Quote from: Baeraad;955670True, and well worth noting, but I don't see why the best way of going about it is to randomly restrict choices rather than just offering a comprehensible number of viable options to everyone. If you roll 3 in each attribute your choices are shitty fighter or shitty fighter, so then we're back to North Korea, and if you roll 18 in every attribute you can be anything you want, which means that your choices aren't restricted after all. I mean, both those are unlikely scenarios, but you see what I mean - random rolls restrict options randomly.

In AD&D, if you roll 3 in everything you can't be any character and you reroll. You'll find on the stat tables it says, things like "Intelligence 5 - here or lower the character can only be a fighter." But if they don't have Str 9 they can't be a fighter, either. So you reroll.

The chance of a single 3 is 1 in 216. The chance of an 18, also 1 in 216. So the chance of straights 3s is 1 in 216 multiplied by itself 6 times, as is straight 18s. I've never seen it happen, have you?

In practice, 3d6 down the line will usually lead to a choice of at least two character classes, and often 3. You'll almost never see paladins and the like. But note that excepting the illusionist, the character classes most hard to qualify for are also known as the most disruptive to play - paladin, assassin - or just plain weird - bard - or overpowered at the start - ranger. So while the players may be disappointed at the time of rolling, most DMs are not sad if the players are restricted, and the play will run smoother.  

Quote from: AsenRG;955685Only if those hirelings stand a chance at hitting the opposition, though. The average hireling in PF might well have a +3 to +5 to attack, when you start facing things with AC in the 25-28 range, that's not really useful contribution.

I'll introduce you to a concept forgotten from 2e onwards: "tactics." Cave men did not manager to make mammoths extinct by going one-on-one toe-to-toe with them - they drove them into narrow gullies and poured dozens of spears into the bastards.

Yes, a bunch of 0-level men-at-arms will do badly in most stand-up fights. The aim of the players should thus be to avoid stand-up fights. Make them ambushes. In this you will find parallels with real-world militaries. The competent professionals don't go Leroy Jenkins: they scout and plan for days and ambush and bring the maximum possible force to bear on the weakest point in the shortest possible time.

A sensible DM will offer bonuses for this, if nothing else using surprise rules. If your DM thinks you're playing Command & Conquer where everyone reacts instantly without fear or confusion and fights to the last hit point of the last man, well what can you do. We have to assume you're not playing with morons.

QuoteNow, those aren't the same thing. A few simple tools, applied universally is not the same as returning to the basics and seeing them on a whole new level.

In practice it is. You realise that a few simple tools are all that's needed. Again, there are reasons AD&D1e and other old games are still played while a thousand universal ones are forgotten. No version of D&D has alone exceeded AD&D1e's sales. No universal point-buy game in all its editions have exceeded the sales and reach of that one edition of D&D. Retroclones of that are popular, retroclones of point-buy games are not. There are reasons for that.

People have been quietly playing, using those few simple tools for almost 40 years now.

Quote from: estar;955744Yeah RPG are inherently freeform. They are about experiencing a campaign where you play a character interacting with a setting where the action is adjudicated by a human referee. The rules are tool for helping the referee adjudicate the action. They are not why you play a campaign in the first place.

Because you are a character within a setting, you can do ANYTHING that character can do as if he really existed within the setting. No set of rules can encompass the possibilities hence the need for human judgment to make the whole thing work.

Because the character can be doing whatever in the setting there is rarely a optimal "build". The only way optimal builds work is for narrow situations. If having a optimal build is a essential for a campaign then that means the referee has a narrow focus in what he details for the players.

D&D 4e is a good example of this. The vast majority of the published adventures amounted to a linked set of wargame scenarios where the focus was defeating the enemy through the clever use of tactics. They were not devoid of roleplaying but it was definitely filler material much in the same way the whole Inner Sphere setting works for BattleTech or the setting of Warhammer 40k works for that game.

In the published D&D 4e adventures I ran if the players doesn't optimize his build that means he is not fighting at his levels which makes him underpowered compared to his teammate. On the flip side when I used the D&D 4e rules for my Majestic Wilderlands how I used AD&D, GURPS, Fantasy Hero, etc then under-powered character ceased to be an issue. The variety of situation the player encountered increased and what became important was understanding the circumstances and planning accordingly.

Thanks for the clarification.

40 pages, 40 pages...

Quote from: AsenRG;955761Do you hang out a lot with freeform players, or something:p?

Good lord, no. Those I have found to be a bunch of massive power-gamers.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;955844The chance of a single 3 is 1 in 216. The chance of an 18, also 1 in 216. So the chance of straights 3s is 1 in 216 multiplied by itself 6 times, as is straight 18s. I've never seen it happen, have you?

