TheRPGSite

When you're designing an RPG, you need to understand what "good design" really means, and it all starts with one fundamental truth.
#dnd       #ttrpg   #osr   

Definitely agree that playability should be the priority. I also think people dismiss D&D at their own peril in design because even though I don't play it as much as I used to, one that that is instantly clear to me the moment I run another campaign (and it can be any edition from first to third for me) is on the GM it is clear what you need to do to prep and plan for a session. It is also a system that has legs. You can start a campaign on a whim and it will blossom it just has the right mixture of gameable content. My experience when I go back to it is always "Oh yeah, this is why D&D works". Not every system needs to do what D&D does but that lesson of playability is crucial

"D&D is bad game design"

This is like saying basic Poker is bad game design because you prefer Texas Hold'Em; just another typical horseshit postmodern argument. Hegel really fucked up Western thought in just about every significant aspect.

EDIT: The Vampire example given at the end is interesting...I agree that the system isn't very good, but as a game it still somehow works specifically due to a combination of factors. There's more to the forest than simply the trees.

I hate to be blunt, but OSR is barely played more than Forge games relative to D&D. Realistically, the OSR crowd is vocal and buys a lot of RPGs (more than they play, as with most indie RPGs) but D&D's dominance is from marketing and familiarity, not quality. So I deny the argument that more players equals quality. That is kinda true, but it's also kinda untrue when you're comparing an indie studio of three people in their spare time to WotC spending a half million dollars for ads. Actual play is not a perfect yardstick when the market is this distorted.

I have made my opinion clear that I think D&D is obsolete. This applies much more to the WotC era products than the oldest editions (well, beyond THAC0, anyways) because WotC has always designed D&D as a quagmire of noob-trap abilities. It's much easier to take a not-so-overbuilt TSR edition of D&D and streamline it into a modern OSR game than it is to work with newer WotC editions of D&D, which tend to be both overbuilt and irreducibly complex. The TSR editions are also objectively obsolete, but they are easy to modernize, and most GMs can do it almost unconsciously. The WotC editions of D&D are somewhat easier to make content for, but practically impossible to modernize.

The Forge made many mistakes. I think the ideas were interesting, but also flawed. You have to take them with a significant pinch of salt. And as the Forge grew, creative envy also grew and it suffered internal sabotage. I have personal experiences from my time moderating Reddits r/RPGDesign which suggests to me that someone in the industry is intentionally sabotaging the homebrew community. My experiences and my speculations as to who and why are probably best saved for another time. But the real issue is that the Forge went into "Winter" precisely as Smartphones went mainstream and just before streaming became popular, both changed average table chemistry significantly. This means that the supermajority of Forge games did not age well at all, and suffer even worse irreducible complexity problems than WotC D&D. Fiasco is brilliant, but you can't alter the games and make anything other than Fiasco, so no one homebrews Fiasco variants.

Your comments about min-maxing...irritate me. This is an infuriatingly common perspective and I absolutely despise it. In all other games, people who put effort into reading and internalizing the rules and understanding the nuances of the game are the most valuable players. Only in RPGs are these players considered problem-players, and one of the key reasons why is that WotC D&D is filled with noob-trap abilities which sound cool, but which are objectively inferior and the min-maxing player knows that. This more than any other reason is why I think D&D's core paradigm is flawed; it drives groups apart rather than bringing players together.

Classless and point-buy are better than class-based, but also significantly harder to design. A lot of D&D's design decisions (and games which roughly copy the formula) are about avoiding design decisions which make the game difficult to design more than engineering a good player experience. I think it's fair to say that to make a game which is significantly different from D&D which has any chance of being successful, you must have more game design experience than Gygax did sometime in the 1980s because that's when a lot of the tropes D&D is designed with were established.

At the end of the day, I think you massively oversimplify what makes D&D successful. It was the first RPG. It was a fantasy RPG in a market which loved fantasy. It's usually been backed by a major company with a significant marketing budget. It's hard to imagine D&D failing in this circumstance. 5E literally marketed itself on the nostalgia of older editions of D&D, and I kinda expect that most 5E PHB and Splatbooks were never actually used, they were just collectibles because D&D is a cultural artifact. It's also worth noting that homebrew designers and OSR GMs tend to run tighter ships than pick up group D&D tables, and such PUG groups have major problems with player attention spans and distracted play. D&D is not actually particularly good in this environment, but people play it because it's familiar and comfortable.

Quote from: Fheredin on May 22, 2023, 02:19:03 PM
Classless and point-buy are better than class-based

Your entire argument is null and void with this simple statement. You cannot make normative statements like this, in absolute terms, over matters of taste. Some people like vanilla, some like chocolate; which is better? Point-buy is not "better" than random rolls except in specific instances of implementation, when it achieves the design goal; I think that's what Pundit was pointing out in his analysis. If your goal is to design a point-buy, classless game, then something like GURPS or HERO or whatever does a much better job of achieving that goal vs. something like D&D. But if your goal is to make a dungeon-delving game with characters created at random who fit into definitive, rigid paradigms, those games are terrible and D&D is thus a better game of that type.

Also: "D&D is obsolete"

Is chess obsolete? What constitutes obsolescence? Is it merely age? Advancement does not make a thing obsolete unless it totally replaces that thing. There are many who argued that the radio was obsolete as soon as television came onto the scene, when in fact radio merely took on a different role and remained a viable medium of expression. TV cannot replace radio; it provides a different experience. "Modern" rpgs cannot make D&D obsolete, they merely provide a different gaming experience, and some people prefer D&D to whatever the current thing is, for whatever reason.

"At the end of the day, I think you massively oversimplify what makes D&D successful." - The Model T was the first real production automobile, and yet it was surpassed and replaced almost as soon as something better was available. Your argument is based on what is seemingly your own predisposition to hate D&D, for whatever reason.

-

Quote from: Brad on May 22, 2023, 03:01:56 PM
The Model T was the first real production automobile, and yet it was surpassed and replaced almost as soon as something better was available.

Your entire argument is null and void with this simple statement. You cannot make normative statements like this, in absolute terms, over matters of taste. Some people like vanilla, some like chocolate; which is better?

I don't like classless at all, but I don't think it's inherently bad or good design.  I don't like the idea that characters aren't immediately taggable by game handles, and I don't like that there cease to be understandable mechanical differences between them.  Of the fully classless systems I've seen, the only one that doesn't actively anger me is Savage Worlds, and they've done a lot of work to allow for class-like things if you want them.

You can easily make the case that classless is more realistic, and that it's possible to balance after all (even though I'd definitely say it's much harder, especially for the end user, the DM).  So it's not like it's bad design, it's just something I never want in practice.

By contrast, point buy is only ok if you assume that the stats don't matter.  Video games usually make this assumption (and the rare exceptions use stat values as different valid ways to play- stats used for replay value is actually really cool in a game).  If stats are just +3 to hit and damage, or +4 to a target number, then point buy is strictly better, no doubt, and you can hammer in exactly what the budget is, and build single and multiple attribute dependent classes around that.

But that's not what stats are really right?  If you have an Int of 3, you're fucking retarded.  Right?  That's what that means?  Perhaps profoundly retarded.  In 3.X that was the minimum for language, in 5ed there are many animals, not just dolphins, smarter than that.  An Int of 8 is a tiny bit below average and an Int of 12 is a tiny bit above average.  This will affect how you play your character some.  Similarly, dumping Cha and Wis both to 8 or something is supposed to have roleplay effects.  And since the game rewards you much more for having your prime attribute to whatever that game's softcap is than it punishes you for dumping most stats (in 5e, strength, intelligence, and charisma are solid dump stats, because the saving throws tied to them are so rare that you can't factor them in [and the one time you get an intellect devourer or whatever you needed way more than a +2], and because you can CHOOSE to not be a pack mule, or the party face).
Which means that a "properly built" character has roleplay restrictions that are difficult to get around- a problem that rolling for stats avoids, especially in like, AD&D, or whatever.

I do think that point buy, which I do prefer, encourages in many people a min/max mindset which then snowballs into other problems Just my experience.

Aren't PBtA and Blades in the Dark games pretty popular? So they're good too?

I do personally prefer playability.  If the ony way your game works is when it's embedded into a VTT I'm not sure that's well designed

Quote from: Hixanthrope on May 22, 2023, 03:20:23 PM
Your entire argument is null and void with this simple statement. You cannot make normative statements like this, in absolute terms, over matters of taste. Some people like vanilla, some like chocolate; which is better?

Nope, there is a demonstrative "better" in all the capabilities of cars that came after the Model T. Better handling, better fuel economy, better range and drive-ability, etc. All the "better" parts of games after D&D are purely subjective and entirely rooted in taste. Try again.

Quote from: PencilBoy99 on May 22, 2023, 03:42:06 PM
Aren't PBtA and Blades in the Dark games pretty popular?

On reddit ? Sure, nobody plays anything else.
In the real world ? Probably all of PbtA combined reaches about 10% of D&D's player base.

