Quote from: Christopher Brady;955428This?  Is a projection.  You use words that Thegn doesn't.  'Optimal'?  He never said this.  He said that a player doesn't want to play a character that will drag the party down.  Someone who can barely make the rolls needed to do something, like say pick a lock or disarm a trap, isn't complaining about 'optimal' characters, they're talking about feeling useful.  You could argue that if he kills himself by failing to disarm a trap he's actually hurt the party.  Less fire power/hp resource available for when the inevitability of combat comes up.

Here's a better analogy, who would you hire as a locksmith after having locked yourself out of your own car?  Some fumbled finger no name goon, or someone who can do the job and has all the tools, both physical and mental?

I can tell ya, most people, gamers or not, would rather be the guy who can do the job.  Which is why if they can, they will learn to do the job, or more likely get the one who can do it, and do it well.

Why the hell do RPGs have to force you, and I do mean FORCE, into choosing to have the idiot who can barely pick his own nose without drawing his own blood into a role he's not suited for?

It's not realistic in the least.  Hell, in older editions you could HIRE people who were good at the job you wanted for a decent amount of gold.

The right tool for the right job argument is definitely valid. However, the editions which 'forced' people to use random rolls are also the ones where starting stats are nice perks at best, not vital to character success. All of the editions (and I'm talking TSR/WotC/Piazo games, I can't speak for every OSR game out there) where the difference between a 10 and an 18 is the difference between competent and incompetent (AD&D 1&2, D&D 3-5, and PF) has point buy, array, point allocation, or some other method listed where a player can almost be guaranteed a fairly competent character.

As to realism, it depends on the backstory you imagine lead these characters to adventuring. If these are people forced by circumstance into a life of adventure (forced literally like in a zombie-survival scenario, or just a 'you can be a starving dirt farmer your whole life or pick up a sword and do something about it' scenario), then yes, it is reasonable that Clumsy Joe and Asthmatic Allen will become adventurers because 'stay behind and let someone more naturally adept do it' doesn't solve their situation. If instead you want to zoom in on the party at the point where they are competent, capable adventurers, then you probably won't find many Clumsy Joes. It's just different styles of play, and thankfully no one is being forced to play a game that doesn't match their preferred style.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;955456So you're saying you can pound a nail with a hammer with a wobbly, rusted pig iron head, just as well with a fully functional and capable steel claw hammer?

Because it's the same thing.  Why risk your hand with a substandard hammer, when you have a perfectly functional one.  And that's the thing, functional, NOT superiour.

A character is a tool, a tool to play make believe, to have fun dredging through dungeons and ruins, to explore mental landscapes, whether that involves a story or narrative or not.  And as long as the tool does the job it's often fun.  But if you have to find excuses and reasons as to why you must make a less capable (there's that word again!) tools with you, maybe you should consider what you're doing.

Here's the rub, if your beer and pretzel's game is all about running through various deathtrap laden mazes with the sole goal of seeing how far you can go, then hell yeah, a character with substandard abilities is just as good as a demigod.  Probably because both will have about the same rate of 'survival'.

But for those of us who like to stick with a character, hopefully (cuz you know, dice and all other randomizers), longer than a single session, something better than Louie The Loser might be in order.

And quite frankly, I don't know about anyone else, but I'm sick and tired of having the likes of Gronan and Black Vulmea throwing their e-peens around and yelling at 'those damn kids' when games have changed to reflect more modern sensibilities.  We get it, you're damn proud of the fact that you had to walk up hill, in the snow, in the dead of winter, both ways.  But there's a reason bus services got created.

