you needed to hit it, so that in actual play you don't have to make any calculations because presumably you already went through the trouble before play.

My argument is that Roll+Mod is better because I don't need to pre calculate every single AC in the game in advance to know which one I hit when I roll. I just need to roll a d20+Mod and the result automatically tells me which AC I hit.

Furthermore. You can pre-calculate which AC you hit with every roll result in advance with Roll+Mod as well. That's not a unique feature of THAC0 and descending AC. It's just bandaid solution to try to sidestep the fact that THAC0 is convoluted AF, but you could do that with practically any other system. The difference is, with Roll+Mod, you don't have to. But with THAC0 and descending AC you need to devote an entire section on the character sheet and pre-calculate a bunch of results to make believe that THAC0 ain't convoluted.

*which was clunky AF, cuz you need space for the entire 10 to -10 AC range. And doesn't take into account different modifiers for different weapons, which skews numbers and makes you add or substract numbers regardless.

Quote from: VisionStorm on April 17, 2023, 10:20:34 PM

Quote from: Persimmon on April 17, 2023, 01:32:08 PM
Well, one problem with the THACO argument is that on most old school character sheets you're not even doing a calculation.  You literally write the value needed to hit an AC.  So there's actually no math involved in the actual game.

Your argument is basically that THAC0 not is not bad because old school character sheets made you pre-calculate and write in advance a complete break down of every AC in the game* and what you needed to hit it, so that in actual play you don't have to make any calculations because presumably you already went through the trouble before play.

My argument is that Roll+Mod is better because I don't need to pre calculate every single AC in the game in advance to know which one I hit when I roll. I just need to roll a d20+Mod and the result automatically tells me which AC I hit.

Furthermore. You can pre-calculate which AC you hit with every roll result in advance with Roll+Mod as well. That's not a unique feature of THAC0 and descending AC. It's just bandaid solution to try to sidestep the fact that THAC0 is convoluted AF, but you could do that with practically any other system. The difference is, with Roll+Mod, you don't have to. But with THAC0 and descending AC you need to devote an entire section on the character sheet and pre-calculate a bunch of results to make believe that THAC0 ain't convoluted.

*which was clunky AF, cuz you need space for the entire 10 to -10 AC range. And doesn't take into account different modifiers for different weapons, which skews numbers and makes you add or substract numbers regardless.

First off, no one's pre-calculating anything.  They're literally looking at a chart in the book.  Second, I'm just noting this is on the character sheet itself and would therefore involve no calculation if someone was not inclined to do that.  And I'm not sure how dense someone must be to think that THACO is "convoluted."  It's literally just basic subtraction.  I need to hit an AC of 5, my THACO is 10.  Therefore I need to roll a 5.  How is that convoluted?

Quote from: Persimmon on April 17, 2023, 11:19:17 PM

Quote from: VisionStorm on April 17, 2023, 10:20:34 PM

Quote from: Persimmon on April 17, 2023, 01:32:08 PM
Well, one problem with the THACO argument is that on most old school character sheets you're not even doing a calculation.  You literally write the value needed to hit an AC.  So there's actually no math involved in the actual game.

Your argument is basically that THAC0 not is not bad because old school character sheets made you pre-calculate and write in advance a complete break down of every AC in the game* and what you needed to hit it, so that in actual play you don't have to make any calculations because presumably you already went through the trouble before play.

My argument is that Roll+Mod is better because I don't need to pre calculate every single AC in the game in advance to know which one I hit when I roll. I just need to roll a d20+Mod and the result automatically tells me which AC I hit.

Furthermore. You can pre-calculate which AC you hit with every roll result in advance with Roll+Mod as well. That's not a unique feature of THAC0 and descending AC. It's just bandaid solution to try to sidestep the fact that THAC0 is convoluted AF, but you could do that with practically any other system. The difference is, with Roll+Mod, you don't have to. But with THAC0 and descending AC you need to devote an entire section on the character sheet and pre-calculate a bunch of results to make believe that THAC0 ain't convoluted.

*which was clunky AF, cuz you need space for the entire 10 to -10 AC range. And doesn't take into account different modifiers for different weapons, which skews numbers and makes you add or substract numbers regardless.

First off, no one's pre-calculating anything.  They're literally looking at a chart in the book.  Second, I'm just noting this is on the character sheet itself and would therefore involve no calculation if someone was not inclined to do that.  And I'm not sure how dense someone must be to think that THACO is "convoluted."  It's literally just basic subtraction.  I need to hit an AC of 5, my THACO is 10.  Therefore I need to roll a 5.  How is that convoluted?