Quote from: PencilBoy99 on May 22, 2023, 03:42:06 PM
So they're good too?

Only if you're a fly.

Quote from: Brad on May 22, 2023, 03:01:56 PM

Quote from: Fheredin on May 22, 2023, 02:19:03 PM
Classless and point-buy are better than class-based

Also: "D&D is obsolete"

Is chess obsolete?

I'm glad you asked because this is precisely why the Forge's goal of abstract design theory was a good idea.

Chess is objectively obsolete because of a phenomenon called "first player advantage." In turn based games with symmetrical rules (like Chess) the first player to move has a tempo advantage which means that White will win the majority of games, especially at competitive high level play. Garry Kasparov (famous for playing against Deep Blue) is quoted as saying he would try to win as White and draw as Black. As a result, chess tournaments must make players play each player twice--once on each side of the table--and the total number of games comes out to be even, so there's a good chance of the tournament coming to a draw even if none of the games within it are draws or stalemates.

This is very obviously a design fault in the game which event coordinators and players are trying to work around. Modern games tend to understand first player advantage and include mechanisms to counterbalance first player advantage...at least assuming the game designer has studied some formal game design.

For example, consider Magic: The Gathering.

In Magic: The Gathering, players draw 7 cards ad assuming this is a two-player game and no one mulligans, the first player to act skips their draw-step. This means that the tempo advantage gained by acting first is at least partially counterbalanced by the second player holding a one card advantage. Richard Garfield baked in an asymmetry between the two players to make the game less unbalanced because he understood first player advantage. I think he underdid it--really, to undo first player advantage in a game like MTG, you need the player on the draw to draw two cards, but that would make for a wonky first turn.

I would argue that Magic: The Gathering is another example of an obsolete game because of the Mulligan. Opening hands must have good spell/land mixes to work, and by tournament rules, each time you Mulligan you draw one fewer cards, so you can wind up mulliganing down to 3-4 cards, which probably isn't a competitive hand, and have to resign a game purely because of RNG. The solution is pretty easy (split lands and spells into separate libraries) but that would break a lot of existing Mill and card discard cards, so sunk cost forces WotC to stay the course with an obsolete game.

Note that obsolete does not mean unplayable. An obsolete game is potentially just as enjoyable as it ever was, but it also has a flaw which people have mulled over, articulated in abstraction, and found at least one solution. Game design is an iterative process, not just individually for single games, but also as an industry-wide collective.  Players who have seen better often reluctantly return to obsolete games because they know they will now experience the flaws much more clearly. It's that ratchet of progress that players do not want to go backwards when they have seen better which defines game obsolescence.

Quote from: Fheredin on May 22, 2023, 02:19:03 PM
I hate to be blunt, but OSR is barely played more than Forge games relative to D&D. Realistically, the OSR crowd is vocal and buys a lot of RPGs (more than they play, as with most indie RPGs) but D&D's dominance is from marketing and familiarity, not quality. So I deny the argument that more players equals quality. *snipped for brevity*

I tend to agree with a lot of these points (though, I don't have a strong opinion on the Forge, which I kinda missed except for a few tidbits I gleaned while it was still going on, and people complaining about it later), and tend to think that Pundit's defense of D&D mostly amounts to treating the Bandwagon Fallacy like it's not a fallacy. That being said I think that there's some merits to D&D and that it would be next to impossible to achieve D&D's level of success on pure first mover and name recognition alone.

If the system was truly that crap it'd have been replaced by a better system by now, no matter how "first" it was or how recognized it is. Some parts of it must be serviceable for it to survive as the world's top RPG almost undisputed (barring a few brief instances) for this long, even if they're only barely serviceable. Otherwise people wouldn't have persistently put up with it for long enough for it to become a recognizable name to begin with.

I'm also firmly on the camp that "min-maxing"—to the degree that that is arguably a "bad" thing—is 100% on the system and not the player. If someone else making an optimized character really bothers you that much there's either something wrong with you, or the system must be so broken it needs to be fixed. And no, the "problem" player adjusting their build decisions to fit someone else's undefined and completely subjective and arbitrary opinion about what is or is not acceptable as a character build isn't a solution.

But old D&D gets around this by making everyone pick a boilerplate class, and leaving the power disparities to some classes being more powerful than others (often at different levels) and players getting lucky during character creation when they're rolling stats. Which is apparently much fairer and far preferable than characters being stronger on the merits of their build. Cuz some players rolling unbelievably bad during character creation and others getting ridiculously high scores is "realistic", but some characters being stronger cuz they picked the right abilities is unfair and a reflection on the player as a human being rather than the people envious of them or the game system.

I also agree that something like point-buy and freeform/classless is objectively better than class based, at least, as far as character customization is concerned. Once you throw customization into the mix character classes just become a hurtle that gets in the way and complicate things more that just building everything a la carte. Though, I'm not sure I agree that it's necessarily harder to design, specially compared to modern class-based games with stuff like skills, "feats" and a bunch of class abilities as you go up in levels. I think something like WEG Star Wars d6 and similar skill-based games are far simpler at their core than modern D&D.

Quote from: Brad on May 22, 2023, 03:01:56 PM

Quote from: Fheredin on May 22, 2023, 02:19:03 PM
Classless and point-buy are better than class-based

Your entire argument is null and void with this simple statement. You cannot make normative statements like this, in absolute terms, over matters of taste. Some people like vanilla, some like chocolate; which is better? Point-buy is not "better" than random rolls except in specific instances of implementation, when it achieves the design goal; I think that's what Pundit was pointing out in his analysis. If your goal is to design a point-buy, classless game, then something like GURPS or HERO or whatever does a much better job of achieving that goal vs. something like D&D. But if your goal is to make a dungeon-delving game with characters created at random who fit into definitive, rigid paradigms, those games are terrible and D&D is thus a better game of that type.

Split away because this is a less important reply.

Classless is a bit of a misnomer because you can actually build a class-system inside a classless system. This is typically called a Career or Life Path or something like that, but fundamentally this is just building a mini-class system inside a classless game. You can also design a classless system to be optimized for speed, to be optimized for character immersion, to emphasize character customization options, or all of the above with multiple character creation paths, because point-buy means multiple character creation paths can be balanced against each other (although that's a bit of a rare feature.)

A class-based system is intended to be babies learning to doodle by shading within the lines. Yes, most of them offer multiclassing, but that basically makes a class-based game into a classless one through the most Byzantine method possible. It makes far more sense to start classless and build a class system within it which players can opt into or out of.

The one redeeming feature of class-based games is book girth. People at a bookstore instinctively equate spinal thiccness with quality, so having a fat-boy chonky spine makes your book look more impressive on a shelf.

Yep, Chesterton's Fence all over again. 

If someone understands why, for example, that rolling against AC, with armor making you harder to hit, works (to a certain extent), then it becomes a lot easier to understand where it doesn't work quite as well, and then what the implications are for related rules.   You could just as easily say the same thing starting from, say, RQ or GURPS, which don't have AC, but instead have armor as damage reduction. That approach also works (to a certain extent), and also has limitations, and implications. 

Chesterton's Fence never said you couldn't tear it down.  It only said that the statement, "This fence serves no purpose.  We should tear it down." should be answered with, "Go away until you understand the purpose of the fence.  Then we may allow you to tear it down."

Quote from: Fheredin on May 22, 2023, 05:19:43 PM
A class-based system is intended to be babies learning to doodle by shading within the lines.

I'll take this at face value: and? What if we just want to use a coloring book instead of getting out a whole paint set? You're simply arguing that more player choice and influence over character makeup is somehow better than less. For certain types of games, okay, but not all. If we're playing Monopoly, does it matter who gets the hat and who gets the car? I have seen arguments over this, when there is zero difference in play between them. If I want to play a dungeon delve with some buddies while getting drunk and eating cheap pizza, we can all roll up D&D characters in five minutes and start "shading within the lines" before the first beer impairs our sensibilities. Good luck doing any sort of impromptu game that requires lifepaths or whatever else.

I really do not understand this complete adherence to the Hegelian dialectic when it comes to RPGs. It's insanely perplexing to me.

The question about whether class-based or classless/freeform is better is not so much a matter of taste or preference, but about what you want to do with the game and what you're trying to do with these components. If you're willing to put up with the restrictions of class-based progression and customization is at best a secondary concern, class-based is fine, and depending on how simple and straight forward the class structure is, arguably better. If all you're going for is casual play and most people in the group don't want to bother with fine tuning their characters you probably don't need a classless approach.

But the moment that customization becomes anything beyond a distant concern, classless/freeform systems can do anything that class-based can do better. And they can do anything classes can't do. Even when you take the pitfalls of classless/freeform systems into account, such as decision paralysis, most of them are implementation issues that can potentially be bypassed by stuff like using startup templates during character creation. And a lot of them apply even with class-based systems if you allow multiclassing or have a skill system thrown on top of the class-based system—except they're worse than if you just got rid of classes and went pure skill-based with freeform options.