Gronan has been pretty even handed in this thread, I think. And Vulmea's penchant for Spanish swearing here has made me feel slightly wistful about my old hometown in south-central Texas.:-)

Those guys aside, I would venture to say that, regardless of how you generate your characters, I would think your memories would be more about what they did, rather than what their numbers were, which is why I suggested the focus be on the people, rather than the the stats their characters have. I made my comment because it sounded (and still does sound) like you're insinuating you can't have any long term fun unless your character is "optimal." I believe there's a more appropriate yardstick to measure the quality of the gaming experience other than "My character was successful on X % of my die rolls." To assess that proposition, I would ask you this: when you and your mates talk about your adventures/sessions, does anyone ever say, "Remember that time I made all my lockpicking checks, because of that +10 Mechanics skill I have, coupled with the 'Super Rogue' Feat? Man...that was fun..." Or is it more about "Remember when Gromm charged up the hill, got caught in Warren's Sleep spell, and passed out before he reached the target?"

Beyond that, the way you're presenting yourself as a player (here, anyway) is as someone who would sit at my elbow every session, peering over at my sheet, then judging whether I'm "dead weight" based on that, rather than the decisions I make. It seems that how I plunk down the numbers might be your primary yardstick for how I play, before you've even seen me play).

I would assume that's not how you actually play, or actually judge the quality of your table. Otherwise, I feel like you'd be constantly disappointed. This, of course, assumes that we both agree that gaming is about whom we game with, rather than the characters they make. Of course, if how someone makes a character is a part of that measurement...

Quote from: Omega;955388One problem as it were with some point buy and especially Gurps is that while its pretty even at the start. That all breaks down when someone starts to take on disadvantages to get more points. All of a sudden the character with no flaws may end up woefully underpowered compared to the character whos taken possibly several disads to garner alot of points.

Normally this isnt a problem when you have a competent GM. But seems way too often either the GM doesnt enforce those disads, or the player tries to rules lawyer the disads into a little corner where it can rarely show, or turn it into an ongoing advantage somehow. Which is why I warn players up front that if they take a disadvantage I am going to enforce it.

I had one player who was dismayed that their PC who flips out under stress was... flipping out under stress...

Normally nobody minds if the other guy is more powerful but also dealing with disads. Some may though resent the more problematic ones that interfere too much.

With random rolling normally no one cares there overall because the system tends to push you towards average and getting a high or low roll tends to be more a badge of luck, good or ill. They may grumble if someone gets really lucky. But even then there tends to be less trouble unless its the same player rolling suspiciously high again and again. And some are ok with being joe average or even less as it tends to mean the guy with the 18s is going to be drawing alot of fire and they wont.

In the end part of the roll vs something else problem comes from players simply not understanding the system or getting it in their head the system does some unfair thing when that is not the case. And the other part coming from bad first impressions leaving them SCARRED FOR LIFE!

Hehe!
Yeah, once again, the main problem it seems like many people have with GURPS is that it's rather different from other games and so (particularly if the GM isn't very experienced with it) there can be quite a few unexpected situations and other surprises, one of which as you say being if the GM under (or over) emphasizes something. Badly managed or unmanaged character creation by newbies and/or munchkins can of course easily make ridiculous broken characters. So it's really easy to have "this is weird/sucks" experiences at first, especially with a green GURPS GM.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;955454I thought that too until I played PATHFINDER.  You're using your stats in everything you do, and if your prime requisite isn't at least a 16 all you're good for is absorbing hit points from bad guy attacks.  Sure, you can still use your brain, but at that point you can contribute and use your brain without a PC, too.  I would not dream of making people use 3d6 in order in PATHFINDER.

But if you die quickly, you get to roll new stats. ;-)

Quote from: Christopher Brady;955456And quite frankly, I don't know about anyone else, but I'm sick and tired of having the likes of Gronan and Black Vulmea throwing their e-peens around and yelling at 'those damn kids' when games have changed to reflect more modern sensibilities.

Chris - may I call you Chris? - Chris, I have ten posts in this thread before this one, and in none of them - not a single one - did I say anything about point buy being inferior to random attribute generation.

In two posts I pointed out that Voros' claim about 3d6 in 1e AD&D was bullshit, devoted a post to the idea that in-game social interactions usually require both talking things through and rolling for success, added two posts about what a gawdawful click-bait topic this is and three posts pointing out that you're ignorant, quoted some of nDervish's points about fairness and zero-to-hero, and I made a Monte Python joke, 'cause, y'know, gamers.