Old character sheets with a Target AC and THAC0 track have a space to note down what you need to roll to hit each individual AC, which would require you to calculate it based on your actual THAC0. Even if the book already had a chart with these values pre-calculated (I don't recall that, but I mostly played 2e, which I think didn't have it) it still doesn't change the fact that I have to rely on extra charts to help streamline this mess.

In straight d20+Mod if I need to hit AC 15 I don't need to do any calculation. The AC already tells me what I need to roll to get there (15 in this case). I just roll a d20, add any relevant modifiers (which I need to do even in the old THAC0 system with ability modifiers, magic bonuses, etc; d20 System just makes your attack value a modifier as well), and that automatically tells me what AC I hit—no looking up at some chart BS or subtracting extra stuff to figure out what the final value is. The roll's total result IS the AC you hit.

If it's equal or higher you hit it. If it's not you missed. The end.

The convoluted part is keeping track of a "To Hit" number that lists an AC value that nobody has (AC 0) like it's some sort of universal benchmark when it isn't. Then having to calculate which AC you actually hit, based on your roll plus modifiers vs your THAC0 vs your opponent's actual AC (which almost invariably is NOT going to be 0, so why the fuck am I tracking what I need to hit that specific number?).

Versus just rolling a d20, adding your modifiers*, and automatically knowing what AC you actually hit.

*which again, both systems have to do to some extent or another regardless, so THAC0 doesn't even eliminate the need to do this, it just makes you track a number that's almost never gonna come up

The THAC0 argument is interesting, mostly because it's a way to avoid using the chart but isn't as easily to use as a simpler ascending AC roll. Further, it eliminates the advantages of the chart entirely. The multiple natural 20s and allowing for some interesting effects at higher level are pretty much gone. So while I like descending AC, if you're going to go with THAC0 I see no reason why to use it over ascending since you dump one of the major reasons to use descending.

As a young-ish person (mid twenties, you can make your own ruling there) I started with 3.5 edition in 2013 or 2014, and I was ambivalent to the complexity of that system and the range of options presented to players in terms of customization. I only played 4E once or twice and probably didn't even update the system at all from 3.5 apart from those healing charges or whatever.

In any case, I tried 5E and once again, the amount of complexity in terms of character arrangement simply bored me. I don't care about feats, customization and all of that excessive sort of stuff. I graduated to OSR (Labyrinth Lord and Swords & Wizardry) and I just do 3d6 down the line and kill one, and that's your character. No interest in point buy, no interest in convoluted character backstories, etc. Though personality and life experiences are very much encouraged.

With that being said, my friends and I are much more interested in inter-party roleplay and expression than dice rolls. We keep those to a minimum. Want to haggle with a shopkeeper or charm a guard into letting you through the gates? You, yourself, need to be charismatic and present good reasons for why the item should cost less or why you should be let in. No need to roll a few arbitrary dice rolls for something and slow down the whole process, which for us is the talking and roleplaying.
Dice get rolled during combat or during dungeon generation for loot tables and relevant enemy varieties. We don't do THAC0, because it's inconsistent, as many people have pointed out so far.

So essentially, as a young person, I don't care for lots of rules and dice rolls because it slows down the roleplaying and many things can be accomplished through character actions and roleplaying. The DM should be doing most of the dice rolling anyway.

Quote from: Lidless_Eye on April 18, 2023, 05:55:06 AM
As a young-ish person (mid twenties, you can make your own ruling there) I started with 3.5 edition in 2013 or 2014, and I was ambivalent to the complexity of that system and the range of options presented to players in terms of customization. I only played 4E once or twice and probably didn't even update the system at all from 3.5 apart from those healing charges or whatever.

In any case, I tried 5E and once again, the amount of complexity in terms of character arrangement simply bored me. I don't care about feats, customization and all of that excessive sort of stuff. I graduated to OSR (Labyrinth Lord and Swords & Wizardry) and I just do 3d6 down the line and kill one, and that's your character. No interest in point buy, no interest in convoluted character backstories, etc. Though personality and life experiences are very much encouraged.

With that being said, my friends and I are much more interested in inter-party roleplay and expression than dice rolls. We keep those to a minimum. Want to haggle with a shopkeeper or charm a guard into letting you through the gates? You, yourself, need to be charismatic and present good reasons for why the item should cost less or why you should be let in. No need to roll a few arbitrary dice rolls for something and slow down the whole process, which for us is the talking and roleplaying.
Dice get rolled during combat or during dungeon generation for loot tables and relevant enemy varieties. We don't do THAC0, because it's inconsistent, as many people have pointed out so far.

So essentially, as a young person, I don't care for lots of rules and dice rolls because it slows down the roleplaying and many things can be accomplished through character actions and roleplaying. The DM should be doing most of the dice rolling anyway.