I played a lot of RuneQuest, and its got no classes, and the characters all seem sort of alike.
Class-based games don't really have that problem.

Quote from: Fheredin on May 22, 2023, 02:19:03 PM
I hate to be blunt, but OSR is barely played more than Forge games relative to D&D.

The hard data we have indicate otherwise. (DriveThru Sales, Kickstarters, Convention attendance, etc.)

Quote from: Fheredin on May 22, 2023, 02:19:03 PM
(snip)
So I deny the argument that more players equals quality.
(snip)

I have made my opinion clear that I think D&D is obsolete. This applies much more to the WotC era products than the oldest editions (well, beyond THAC0, anyways) because WotC has always designed D&D as a quagmire of noob-trap abilities.
(snip)
Classless and point-buy are better than class-based, but also significantly harder to design.
(snip)
At the end of the day, I think you massively oversimplify what makes D&D successful. It was the first RPG. It was a fantasy RPG in a market which loved fantasy.
(snip)

You like many others are missing the point that tabletop roleplaying is not about playing a game first. But rather about pretending to have interesting adventures as interesting characters in an interesting setting first. The system is one tool to make this happen. Most games like Fiasco, Blade in the Dark, Apocalypse World are games wrapped up in flavor text. Much like most euro-games like Settler of Catan where the mechanics are designed first followed by the flavor text.

These games are fun but not when you want to focus on actually roleplaying a character having adventures in a setting.

What makes tabletop roleplaying, tabletop roleplaying is they have a single primary mechanic.

• The referee describes a setting.
• The players describe what character they want to play in the setting
• The referee describes the circumstances in which the characters find themselves
• The player tell the referee what they do as their characters
• The referee adjudicates what they attempt and then describes the new circumstances
• The above two are repeated through the campaign or session until time runs out or an ending point is reached

The system is a tool to make the above happen. If the referee is that good of a teacher, that good of a coach, and knows the setting very well. Then you don't need any rules other than the above procedures. But for most folks, a good system helps make the above fun, enjoyable, and playable within the time they have for a hobby.

Later in this thread, you make a critical remark about chess and the fact that white has an advantage. Unlike chess, the rules of a system are not the final arbiter of what happens in a campaign. Rather it is what has been described about the setting is the final arbiter. If the setting is basically a medieval fantasy world that has different implications than a setting described as the world of Saturday morning cartoons. Or a four color world of superheroes versus a "Dark Knight" style world of superheroes.

Then finally there is the "Rule Zero" bullshit folks like to pull out and brandish. The human referee is crucial to making tabletop roleplaying. RPGs rose out of a tradition of refereed wargames that already several years old by the time the first roleplaying campaign started being played. The whole reason RPG campaign became popular in the first place over their wargame counterpart was the fact that referees like Dave Arneson were willing to look outside of the rules and instead look at what made sense for the setting of the campaign. If it did then Dave would make a ruling, note it down, and continue the session.

In my opinion, folks who don't make the judgment of the human referee an integral part of their system are not writing an RPG. They are writing a boardgame, dice game, or a wargame. The same if they don't make it clear the connection between the setting or genre of the system and it's mechanics. One reason I settled on GURPS for over two decades compared to its competitors in the 90s is because of how well the authors of SJ Games explained that connection.

As for D&D specifically, it has been and continues to be since 1974 "good enough" for the above. D&D biggest strength is that since day one it have focused on the dungeon crawl it has been far more approachable to novices than its competitor. Unlike other settings teaching a novice how to make and run a dungeon is very straightforward.

• Take a piece of graph paper
• Draw a maze with rooms
• Populate some rooms with monsters, other with treasure, some with traps, and leave a few empty
• Place the adventuring party at the entrance and describe what they see

Because it is so straight forward you have the page count to add in tools, support, and advice to make this fun and interesting for most people.  Compare this to generating an adventure based around a heist, mystery, or space, making an interesting dungeon that offers real choices is far more easy.

If there is a sin to be laid at D&D's feet it is the fact that Gygax and Arneson assumed they were going to be selling to the wargaming community of the early 70s. That they would not need to devote precious word counts to explaining things that this audience would know. But D&D spread outside of this community faster and further than expected. And the authors never got around to thinking about or explaining why they picked classes, hit points, armor class, and the rest of it.

But when you look at what folks were doing at the time the reasons behind all these mechanics become clear. That they were not made up out of thin air. Once this is understood, it becomes far more straightforward to tweak D&D to make it more fantastical or to design a version that is more grounded and flexible like my Majestic Fantasy RPG.

And if you and others are not aware of how D&D mechanics tie back to a fantasy setting then you need to look harder. At this point dozens of authors have written about this including myself. Some of us even share our insights for free.

https://www.batintheattic.com/downloads/When%20to%20make%20a%20Ruling.pdf


Finally, just because D&D mechanics made better sense doesn't mean people should expect to start LIKING it. What make an RPG an RPG is the mechanic I outlined at the beginning of the post. However what you choose to use to support this like the system you use to adjudicate is a preference. You should pick the system that you find fun and interesting. If classes, hit points, and armor class don't cut it. It is not because they objectively bad. It because you like the alternative better and that they are far more fun for you and your group. That OK. I still prefer GURPS but I focus on classic D&D because want to share the adventures and setting I create. And it easier to do that when I use D&D. Especially now I understand D&D mechanics thoroughly and make sure the results reflect the setting I make rather than the other way around.

Quote from: Ruprecht on May 22, 2023, 07:33:35 PM
I played a lot of RuneQuest, and its got no classes, and the characters all seem sort of alike.
Class-based games don't really have that problem.

Having played GURPS for two decades, the solution to that is to make the campaign that involve things other than swordfighting and spellcasting.

For example I have a Merchant Adventurer class in my Majestic Fantasy RPG (based on OD&D in the form of Swords & Wizardry). This class is in part is a reflection of what happened in several GURPS campaigns where players focused on playing merchants in a fantasy setting. Those characters were built differently compared to GURPS campaigns where players are focusing on adventuring in dungeons. What made it work is the fact I followed through and fleshed out that part of the Majestic Wilderlands were merchants were having adventures while doing merchant stuff.

Then that paid off later when a player in a Majestic Fantasy campaign I was running wanted to play a merchant and picked the Merchant Adventurer. At first the group was skeptical but got into it once they experienced a couple of adventures. But even then they still took time to explore some dungeons and wilderness with the merchant adventurer as part of the party.

Quote from: estar on May 22, 2023, 08:48:48 PM
For example I have a Merchant Adventurer class in my Majestic Fantasy RPG...

I have you written up any of the adventures or any notes? I ask because I've always felt folks talk about Domain play end game but I think there is a room for a mid-level play where characters run a Merchant House, a Thieves Guild, A Wizards guild, a Temple, a Mercenary Band, a tavern or the like.

Quote from: Ruprecht on May 22, 2023, 10:07:22 PM

Quote from: estar on May 22, 2023, 08:48:48 PM
For example I have a Merchant Adventurer class in my Majestic Fantasy RPG...

I have you written up any of the adventures or any notes? I ask because I've always felt folks talk about Domain play end game but I think there is a room for a mid-level play where characters run a Merchant House, a Thieves Guild, A Wizards guild, a Temple, a Mercenary Band, a tavern or the like.

Mainly what I do is pretty naturalistic for lack of a better term. I compile lists of costs and income as a starting point. Culled from games like Harn, ACKS, Ars Magica, etc. Then double checked again some primary sources I have. Then I massage it into a consistent list of prices, costs, and potential revenue.

For the past decade or so for trading I adapted Autarch's ACKS system. Also massaged to fit the work I did previously. The result is the following which I successfully used in several campaigns.

https://www.batintheattic.com/downloads/MW%20Merchant%20Adventures%20Rev%2004.pdf

As for the Merchant Adventurer Class see this
https://www.batintheattic.com/downloads/Merchant%20Class.pdf

To make sense of the skill system I use see this
https://www.batintheattic.com/downloads/MW%20Majestic%20Fantasy%20Basic%20RPG%20Rev%2010.pdf

Or if you like what you see you can get this.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/337515/The-Majestic-Fantasy-RPG-Basic-Rules

The basic rules just have four classes up to level 5. But Merchant Class I posted is what will appear in my player's handbook the Manual of Puissant Skill.

If you want to delve deep into this stuff I strongly recommend you get any of Autarch's collections that Axiom #3. Which breaks down peasant economics in a way that is highly playable for worldbuilding.

I also suggest reading this post on my blog on dealing with real estate.
https://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2021/03/construction-real-estate-in-fantasy.html

The basic gist is that unlike modern economies there isn't a market for land and building. Rather they are viewed in the same way we view a long-term bond or stock. An investment with a return on the amount put in. Since the point is the return not the (rising or falling) value of the land or building, there isn't much of a market. There is a strong sense of what is a fair price. If it cost 40,000d to build a shop then its fair price is 40,000d. But that would be just for the building. The right to use for a particular venture is something different. Which has to be paid for. Which I have been setting to about 5 times the yearly income. If one is available.