But not once did I say anything negative about point buy, because while I prefer randomly generated characters when I play, I also couldn't care less if a gamer wants a 'standard array' or straight 18s or 00s or whatever on their character sheet. Shine on, you crazy diamond, 'cause in the games I play, it's really not that big an advantage.

And by the way, I guess this is going to be another post about your ignorance, because point buy characters goes back to at least 1977 with Melee and 1980 with The Fantasy Trip, so fuck your gibberish about 'modern sensibilities.'

Quote from: Christopher Brady;955456We get it, you're damn proud of the fact that you had to walk up hill, in the snow, in the dead of winter, both ways.  But there's a reason bus services got created.

Unlike most of the profoundly ignorant posters on this site, I don't have you on Ignore because while so much of what you say is hare-brained nonsense, you do actually have something to contribute once in while - that right there is funny.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;955454I thought that too until I played PATHFINDER.  You're using your stats in everything you do, and if your prime requisite isn't at least a 16 all you're good for is absorbing hit points from bad guy attacks.  Sure, you can still use your brain, but at that point you can contribute and use your brain without a PC, too.  I would not dream of making people use 3d6 in order in PATHFINDER.

Sounds more like a problem with the campaign not the game. If the campaign is all about combat and you don't optimize for combat then your character will feel like a fifth wheel. In addition if encounters are designed to be "level appropriate" rather than what natural for the setting again a non-optimized character will feel like a fifth wheel.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;955456So you're saying you can pound a nail with a hammer with a wobbly, rusted pig iron head, just as well with a fully functional and capable steel claw hammer?

Because it's the same thing.  Why risk your hand with a substandard hammer, when you have a perfectly functional one.  And that's the thing, functional, NOT superiour.

Because RPGs are about experiencing a campaign where you interact with a setting as your character where your actions are adjudicated by a human referee. Not playing a wargame with a specific set of rules set in a defined scenario. RPGs are inherently freeform. As such exactly what is optimal?

I ran a campaign centered around a hedge wizard, a priest, a laborer, and a city guard living out their lives in a neighborhood of the City State of the Invincible Overlord. What as optimal was very different from a campaign where everybody played a magic-users. Which was different from the one where everybody was a member of the City Guard. Which different still from the campaigns that I run most of the time where the players make characters that interest them and they hang out and adventurer and getting into trouble by looting dungeons.

Beyond a minimum threshold any set of rules can be used to adjudicate the action of the characters for any type of campaign.  Takes a lot for more work to use OD&D  rules to run a Cyberpunk campaign hence is why rules like Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0 have utility. The only objective criteria is does it take more work for you to run your campaign with point buy over random generation? The same with any other set of mechanics. Otherwise it preference and what "best" is what you like.

Quote from: estar;955535Sounds more like a problem with the campaign not the game. If the campaign is all about combat and you don't optimize for combat then your character will feel like a fifth wheel.

I've seen this. But it can also be the game, like with SpaceMaster or RoleMaster. (I forget the version--late 80s I guess.)

If you have massive rules mastery, you can make characters whose tertiary abilities are orders of magnitude higher than the primary skills of someone who made a character with a character concept or without rules mastery. I feel the same way playing the computer game of D&D's Temple of Elemental Evil, where you have to plan what your character is going to take at each level, ahead of time, or you don't get the good skills at higher levels.

I don't know if you consider that a system (game) problem or what.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;955474A good tradesman wouldn't work with substandard ones in the first place, as if it was a point of pride.

Come on now, I bet some in this thread would be yelling "Stone tools was good enough for us!" just to make a point.

Quote from: Tod13;955544If you have massive rules mastery, you can make characters whose tertiary abilities are orders of magnitude higher than the primary skills of someone who made a character with a character concept or without rules mastery. I feel the same way playing the computer game of D&D's Temple of Elemental Evil, where you have to plan what your character is going to take at each level, ahead of time, or you don't get the good skills at higher levels.