Like I said, they are unlikely scenarios. I also said, "but you see what I mean." Apparently I was mistaken on that second one.

Let me try again, then. What I mean is that random rolls give different numbers of options for different results. No, you won't get a lot of 6 x 3 or 6 x 18, but you will definitely get a non-negligable amount of disgustingly good results that mean the world's your oyster, and depressingly bad results that reduce you to a single possible role which you won't even be very good at. That I have seen plenty of times.

Now, if you really want people to choose among a truncated number of options - and sure, making them do that is a large part of roleplaying - and you also want those options to be randomly generated for each players, here's a better way to do it: write down a list of every viable option that exists. Then make each player make a fixed number of rolls on that list, and choose among his results. So basically, the way you do it in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2E, which happens to be a game that really makes the randomised chargen work for it.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;955844In practice, 3d6 down the line will usually lead to a choice of at least two character classes, and often 3. You'll almost never see paladins and the like. But note that excepting the illusionist, the character classes most hard to qualify for are also known as the most disruptive to play - paladin, assassin - or just plain weird - bard - or overpowered at the start - ranger. So while the players may be disappointed at the time of rolling, most DMs are not sad if the players are restricted, and the play will run smoother.

So what you're saying is, there are possible characters explicitly given in the rules as written that are non-desirable in play, but that's okay because the randomised chargen ensures that they'll almost never actally get used? And that is why randomised chargen is superior to point-buy?

... you know, I'm starting to think that I should regard old-school enthusiasts in the same way I regard people who go bungee jumping for fun. Which is to say, I'm glad that they're enjoying themselves, but I'm personally never going to understand the appeal of an activity where the remote chance of catastrophic failure is a selling point.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;955844In practice it is. You realise that a few simple tools are all that's needed. Again, there are reasons AD&D1e and other old games are still played while a thousand universal ones are forgotten. No version of D&D has alone exceeded AD&D1e's sales. No universal point-buy game in all its editions have exceeded the sales and reach of that one edition of D&D. Retroclones of that are popular, retroclones of point-buy games are not. There are reasons for that.

Yes there is, but I don't think they're the ones you imply. In my experience, something that's the right kind of messy will gain mass appeal in a way that something neat and elegant can only dream of. It just seems to be human nature. It's like how cities designed in symmetrical squares are objectively superior over cities that just grew up chaotically over the centuries, but people who try to live in the former get depressed and will get out at the first opportunity.

D&D has certainly enjoyed enduring success, but hardly because it's perfect. If anything, it's enjoyed enduring success because it's such a weirdly charming and idiosyncratic kind of bizarre, malfunctioning mess that people will spend a ton of energy learning how to make its quirks work for them rather than against them. And any improved versions are met with a half-hearted response of, "sure, that's better, I guess" - and then people go back to playing the original, because the improved versions just don't feel like they have any soul.

Hell, even I like idiosyncratic messiness better than sterile perfection, for all my pro-point-buy heresy. That's the reason why instead of just playing Godbound (which is like Exalted but objectively better in every way) I'm spending endless hours converting Exalted Charmsets into the Godbound rules, because all the dumb fiddly bits were part of the fun. Objective quality is not the only thing people look for, especially not in a leisure activity.

"improved versions are met with a half-hearted response"...

You assume mistakenly that later versions are objectively improved.  This is not so.  They are different, yes, and thus they appeal to different people; but to say that the later versions are necessarily improved is simply fatuous.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;955844No version of D&D has alone exceeded AD&D1e's sales.

Pretty sure that the Red Box was the biggest seller for TSR, far exceeding the sales of any 1e book. According to Jim Ward, Mentzer himself and Kask it sold over a million copies just in North America, sometimes in just a year, and similar numbers in Europe and Japan. Kask being a Gygax partisan would have little reason to exaggerate about the Red Box sales or disparage 1e sales.  From the sounds of it the 1e books sold anywhere from 120,000 to 200,000 each. Combined they would be lucky to match half the sales of the Red Box just in North America. I think the same is true of the Holmes box far outselling the OD&D original. And from the looks of it 2e and 3e also outsold 1e, not surprising considering how established the brand was by that point and the greater capacity of the companies.

Makes one wonder why TSR didn't push B/X/BECMI harder as they was their biggest seller and instead seemed to put way more effort into AD&D. Perhaps the Red Box didn't 'have legs'? Or they didn't want the game to be associated too clearly 'with kids'? I remember an insider at WoTC during the early years writing about how the marketers didn't want MtG to be thought of as 'for kids.'