Above all, and I can't stress this enough, the hearts of any of this is the characters involved both NPCs and PCs. Rather than going the full spreadsheet route, I just use enough mechanics to reflect the decisions a character would normally make in pursuing a venture. The bulk of the players efforts was finding and cultivating contacts and doing favors so they can score deals and avoid bad deals.

This is the main reason I haven't just dumped this all into a formal product. Because I am still writing up how I handle this part which is more about judgment calls than mechanics.

As a final example. Consider Harnmanor
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/63126/HarnManor

It has an excellent way of handling manorial economic that about a complex as running a starship in Traveller. Along with four fully detailed manors for Harn (or any vaguely medieval fantasy setting). But what make shine in my opinion is how it handle running a manor.

You basically roll up all the tenants of the manor (about 30 to 40 households0. Then you roll each year to see what happens to them. Now this is not to supposed to happen all at once. But instead represent a series of complication throughout the manorial year that you (the liege) has to deal with. And most the of the results are good adventure seeds or involved roleplaying. And not all the results are bad some are beneficial.

Anyway, this put the focus squarely on the characters involved in manorial life which makes it far more interesting than it ought to be.


Hope this helps.

Here's a game theory:
D&D is the original rogue-like, Forgeries just suck at roleplaying because they can't handle the nerve of having to roll a new character.

If Forge was better, the OSR shouldn't exist, L&D/LotFP/OSE/Mork Borg etc shouldn't exist, Zak S/Venger Satanis/RPGPundit would all make storytelling games, and we all should have seen storytelling game editions of GURPS, Traveller, WoD, CoC, Shadowrun, Cyberpunk 2077, and BASIC RPS. DungeonWorld would have had a second edition, because the one guy who got canceled for having fudged the plot while playing and entirely different system than the one he co-wrote would have just been replaced with another guy.

What is DungeonWorld? No one remembers, becasue no one cares.

After all this time of Forge throwing shade from depths of their grave, the biggest trends in the past few months were all ruled by the undefeated (even under Hasbro) Dungeons & Dragons:

• D&D One
• OGL/ORC Drama
  
• D&D Beyond's onlne only microtransatction VR tabletop walled garden
• Shadowdark's pan flash
• The recent movie
• "Wait, 4th Edition is better than 5th Edition, even though 4E is the reason that both Pathfinder and Forge exists at all."
• The Sacred Cow known as Critical Role still the biggest play-stream by running 5th edition D&D instead of Farts in the Dark.

What was that again about how a "purely theoretical analytical model of RPG's, i.e. without any practical application whatever" wouldn't be succesful or accepted by any rolegamer community? I guess it's just more fun to think about how games ought to played, rather than to play them at all, and the above list is entirely meaningless becasue none of it happened.

"BUT storygames are good for one offs!"

Nope, see list above. You just suck at prep and can't admit it.

"BUT it's simulationist, you can tell by the combat rules!"

Quote
Naturally, every attempt has been made to provide all of the truly essential information necessary for the game: the skeleton and muscle which each DM will flesh out to create the unique campaign. You will find no pretentious dictums herein, no baseless limits arbitrarily placed on female strength or male charisma, no ponderous combat systems for greater "realism", there isn't a hint of a spell point system whose record keeping would warm the heart of a monomaniacal statistics lover, [sic, lol] or anything else of the sort. You will find material which enables the Dungeon Master to conduct a campaign which is challenging, where the unexpected is the order of the day, and much of what takes place has meaning and reason within the framework of the game "world".

It is important to keep in mind that, after all is said and done, ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS is a game. Because it is a game, certain things which seem "unrealistic" or simply unnecessary are integral to the system. Classes have restrictions in order to give a varied and unique approach to each class when they play, as well as to provide play balance. Races are given advantages or limits mainly because the whole character of the game would be drastically altered if it were otherwise. Everything in the ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS system has purpose; most of what is found herein is essential to the campaign, and those sections which are not — such as sub-classes of characters, psionics, and similar material — are clearly labeled as optional for inclusion. [sic]

Quote
Gary Gygax, "Preface", Advanced Dungeons and Dragons: Players Handbook, 1979, Tactical Studies Rules, p 6.

Translation:
"Hey, these are just guidelines, adjust anything to your own tastes for your own games, it doesn't really matter that much. Be chill and have fun."

Versus this non-exhastive list of permittable metagming mechanics:

• Fudging dice rolls (Because creating back up characters before play or choosing from your party henchmen is tyranny)
• Metacurrencies (Course corrections using the magic of out of game hindsight to insist on one solution to a single in game problem)
• Psyche bleed ("I'ma woman because its written on my sheet!" "I have the lived experience of El Chupacabra!" "I'm a pet rock!")
• Knowledge checks ("Hey man, I don't want to experience a monster for the first time with any sense of wonder, just hit me with that info dump")
• Unlimited ammo/money (Because who wants to have the inconvenice of making tough combat choices that you might still succeed at?)

---

While I'm here, I'm giving up and disavowing GURPS, Traveller, WoD, CoC, and BASIC RP, misc as well, nothing's going to save these games from they're leaderless communities, despite these games surviving as long as they don ow precisely because they don't apply Forge Theory. I am never buying these systems, playing these games, or keeping up with their releases. I wish I didn't ahve to concede these systems as sunk, but damn it are they sunk.

Quote from: VisionStorm on May 22, 2023, 04:50:33 PM
But old D&D gets around this by making everyone pick a boilerplate class, and leaving the power disparities to some classes being more powerful than others (often at different levels) and players getting lucky during character creation when they're rolling stats. Which is apparently much fairer and far preferable than characters being stronger on the merits of their build. Cuz some players rolling unbelievably bad during character creation and others getting ridiculously high scores is "realistic", but some characters being stronger cuz they picked the right abilities is unfair and a reflection on the player as a human being rather than the people envious of them or the game system.

Seems a matter of preference to me. Personally I tend to dislike the extreme power disparities you get in eg Pathfinder 1e depending on how people build their PCs, I prefer them to win or lose during play, not during character creation. OTOH running 3e D&D or Pathfinder 1e with roll-and-assign stats is even worse. Overall I tend to like the organic feel you get from roll-in-order PCs, but I give everyone a free '15' to assign as they like, which mitigates the imbalance pretty well I find.

OSR:

Sheeples:
"I really hate that every class level in AD&D is essentially a dead level, because now I feel deprived of my right to be unable to roll up a new character in under twenty minutes and just use my own creativty to continue play."

Steve Jackson saw a lot of flawed game design in D&D, and created The Fantasy Trip, and this was during his sane years.  The game plays very well and the combat is less abstract.  I don't recommend giving SJW Games money for it, of course, but the core combat module is available on the SJW Games  web site for free in PDF format, so people can try it in good conscience.

Quote from: Hixanthrope on May 22, 2023, 03:20:23 PM

Quote from: Brad on May 22, 2023, 03:01:56 PM
The Model T was the first real production automobile, and yet it was surpassed and replaced almost as soon as something better was available.

Your entire argument is null and void with this simple statement. You cannot make normative statements like this, in absolute terms, over matters of taste. Some people like vanilla, some like chocolate; which is better?

The ones who like marble fudge, obviously.

Quote from: jeff37923 on May 23, 2023, 07:54:53 AM
The ones who like marble fudge, obviously.

Then why are you always complaining about the people at Nu-WotC? They love fudge.

I only ever run point buy systems but my current campaign is a Warhammer clone, so there's a bunch of front-loaded constrained choice. For example, one of my players who if given a point by system would have made a combat-maxed Ogre instead ended up making a Ogre Forester, who is okay at combat because he's big but not really a trained combatant. Other players are in similar situations.

With longer gameplay we're getting a much more interesting resulting story. None of them are optimized for their situation because that's actually the story - they're just people who got roped into this situation, who now become increasingly capable in ways relevant to their situation. It's a lot better story than it would have been otherwise. I mean story in the sense of what we describe afterwards - this isn't really a railroad game.

Quote from: S'mon on May 23, 2023, 01:41:08 AM

Quote from: VisionStorm on May 22, 2023, 04:50:33 PM
But old D&D gets around this by making everyone pick a boilerplate class, and leaving the power disparities to some classes being more powerful than others (often at different levels) and players getting lucky during character creation when they're rolling stats. Which is apparently much fairer and far preferable than characters being stronger on the merits of their build. Cuz some players rolling unbelievably bad during character creation and others getting ridiculously high scores is "realistic", but some characters being stronger cuz they picked the right abilities is unfair and a reflection on the player as a human being rather than the people envious of them or the game system.

Seems a matter of preference to me. Personally I tend to dislike the extreme power disparities you get in eg Pathfinder 1e depending on how people build their PCs, I prefer them to win or lose during play, not during character creation. OTOH running 3e D&D or Pathfinder 1e with roll-and-assign stats is even worse. Overall I tend to like the organic feel you get from roll-in-order PCs, but I give everyone a free '15' to assign as they like, which mitigates the imbalance pretty well I find.