In my Majestic Wilderlands (and my other settings) being able to kill everything and anything often doesn't have anything to do with resolving the current complication. Note this is not the same as saying that it has no effect. Of course being a combat/skill/magic optimized monster does influence how events play out. However it causes it own set of complications.

The thing to remember that there are not many RPGs that are so broken that the weight of numbers in the form of organized society doesn't win in the end. I don't need to make optimized NPCs to counter the player. Even the most tricked out optimized fighter in most heroic fantasy RPGs are not capable of handling the entire 200 man city guard by themselves along with whatever forces the king/overlord/emperor contributes.

That if it even gets to that point in the first place. The way I emphasize first person roleplaying for myself and my players helps greatly in curbing maddog behavior.

Quote from: Ras Algethi;955552Come on now, I bet some in this thread would be yelling "Stone tools was good enough for us!" just to make a point.

And sometimes they have a point for example Surgical knives made from obsidian are still used in some types of surgeries. But in general yes stone as a material for tools is generally inferior to the alternatives. But because the focus of RPGs is on being a character within some imagined setting, what mechanics you use to handle various aspects of the campaign is not black and white.

What important is to understand the consequences of using a particular set of mechanics. And keep in mind that it not that finely tuned there are lots of equally good ways to figure out if a weapon strike hit and how much damage it along with detailing the different aspects of a specific character.

Quote from: AsenRG;955391Definitely sounds like a plan to me, with salt or without;)?

I'm very indecisive when it comes to popcorn, so I like to get a Xmas three-flavor tin and then roll on my custom random encounter table:

1-4 Go classic! (Butter)
5-8 Go dairy! (Cheese)
7-14 Get sweet! (Caramel)
15-16 Butter, and roll on Table 73: Random fridge leftovers
17-18: Cheese, and roll on Table 102: Random questionably half-eaten pantry items
19: Caramel, and roll again
20: Get your lazy ass outdoors

Quote from: estar;955535Sounds more like a problem with the campaign not the game. If the campaign is all about combat and you don't optimize for combat then your character will feel like a fifth wheel. In addition if encounters are designed to be "level appropriate" rather than what natural for the setting again a non-optimized character will feel like a fifth wheel.

Oh, certainly; the game sessions are all commercial "Adventure Paths," which are designed exactly that way.

Quote from: Ras Algethi;955552Come on now, I bet some in this thread would be yelling "Stone tools was good enough for us!" just to make a point.

But, you see, the dichotomy is false.

Analogy is always suspect, but I'm going to use one anyway.

In the model railroad hobby, it is possible to buy a fully finished, ready to go locomotive.  Put it on the track, boom, done.  Against a neutral backdrop, a photograph of the model will be absolutely indistinguishable from the real thing.

There are still people out there who take their miniature machine shop, and a bunch of brass bar and sheet stock, and painstakingly build a model locomotive with their own hands.  Some of them are quite good at it, and produce truly amazing models, down to turning the spokes for their steam engine wheels individually.

They do this because they WANT to.

And they don't really care what other people do, until the model railroad equivalent of ChristopherBrady comes along and tells them that they are doing it wrong, and, more importantly, that nobody ever really enjoyed doing it that way, and that the model builder in question is only doing it to "put down" those "damn kids," instead of, you know, he actually enjoys doing it.  At which point the model machinist takes one of his miniature lathe tools and carves his initials in ChristoperBrady's forehead.

Here endeth the lesson.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;955573Oh, certainly; the game sessions are all commercial "Adventure Paths," which are designed exactly that way.

Ah make sense considering how they are setup. I will use adventure paths but I break them down into NPCs, plot (like what the NPCs plan to do), and locale. Then run it like I always run my campaign. Some are easier to do that with than others. Kingmaker is one I really liked as it was designed as Paizo's take on a sandbox campaign.

If a party is not optimized for combat usually what happens is something I label as "peck them to death". They won't meet the enemy head on or on the path laid out in the book. But figure out different ways to pick off the opposition and try to whittle them down to something they can handle. This could mean setting up a deception where part of the main opposition is off elsewhere doing something else. The original locale is somewhat depopulated compared to what was laid out.