He might have been talking about the whole line, not the main books.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;955882"improved versions are met with a half-hearted response"...

You assume mistakenly that later versions are objectively improved.  This is not so.  They are different, yes, and thus they appeal to different people; but to say that the later versions are necessarily improved is simply fatuous.

And the reverse is also true.

Quote from: Baeraad;955879Yes there is, but I don't think they're the ones you imply. In my experience, something that's the right kind of messy will gain mass appeal in a way that something neat and elegant can only dream of. It just seems to be human nature. It's like how cities designed in symmetrical squares are objectively superior over cities that just grew up chaotically over the centuries, but people who try to live in the former get depressed and will get out at the first opportunity.

D&D has certainly enjoyed enduring success, but hardly because it's perfect. If anything, it's enjoyed enduring success because it's such a weirdly charming and idiosyncratic kind of bizarre, malfunctioning mess that people will spend a ton of energy learning how to make its quirks work for them rather than against them. And any improved versions are met with a half-hearted response of, "sure, that's better, I guess" - and then people go back to playing the original, because the improved versions just don't feel like they have any soul.

Hell, even I like idiosyncratic messiness better than sterile perfection, for all my pro-point-buy heresy. That's the reason why instead of just playing Godbound (which is like Exalted but objectively better in every way) I'm spending endless hours converting Exalted Charmsets into the Godbound rules, because all the dumb fiddly bits were part of the fun. Objective quality is not the only thing people look for, especially not in a leisure activity.

Your observations certainly reflect the 3e -> 4e -> 5e flamewars.

*Opens can of worms, dons firefighter gear*

Quote from: cranebump;955714Beat me to it. It's no more "fair" than anything else, though it does shift accountability to the player, while shifting excuses away from dice rolls.

It's a control issue. Some folks want more control. Point Buy is just a tool to allow it.

It allows a player to play exactly what they want. Which *is* inherently more fair than being handed what the whims of fate will dispense. Some folks will play anything. Some folks only want a certain character type. Let everyone get what they want.

Quote from: Tetsubo;955972It allows a player to play exactly what they want. Which *is* inherently more fair than being handed what the whims of fate will dispense. Some folks will play anything. Some folks only want a certain character type. Let everyone get what they want.

That's more accommodating, not more fair. In the random roll situation, each player has the same chance as each other of not being able to play the character type they want to play, which is of equal fairness to the situation of each player having a 100% chance of being able to play the character type they want to play.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;955973That's more accommodating, not more fair. In the random roll situation, each player has the same chance as each other of not being able to play the character type they want to play, which is of equal fairness to the situation of each player having a 100% chance of being able to play the character type they want to play.

Which is great if that is what the players want. Some of us don't. Neither model is any 'better' than the other. Again, let players play what they want.

I agree that people should play what they want. I was just pointing out that 1) everybody gets what they want, 2)nobody gets what they want, 3) everybody has the same chance as getting what they want, and 4)lots of other possibilities are all equal in terms of fairness, and thus the term isn't relevant to the discussion.

Quote from: Baeraad;955879Good lord, no. Those I have found to be a bunch of massive power-gamers.

Therefore, it's not that you don't know power gamers, it's just that you avoid playing with them;)?

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;955844Yes, a bunch of 0-level men-at-arms will do badly in most stand-up fights. The aim of the players should thus be to avoid stand-up fights. Make them ambushes. In this you will find parallels with real-world militaries. The competent professionals don't go Leroy Jenkins: they scout and plan for days and ambush and bring the maximum possible force to bear on the weakest point in the shortest possible time.

In 3.x, once the AC gets high enough, your chance to hit becomes 5%, and you can't score a crit, so it takes essentially 20 hirelings to do one hit of damage per round. And if the AC is that high, the HPs are in the hundreds, so unless you have an army with you, the creature is going to find a way to ruin your shit. I mean, I appreciate what you're saying. I hate overreliance on dice as much as the next guy. But the last few editions have been designed such that if you don't meet the stats, you're fucked.

As I have pointed out a couple times now, you can't really compare a game where your THAC0 and damage are guaranteed to scale nicely with one where it's heavily dependent on your ability scores. In AD&D, you are not allowed to be a Fighter who takes a penalty on attack rolls. Don't have STR 9? Play something else. In WotC editions, the rules will let you hang yourself much more easily, so it's dumb to make comparisons.

QuoteNo version of D&D has alone exceeded AD&D1e's sales.

Pretty sure Mentzer Basic and 3.0 both did, and if 3.0 did, it probably means 5e has as well.