I think the organic feel is a merit of random attribute generation, and it can also help when you're stuck on your character concept or want ideas for what type of character to make. But I don't like the wide disparities it tends to create, which can potentially end up being far wider than I think normally happen in real life. And I don't like power disparities in general, out side of character level differences or characters built with a higher number of "points" in a point-buy game (preferably as a result of participation during play, rather than randomly rolling for it during creation).

Part of me would prefer some fixed arrays or something, then randomly select where to assign scores if I want them random.

Quote from: Grognard GM on May 23, 2023, 07:59:09 AM

Quote from: jeff37923 on May 23, 2023, 07:54:53 AM
The ones who like marble fudge, obviously.

Then why are you always complaining about the people at Nu-WotC? They love fudge.

I complain because WotC has lost the ability to mix it with the vanilla.

Quote from: Brad on May 22, 2023, 05:40:26 PM

Quote from: Fheredin on May 22, 2023, 05:19:43 PM
A class-based system is intended to be babies learning to doodle by shading within the lines.

I'll take this at face value: and? What if we just want to use a coloring book instead of getting out a whole paint set? You're simply arguing that more player choice and influence over character makeup is somehow better than less. For certain types of games, okay, but not all. If we're playing Monopoly, does it matter who gets the hat and who gets the car? I have seen arguments over this, when there is zero difference in play between them. If I want to play a dungeon delve with some buddies while getting drunk and eating cheap pizza, we can all roll up D&D characters in five minutes and start "shading within the lines" before the first beer impairs our sensibilities. Good luck doing any sort of impromptu game that requires lifepaths or whatever else.

I really do not understand this complete adherence to the Hegelian dialectic when it comes to RPGs. It's insanely perplexing to me.

Good word use, but that's not what Hegelian dialectic means. Creative learning processes are usually iterative and involve trial and error. The Hegelian dialectic is a philosophical discourse model based on two ideas conflicting and eventually finding resolution with a new synthesis. Yeah, there's a parallel, but not an airtight one.

By the way, the fatal flaw of the Hegelian dialectic is that it draws a moral equivalence between ideas which is probably not warranted. In real conflict, one idea is almost always vastly superior to the other and there is nothing of note to compromise or synthesize. And the reason for this error is that the Hegelian dialectic assumes people act in good faith. That is not a good assumption.

I suspect that's the problem here. Either that or you didn't understand my point. What does choice of Monopoly token have to do with articulating a flaw in abstraction or iterating past that flaw? If you do not acknowledge that there are quality differences between games, then you may as well stop playing RPGs and exclusively play Tick Tack Toe. If you do draw a quality differences between games, then what's wrong with the idea that game quality should on average increase over time? Even if you disagree with me that academic theorycrafting can lead to better game iterations, pure chance and Darwinian market selection would wind up with the same result because player choice would preferentially remove bad games from the market, so you don't have to agree with me on the mechanism to agree with me on the outcome.

Do you actually disagree with this assessment? Or do you feel threatened by it because it puts an expiration date on a game you've put sunk cost into?

While I feel engaging with you may end up as a bit of a tar-baby, I'll stick to the classes-versus-skills (or really, classes-versus-whatever) issue for the moment, because I feel pretty strongly that classes are a great design.  I don't think I'd go so far as to say that they are the only way or the best way or whatever, but I think at this point you've said enough that I'm not misrepresenting your position if I state that you believe class based systems are some mix of obsolete or generally less desirable than other, non-hypothetical systems.

If that's a fair assessment, then here's my defense of class-based systems over non-class-based systems.

1- The class system allows the storyteller to set out some templates that characters can be designed within.  This is an advantage, as if I describe a gambler who is down on his luck, is stronger than he looks, but mostly relies on his ability to figure out a solution to a problem before the problem eats him alive, and if you describe a cold-blooded killer who is trained in jungles in war and death and stuff, a class-based system lets us both fit these into something that is a 70% to 99% fit.  If we instead had a pile of skills to choose, it's extremely likely that one of us would end up building a more powerful character than the other, just by picking the correct skills.  If a skill about being lucky, or a background description about last minute solutions ends up stacking with, I dunno, a "+critical-hit" power, then it could be the first guy- otherwise, it should be the second, who will pick up a variety of combat skills (he should definitely be stronger in combat, right?), but there may not be enough non-combat power offered in the first guy's case to make them both reasonably fun at the table.

2- The class system is extremely easy for a DM to add to, especially in any OSR-type games.  Making a 5th edition subclass is pretty reasonable, but not as impactful.  Want to add a class to ACKS or Hyperborea?  That's gonna be real easy.  Remember that the DM is who the system is really sold to- he has assemble that into a game normally, and a skill-based system can prove very difficult, as it has so many moving pieces.  If I make a class that crits twice as often in AD&D second edition, I can probably balance that guy with the fighter (and AD&D 2e's fighter is kinda weak, so that's a task).  This reduces the time it takes to customize the game, which is unquestionably a boon to the game. 

3- More moving pieces are simply more complex.  In the prior pieces I've assumed that the game, if approached from a min-max perspective, is balanced.  In practice, non-class based games generally are not- and worse than that, they are unbalanced in ways that are hard to patch at the table.

I feel these three things generally head off most skills-based arguments.  Not realistic enough?  Add more classes until it is.  Narratively limiting?  Add a kit or subclass that exchanges something for another power that is thematically appropriate, and you can probably do that without adding or subtracting too much power from the class.

But there's also what I touched on earlier:

4- By having reasonably strictly defined classes, everyone at the table has some sense of what the pieces do.  The players learn what their companions can do, many of which are class powers, but they also know how to interact with enemies that have class-esque abilities (or in some cases, class levels).  The DM has a much better sense of what's going on.

I really think that class based systems are the most fun- in video games, in tabletop, wherever.

Deleted...this is idiotic

Turning character creation into a doctoral thesis defense mini-game of balancing point buy choices is the slippery slope into the pseudo-academilc position that there is also the formula for class perfectability as a seperate storygaming model, now informed by by Rousseau and not Hegel.

This is the biggest obstacle to my never having played GURPS, with all the powers and skills dumped together into broad genre categories. You'd have to keep a notebook handy to list your potential candidate powers and skills to write seperate pros and cons tables for various combinations. For every character you attempt to make, so a file cabinet too. This just just takes everything tedious about 3rd D&D character creation due to multiclassing and feat combinations, forgetting skill ranks and the optional point buy for attributes, and then dials it up past 11 to get GURPS. Pathfinder solved none of these issues.

For other classes systems, at least (non-GURPS) Traveller by any publisher sorts everythng into categories of careers, but imagine having to spend several sessions on character creation because one guy keeps rolling bad, over and over again, since character creation being treated as a mini-game and not a set of random tables becomes a flaw when you'd prefer allowing character death during creation, since removing death during creation has a good chance to create Mary Sues, or characters so drastically disabled and unable to afford medical compensations that they might as well have died anyway.** Maybe you could ignore the mini-game flow chart but there's little to zero support for how to handle that properly from what I understand, unless you count pregens that you could mildly adjust... which would be effectively like offering classes anyway.

[Edited for length]

** 3rd-5th edition lineage is designed to eliminate the possiblility of having or at least keeping a mild negative penalty in any attribute, which on the woke's part is the idealization of the ableism they accuse/project onto others anyway, so as they've already conceded to the concept of the "useless character for adventuring" I think it's actually their imperative to abstain from roleplaying games altogether. When can you ever describe a high crunch system as ableist-aware, anyway? Maybe Traveller should just take a page out of Canada's book and just needs a random determination to euthanize such a character during creation?

I think the best approach is 'starting template' rather than strict class or free point buy. Good examples include D6 Star Wars and Dragonbane. The starting package determines your past, not your future. It gets players started quickly but in play they are unconstrained.

Yeah, one of the few arguments against classless games that is demonstrably true and I've actually experienced is issues with analysis paralysis and difficulty creating an effective character during character creation due to having so many choices, and a lack of focus on what the character's role is supposed to be. But all of that gets bypassed by using starting templates, which IMO are a must and should be the default when dealing with classless systems.

But every other argument is BS. Character classes are NOT inherently more balanced by virtue of being classes. One of the longest standing complaints in D&D is how mages eventually become way more powerful than every other class, and can even do everything a rogue can, but using spells. And there have also always been issues with some classes (or class concepts, like Sages, Craftsmen, Merchants and such, which are usually only NPC classes when present at all in D&D) having questionable abilities with dubious usefulness in actual play vs others who are way more effective in an adventuring party.

You also need to almost purposefully go out of your way to create truly incompetent character in a classless/skill-based system. And I'm not sure of any actual examples of truly serious balance issues in skill-based games. So that argument is BS as well. And having to create a class to cover every conceivable concept is NOT easier or more effective than simply picking existing and established abilities that have already been defined in the system and building a professional template around them to define various roles commonly found in the game world. The very notion that building new classes whole cloth from scratch is somehow preferable or more helpful for the GM is absurd.