Greetings!

Welcome, Lidless Eye! Also, I commend your attitude and efforts with gaming in the OSR!

Outstanding! Keep the faith!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

I started listening to a podcast of a group playing through "The Keep on the Borderlands", using actual BECMI rules. Apparently, they had, in a prior meeting, gotten into an argument over THAC0, over whether a player informs the DM of his actual roll ("I rolled a sixteen") or the AC he hits based on the chart ("I hit AC 3").

In either case, it is the DM who must use THAC0, not the players, because the AC of the monster being attacked shouldn't be known to the players, right?

Here is a link to the podcast: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJDd-rw7KvPA_uT-cXT-IBrIfxX27ZvO7

Quote from: cavalier973 on April 18, 2023, 08:29:37 AM
In either case, it is the DM who must use THAC0, not the players, because the AC of the monster being attacked shouldn't be known to the players, right?

The DM decides if an attack hits, not the players. People who disagree with this assertion need to go play another game. That said, I've played it multiple ways over the years...hidden everything and players roll a die, I do all the modifiers (full blown AD&D with weapon type, etc...pain in the ass), roll the die and tell me the value with modifiers, tell the players the AC of the monster and just let me know if they hit. There are advantages and disadvantages to each, but SOME people (no names here) just need to be left in the dark or they will game the ever living fuck out of the system to the point where it's not any fun. One of those situations where the PCs meet some orcs or whatever, they roll and say they hit AC 3 say, I tell them it misses, and one of THOSE PEOPLE will start a fucking argument. "Orcs don't have better than AC 3! Page 97 of the Monster Manual clearly states this!" Yeah, go play a video game.

The older I get the less I care, though, so I like to run Castles & Crusades mostly because it's simple ascending, tell the players the AC of the monsters. and they tell me if they hit. Speeds up play quite a bit for combats. I fixed the problem with THOSE PEOPLE by just not playing with them anymore. Best decision I ever made.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on April 17, 2023, 03:49:01 PM
I dislike THAC0, but it doesn't even need subtraction. Roll a d20, add AC, compare to THAC0 (as you mentioned, Target20 does something similar and I rpefer that - so I guess we partly agree).

and

Quote
T20: 1d20+level(+modifiers)+AC
THAC0: 1d20+AC, just compare to the number in your sheet.

So, I never did rolls back then as 1d20+AC and compare to THAC0, back when I ran THAC0, and the reason is that the modifiers became an endless stream of backwards mods if you are comparing to a target THAC0.  You can't compare to the number on your sheet, because it doesn't include things that are happening right now.  So you have either:

T20: 1d20+(effective fighter level)+(modifiers)+AC, then compare to 20
or
THAC0: 1d20+(modifiers)+AC, then compare to THAC0

I think T20 wins that for sure.  And in my example I definitely picked negative numbers to pick on THAC0, because it breaks hard as armor class and level increase, because you end up with negative AC (which isn't great but it's fine whatever) and negative THAC0 (which is awful, and makes you either subtract from a negative or compare to a negative).

One more thing:  "modifiers" come from a few sources in a typical game.
Lets assume you have a +2 to hit from strength, and a +1 longsword, and you are specialized so you have a +1 to hit, and you are charging so you have a +2, and you can't see the target so you have a -4, and you are a level 5 fighter equivalent.

An ascending AC, or target 20, your sheet somewhere contains "Magic Sword: +9", the summation of your effective fighter level (+5), your strength bonus to hit in melee (+2), the magical bonus of your sword (+1), and the fact that you are specialized in swords of its class (+1).
In THACW0RLD, you instead have "Magic Sword: 7", because you have a THAC0 of 16 somewhere else, and you've subtracted 9 from it.

In Ascending AC or target 20, you can easily add your temporary modifiers to the roll, or to the modifier.  With THAC0, you either add it to the roll or subtract it from the THAC0.  That makes them feel very different and be lame.

QuoteFirst off, no one's pre-calculating anything.  They're literally looking at a chart in the book.

That way is much older than THAC0, and the fact that THAC0 is compatible with that is probably why it was even considered at all.

QuoteI need to hit an AC of 5, my THACO is 10.  Therefore I need to roll a 5.  How is that convoluted?

I selected cases that were convoluted for THAC0 and fine for T20 and Ascending AC.  You selected a case that is not convoluted for any of them.  But there is no meaningful case where T20 and Ascending AC suck, and THAC0 rules.  THAC0 is in some cases not convoluted, sure.  But hitting AC 15 with a +10 to hit is just as obviously 5.  Negative values happen, and they are annoying.