But classless/skill-based characters should always be built using templates as a starting point to help ensure that everyone has a solid foundation of starting abilities that cover some type of function. This helps speed up character creation and ensure that all characters are competent at at least something out of the gate before players start messing with the snowflake elements of their characters.

And before someone brings it up, NO, this doesn't mean that class-based is superior because you still need to "recreate classes" in a classless system to make it work, because 1) templates are not "classes" per se, and 2) classless characters are easier to customize and branch out from a template than class-based characters using multi-classing and extraneous moving parts like skills and feats thrown on top of classes. So you do need templates as a starting foundation, but you don't need classes. Classless/skill-based systems are superior when it comes to handling customization than class-based games, and you can do it in a more effective and consistent manner, using abilities that have already been defined and balanced off against each other, rather than having to make up new ones every time a new class/role concept comes up. Which is why classless is preferable even if you do need to supposedly recreate classes in the form of templates.

Quote from: Fheredin on May 23, 2023, 07:33:48 PM
If you do not acknowledge that there are quality differences between games, then you may as well stop playing RPGs and exclusively play Tick Tack Toe. If you do draw a quality differences between games, then what's wrong with the idea that game quality should on average increase over time?

What you fail to understand is that due to the central mechanic that all tabletop RPGs share that a specific system may not work well for a specific individual.
https://www.therpgsite.com/pen-paper-roleplaying-games-rpgs-discussion/the-biggest-mistake-in-rpg-design/msg1254707/#msg1254707

That this failure is not a sign of quality or lack there of. But rather when it comes roleplaying a character (players), or adjudication (referee) there are a number of options a hobbyist can pick from. Which is "best" is a subjective judgment. What best is the one that the hobbyists of the group find fun, interesting, useful, and playable.

Case in point, a car with a v8 turbo charged engine painted red, and a car painted blue with a standard run-of-the-mill engine both work equally well to get you to a destination. But you may have more fun getting there with the red painted car with a v8 engine. And under certain circumstances having a v8 may be a advantage. But only when those circumstances apply.

The bits of what you like indicate you are highly passionate about specific types of systems. So passionate that it has blinded you to the possibility that other people find other types of systems more useful and more fun. You are knowledgeable enough to use philosophical conceits in an effort to try to impress others that your preferences are somehow magically correct.

The proof in the pudding is the same challenge I gave to the Pundit fifteen years ago when he started attacking the OSR with his own round of bullshit arguments. Take your ideas, write up something, and share it or publish it. Show us OSR hobbyists how we are doing it wrong. I even pitched in with maps for his first OSR project Arrows of Indra.

So put your money where you mouth is. Write up your system showing the rest of us how we are doing it wrong. The folks that make changes in the RPG hobby or industry are those who do. Not that those who run their mouths.

And finally, as for this being an ad hominem attack, the central thesis of my point is that what system is best is a personal subjective opinion. Hence my reply is centered on you as a person. If you are interested in points like how a class based system can work equally well as a point based system for a setting then I would be happy to share my experiences on the matter in another post or thread.

Quote from: Venka on May 23, 2023, 08:02:05 PM
While I feel engaging with you may end up as a bit of a tar-baby, I'll stick to the classes-versus-skills (or really, classes-versus-whatever) issue for the moment, because I feel pretty strongly that classes are a great design.  I don't think I'd go so far as to say that they are the only way or the best way or whatever, but I think at this point you've said enough that I'm not misrepresenting your position if I state that you believe class based systems are some mix of obsolete or generally less desirable than other, non-hypothetical systems.

If that's a fair assessment, then here's my defense of class-based systems over non-class-based systems.

1- The class system allows the storyteller to set out some templates that characters can be designed within.  This is an advantage, as if I describe a gambler who is down on his luck, is stronger than he looks, but mostly relies on his ability to figure out a solution to a problem before the problem eats him alive, and if you describe a cold-blooded killer who is trained in jungles in war and death and stuff, a class-based system lets us both fit these into something that is a 70% to 99% fit.  If we instead had a pile of skills to choose, it's extremely likely that one of us would end up building a more powerful character than the other, just by picking the correct skills.  If a skill about being lucky, or a background description about last minute solutions ends up stacking with, I dunno, a "+critical-hit" power, then it could be the first guy- otherwise, it should be the second, who will pick up a variety of combat skills (he should definitely be stronger in combat, right?), but there may not be enough non-combat power offered in the first guy's case to make them both reasonably fun at the table.

2- The class system is extremely easy for a DM to add to, especially in any OSR-type games.  Making a 5th edition subclass is pretty reasonable, but not as impactful.  Want to add a class to ACKS or Hyperborea?  That's gonna be real easy.  Remember that the DM is who the system is really sold to- he has assemble that into a game normally, and a skill-based system can prove very difficult, as it has so many moving pieces.  If I make a class that crits twice as often in AD&D second edition, I can probably balance that guy with the fighter (and AD&D 2e's fighter is kinda weak, so that's a task).  This reduces the time it takes to customize the game, which is unquestionably a boon to the game. 

3- More moving pieces are simply more complex.  In the prior pieces I've assumed that the game, if approached from a min-max perspective, is balanced.  In practice, non-class based games generally are not- and worse than that, they are unbalanced in ways that are hard to patch at the table.

I feel these three things generally head off most skills-based arguments.  Not realistic enough?  Add more classes until it is.  Narratively limiting?  Add a kit or subclass that exchanges something for another power that is thematically appropriate, and you can probably do that without adding or subtracting too much power from the class.

But there's also what I touched on earlier:

4- By having reasonably strictly defined classes, everyone at the table has some sense of what the pieces do.  The players learn what their companions can do, many of which are class powers, but they also know how to interact with enemies that have class-esque abilities (or in some cases, class levels).  The DM has a much better sense of what's going on.

I really think that class based systems are the most fun- in video games, in tabletop, wherever.

I think this is probably more coming from not having enjoyed classless systems.

I fundamentally view the classless vs. class-based argument as being a bit like the Light side vs the Dark Side in Star Wars: class-based design is quicker and easier, and as a result it tends to be more consistent, especially with inexperienced game designers or GMs. However, there are a number of flaws to it, and one of the big ones is how it hamstrings player freedom. Player freedom is not an optional part of the modern RPG; since roughly 2004-5, the argument for why you should play a tabletop RPGs over an MMO video game is that the RPG offers freedom and choice. Class-based design harms both of those. So I am left concluding that class-based design is traditional, but also harmful. In this sense, class-based design isn't bad because it's obsolete; it's bad because in the context of the modern gaming market, it actively erodes the tabletop RPGs market position against video games.

With the last few Zelda games it's pretty clear that video games can go on a path where they offer more choice and freedom than tabletop RPGs. I find it almost unimaginable that in a world where video games offer more freedom and more choice than tabletop RPGs that tabletop RPGs will prosper; class-based design isn't the only factor in play here, but it's certainly one of the bigger ones. In the top 5 factors, anyway.

I will certainly grant that classless systems are a significantly harder design paradigm for a game designer to work with; there are a lot of things that can go wrong. This is why the worst systems tend to be classless. But I also think there are limitations to what the class-based systems can actually do, and that most of the issues you raise can be designed around. This is why in my opinion, the best RPGs are also classless. Does it take more effort and designer experience to make a high end classless system than it does to make top-tier class-based system? Yes. In fact, if you are aiming for your RPG to fall in the 95th percentile of quality (95% of RPGs are worse), then class-based design requires about half the designer experience and half the dev-team effort. But I also think there's not really any space for a class-based system to go above 95th percentile and classless certainly does.

Savage Worlds is my go-to published system. Even granting the unfun shaken rules, I would eyeball it as 97th percentile game and may even be 99th percentile because all games have faults. It exceeds anything I could reasonably expect a class-based system to do. Character creation only needs to take a couple minutes, with very little of it actually requiring the book. You can tell what a character's archetype is by looking at their attribute dice. The advancement system has enough gating that min-maxing is more amusing than detrimental. The entire character advancement system is always open to you. User-made content is relatively easy to make and to add. While the game has action-adventure feel oozing from it's soul, it can cover a wide variety of specific subgenres.

So yeah, I think your criticisms are well placed...for average implementations of classless and class-based systems. But realistically, you aren't shooting for average implementation when you make a game or when you go to buy one; you are looking for the best you can discern.

Quote from: estar on May 24, 2023, 07:28:53 AM
So put your money where you mouth is. Write up your system showing the rest of us how we are doing it wrong. The folks that make changes in the RPG hobby or industry are those who do. Not that those who run their mouths.

I wouldn't bother replying anymore. This clown is engaging in pure sophistry at this point, hence why I deleted my response to him. Don't get sucked into his stupidity.

Quote from: Fheredin on May 24, 2023, 08:38:05 AM
I fundamentally view the classless vs. class-based argument as being a bit like the Light side vs the Dark Side in Star Wars: class-based design is quicker and easier, and as a result it tends to be more consistent, especially with inexperienced game designers or GMs. *snip*
...
I will certainly grant that classless systems are a significantly harder design paradigm for a game designer to work with; there are a lot of things that can go wrong. This is why the worst systems tend to be classless.

I would have to disagree that class-based is easier to design than classless. All you have to do to design a classless system, at least as far as the classless component is concerned, is to throw some Skills on top of some Attributes and you're set. That formula was pretty much nailed down by the 80s. The rest, like advantages and such, is optional and just icing in the cake.

Meanwhile every single attempt to build a custom class I ran into back in the day was either ineffective, or this broken monstrosity that was overpowered compared to any core class in the game. Specially any time someone tried to recreate "Jedi" or any specialized role in an established IP. They always went full fanboi mode and made this bloated thing with too many abilities or weird benefits, and stuff that outclassed similar existing abilities in the core game.

All the problems with classless games tend to be either stuff not related to the classless component  or trying to reinvent the Attribute+Skill wheel (which doesn't necessarily lead to broken games, but is more likely to). Or stuff like what's already been mentioned about players taking too long or requiring too much system knowledge to make a character, or being able to fit some definite role. Which can be bypassed with temples as already mentioned.

Coming up with the right skill lists might be an issue as well, as is coming up with the right advantages, but that problem also exists when coming up with class abilities in a class-based game. So again, this ain't unique to classless systems. It's just that people ignore it when it happens with classes.

Quote from: VisionStorm on May 24, 2023, 10:08:44 AM
I would have to disagree that class-based is easier to design than classless. All you have to do to design a classless system, at least as far as the classless component is concerned, is to throw some Skills on top of some Attributes and you're set. That formula was pretty much nailed down by the 80s. The rest, like advantages and such, is optional and just icing in the cake.

Characters in a skill based systems are rarely a hodgepodge of randomly selected skills, and abilities. Instead they tend to specialize. The different skills and abilities are picked to support what the players intends for their character to be good at.

The result that over the long run patterns emerge. When players want to do pursue certain things as their character they focus on similar packages of skills and abilities that work best for a given system. A small portion will be different because of individual interest but the broad strokes are the same.

As a result when I started running OD&D in the form of Swords & Wizardry, it wasn't hard for me to adapt what I did in GURPS for two decades. All the classes I developed for my Majestic Fantasy RPG are based on what players made over the two dozen GURPS campaigns I ran since the 80s. This includes making sure there is a small amount of customization to reflect individual interest.

To be blunt, players are not willing to make characters that suck whether it is GURPS, BRP, Hero System, or any other system with complete freedom to customize one's character. So they figure out how they want to adventure and build accordingly.

Class based system are only harder if the author hasn't been paying attention to what players actually do as their characters in a campaign.

Quote from: VisionStorm on May 24, 2023, 10:08:44 AM
Meanwhile every single attempt to build a custom class I ran into back in the day was either ineffective, or this broken monstrosity that was overpowered compared to any core class in the game. Specially any time someone tried to recreate "Jedi" or any specialized role in an established IP. They always went full fanboi mode and made this bloated thing with too many abilities or weird benefits, and stuff that outclassed similar existing abilities in the core game.

The key thing I do to overcome this is to understand the setting or genre I am designing. I describe the different types of characters in plain English and then develop from there. Then I look at that is see how it hangs together and if needed do some further editing.

After that then I design the classes and I do not worry about any type of game/mechanical balance. The result will accurately reflect the balance that exist in the setting or genre as if it was a real place. The quality of the result for a specific group or audience depends on how well they enjoy that setting or genre.

If you developing a Middle Earth RPG there is no escaping the fact the elves are superior physically to humans. To be clear because of Tolkien vision this superiority is not 100% about being better in combat. It more about how they exist as part of the life of the setting of Middle Earth.

Thus Elven PCs in a Middle Earth RPG that true to the setting will be mechanically superior to a human. If you are a fan of Middle Earth this isn't a problem. You expect the Elven PCs to be what they are because that how they are depicted in Middle Earth. But if you not a fan of the setting then the problem isn't with the mechanics, it with the setting itself and how it portrays the difference between Elves and Men.

So the first step in designing a class based system is to make the audience will enjoy the setting or genre that the mechanics will reflect.


I

Quote from: Mr. Ordinary, Esq. on May 23, 2023, 10:28:09 PM
This is the biggest obstacle to my never having played GURPS, with all the powers and skills dumped together into broad genre categories. You'd have to keep a notebook handy to list your potential candidate powers and skills to write seperate pros and cons tables for various combinations. For every character you attempt to make, so a file cabinet too. This just just takes everything tedious about 3rd D&D character creation due to multiclassing and feat combinations, forgetting skill ranks and the optional point buy for attributes, and then dials it up past 11 to get GURPS. Pathfinder solved none of these issues.

(https://i.imgflip.com/14efth.jpg)

I've found myself gravitating to a sort of multi-silo design in my own work as a good compromise between the complete freewheeling of classless and the single classes/race as class of B/X.

Basically, take the old race+class method and add a few more silos; race + class (broad class archetype) + background (non-combat class features) + path (combat class features).

The result is a rather finite number of individual data chunks (10 races, 7 classes, 10 backgrounds, 7 paths) to keep track of and choose from when assembling a character, but which result in 4900 potential combinations for someone to express themselves with.

It's not going to work for everything or everybody (heck, even I only like that approach for certain genres), but for me it has most of the class-based advantages while still having enough flexibility to satisfy my customization itch.

Quote from: Grognard GM on May 24, 2023, 03:28:33 PM

Quote from: Mr. Ordinary, Esq. on May 23, 2023, 10:28:09 PM
This is the biggest obstacle to my never having played GURPS, with all the powers and skills dumped together into broad genre categories. You'd have to keep a notebook handy to list your potential candidate powers and skills to write seperate pros and cons tables for various combinations. For every character you attempt to make, so a file cabinet too. This just just takes everything tedious about 3rd D&D character creation due to multiclassing and feat combinations, forgetting skill ranks and the optional point buy for attributes, and then dials it up past 11 to get GURPS. Pathfinder solved none of these issues.

(https://i.imgflip.com/14efth.jpg)

Fair, a little overuse of rhetoric, and I wanted to get rid of my pretentious writing. Just trying to get across how much time and effort people put into to making a 3rdE character, planning several levels ahead each session, and then *BOOM* you fail a save vs death and it's back to the drawing board. It seems that hyper-customization for characters in a class-system can be bad enough without going full free-form the way that GURPS does.

Maybe it just takes me longer because I'm only getting back into D&D from several years hiatus but that should also show the learning curve for character customization being worse in classesless systems. Many gamers have the entirety of class powers or skill packages memorized from years of play and recite them like poetry. I generally find that to be too much work for a game.

Quote from: Fheredin on May 24, 2023, 08:38:05 AM
So I am left concluding that class-based design is traditional, but also harmful. In this sense, class-based design isn't bad because it's obsolete; it's bad because in the context of the modern gaming market, it actively erodes the tabletop RPGs market position against video games.

I don't think most people argue that choice in "build" is what makes RPGs unique and interesting over video games. You'll get a lot more "build" variety and interesting mechanical variance in something like a video game than even an extremely tightly-designed TTRPG. The interesting "choices" in TTRPGs are around the aspects of the game which typically cannot be codified (or at least require a certain amount of human adjudication of that codification). It's stuff like the choices you actually make in play, your agency at the table in terms of your impact on the game world.

Quote from: Fheredin on May 24, 2023, 08:38:05 AM
Does it take more effort and designer experience to make a high end classless system than it does to make top-tier class-based system? Yes. In fact, if you are aiming for your RPG to fall in the 95th percentile of quality (95% of RPGs are worse), then class-based design requires about half the designer experience and half the dev-team effort.

The flip-side of this is that classless systems require players to make intelligent choices of what kind of "build" they need to achieve their vision. That requires a certain amount of skill in itself, and it's one not many people are inclined to acquire and/or cultivate. Give most players a big old bag of choices and you'll get a lot of generalist hodge-podges mixed with a few min-max optimized builds. I think this is emblematic of the failure state of something like Pathfinder. The game is fun for people whose minds gravitate towards mechanical complexity and synergy, but it can be hard to get a group full of these kinds of people. The result is that some people are left behind in the dust. Supposedly PF 2e is better about this, but I am personally a little skeptical.

Most stories and genres have common archetypes or roles most players are trying to fill. I think that's the whole of the fantasy for most people. Most mechanical puzzles like a character building subsystem also have certain optimal choices or alignments with the fictional which are fairly natural. Thus, I think a good class system acts as a shortcut to get to the interesting fictional "meat" of the genre and hand it over to players to work with it from there. The standard rebuttal is something like removing trap choices so all choices are equal (to what ends?), but I think that's largely an illusory goal. Never heard of a system where every choice is equally valid for every goal. It's a contradiction in concepts. A lifepath is a class sub-system bolted onto a classless system while talents/perks/feats/skills are classless sub-systems bolted onto a class system. I think there are reasonable arguments for either, depending on genre, but I feel class systems are far too maligned for the value they obviously provide to various designs. Consider that most CRPGs also provide classed systems for niche protection and their other valuable traits.

I personally think most of the distaste for classed systems is that they tend to require linear progression on a strict pre-defined track. I often hear players complain that they don't find a particular option interesting at a certain level (and will often come up with their own interesting and unique takes on what kinds of powers or advantages/disadvantages their character should have). If you open up the choices a little bit to sprinkle different archetypes together or seek certain character options first over others, most of the issue recedes and becomes tolerable background noise while you get to the fun part of the game (which is actually playing it). Druid is a useful archetype. Maybe you can pick what order you want your animal companion, your ability to speak with animals, your spells, your whatever, in the order you find most interesting and useful for the campaign/setting you're actually playing. I find that more useful than most of the strict leveled paths.

I'm interested in your opinions or speculation on what or whom is sabotaging the indie RPG scene based on your experience moderating the rpgdesign subreddit, if you'd care to share. Are you alleging perhaps some kind of malice on behalf of someone/some corp or are you just asserting an "own goal" like you're implying with classed systems?

Quote from: estar on May 24, 2023, 07:28:53 AM

Quote from: Fheredin on May 23, 2023, 07:33:48 PM
If you do not acknowledge that there are quality differences between games, then you may as well stop playing RPGs and exclusively play Tick Tack Toe. If you do draw a quality differences between games, then what's wrong with the idea that game quality should on average increase over time?

What you fail to understand is that due to the central mechanic that all tabletop RPGs share that a specific system may not work well for a specific individual.
https://www.therpgsite.com/pen-paper-roleplaying-games-rpgs-discussion/the-biggest-mistake-in-rpg-design/msg1254707/#msg1254707

That this failure is not a sign of quality or lack there of. But rather when it comes roleplaying a character (players), or adjudication (referee) there are a number of options a hobbyist can pick from. Which is "best" is a subjective judgment. What best is the one that the hobbyists of the group find fun, interesting, useful, and playable.

Case in point, a car with a v8 turbo charged engine painted red, and a car painted blue with a standard run-of-the-mill engine both work equally well to get you to a destination. But you may have more fun getting there with the red painted car with a v8 engine. And under certain circumstances having a v8 may be a advantage. But only when those circumstances apply.

The bits of what you like indicate you are highly passionate about specific types of systems. So passionate that it has blinded you to the possibility that other people find other types of systems more useful and more fun. You are knowledgeable enough to use philosophical conceits in an effort to try to impress others that your preferences are somehow magically correct.

The proof in the pudding is the same challenge I gave to the Pundit fifteen years ago when he started attacking the OSR with his own round of bullshit arguments. Take your ideas, write up something, and share it or publish it. Show us OSR hobbyists how we are doing it wrong. I even pitched in with maps for his first OSR project Arrows of Indra.

So put your money where you mouth is. Write up your system showing the rest of us how we are doing it wrong. The folks that make changes in the RPG hobby or industry are those who do. Not that those who run their mouths.

And finally, as for this being an ad hominem attack, the central thesis of my point is that what system is best is a personal subjective opinion. Hence my reply is centered on you as a person. If you are interested in points like how a class based system can work equally well as a point based system for a setting then I would be happy to share my experiences on the matter in another post or thread.

I don't get where you're pulling ad hominem out of. Are you preemtively defending yourself? This community is rather...fiery to put it mildly. However, I don't exactly see anything I would consider an ad hominem in this thread. Insincerity and baiting, yes, but that part's not from you. Could be wrong, though; I've missed a number of things.


I am making my own game, but I don't think that it will provide the answers you are looking for.

I think me making a game to prove a point would be redundant because games making the important points already exist. After all, Pathfinder for Savage Worlds already exists. Class Archetype Edges basically mean that you get the structure and identity you would normally find in a class system, but you also get the freedom of a classless system for all your other Edges. As I have been saying all along in this thread, you can effectively build a class system inside a classless one, and when you do so you can manually set the balance of how many class-like traits and how many classless-like traits you want the system to end up with. Or you can provide multiple character creation paths which focus on or bypass these features the way Cyberpunk Red gives you three different character creation options.

This process basically only works one way, however. It's relatively straightforward to build class structures into a classless game, but it is almost impossible to revert a class-based game into a classless one.

As to my own game: I think this crowd will be one of many positively reviling my work. That's fine by me. It's not a creative endeavor to fulfill the angst-ridden exhortations of my soul...it's a weapon aimed straight at the heart of a bunch of very nasty people. I imagine these people lurk here, but they certainly aren't active members. When you're hunting with only one bullet, you wait until you have a clear shot.

I'm not sure how alternative skill-based systems using templates could be better than AD&D when using 2ndE kits packages and weapon/non-weapon proficiencies from AD&D. Since AD&D already had the 0th level character since it's beginning, you offer kits (or backgrounds) and proficiencies to 0th level characters and then remove the experience point system. You gain or lose proficiencies over play by using the skills during play from there, so even with AD&D you can ignore classes entirely if your dead set on that.

Quote from: Chris24601 on May 24, 2023, 03:55:24 PM
I've found myself gravitating to a sort of multi-silo design in my own work as a good compromise between the complete freewheeling of classless and the single classes/race as class of B/X.

Basically, take the old race+class method and add a few more silos; race + class (broad class archetype) + background (non-combat class features) + path (combat class features).

The result is a rather finite number of individual data chunks (10 races, 7 classes, 10 backgrounds, 7 paths) to keep track of and choose from when assembling a character, but which result in 4900 potential combinations for someone to express themselves with.

It's not going to work for everything or everybody (heck, even I only like that approach for certain genres), but for me it has most of the class-based advantages while still having enough flexibility to satisfy my customization itch.

I would gravitate that way also, too many people try to accmplish this effect by writing 200 seperate base class variants of the fighter but with ever more details. Then they all get permitted as playable in the same campaign.

Quote from: Mr. Ordinary, Esq. on May 24, 2023, 06:40:30 PM
I would gravitate that way also, too many people try to accomplish this effect by writing 200 separate base class variants of the fighter but with ever more details. Then they all get permitted as playable in the same campaign.

I did six races, six cultures, six classes, and more "paths" but each path is limited to chunks of abilities, and only scales so far.  The paths are bigger than skills or feats but smaller than classes.  I do have skills and "perks" layered on top of that, which gives me the means to have some limited overlap between culture, class, and path, but with each one having its distinct role.

It is the kind of design that needs to be targeted to a specific game, or at least a fairly narrow band of related games.  The advantage of pure class-based or pure skills-based is that if you want to attack a different genre or style, all you need to do is replace/modify some of the classes or skills.  The disadvantage is that if you want to do that, it can be deceptively difficult to get the mix of new classes or skills to be a good fit.  That is, you end up having to do a new game design for a big chunk of the game anyway. 

Quote from: Old Aegidius on May 24, 2023, 05:48:13 PM

Quote from: Fheredin on May 24, 2023, 08:38:05 AM
So I am left concluding that class-based design is traditional, but also harmful. In this sense, class-based design isn't bad because it's obsolete; it's bad because in the context of the modern gaming market, it actively erodes the tabletop RPGs market position against video games.

I don't think most people argue that choice in "build" is what makes RPGs unique and interesting over video games. You'll get a lot more "build" variety and interesting mechanical variance in something like a video game than even an extremely tightly-designed TTRPG. The interesting "choices" in TTRPGs are around the aspects of the game which typically cannot be codified (or at least require a certain amount of human adjudication of that codification). It's stuff like the choices you actually make in play, your agency at the table in terms of your impact on the game world.

Quote from: Fheredin on May 24, 2023, 08:38:05 AM
Does it take more effort and designer experience to make a high end classless system than it does to make top-tier class-based system? Yes. In fact, if you are aiming for your RPG to fall in the 95th percentile of quality (95% of RPGs are worse), then class-based design requires about half the designer experience and half the dev-team effort.

The flip-side of this is that classless systems require players to make intelligent choices of what kind of "build" they need to achieve their vision. That requires a certain amount of skill in itself, and it's one not many people are inclined to acquire and/or cultivate. Give most players a big old bag of choices and you'll get a lot of generalist hodge-podges mixed with a few min-max optimized builds. I think this is emblematic of the failure state of something like Pathfinder. The game is fun for people whose minds gravitate towards mechanical complexity and synergy, but it can be hard to get a group full of these kinds of people. The result is that some people are left behind in the dust. Supposedly PF 2e is better about this, but I am personally a little skeptical.

Most stories and genres have common archetypes or roles most players are trying to fill. I think that's the whole of the fantasy for most people. Most mechanical puzzles like a character building subsystem also have certain optimal choices or alignments with the fictional which are fairly natural. Thus, I think a good class system acts as a shortcut to get to the interesting fictional "meat" of the genre and hand it over to players to work with it from there. The standard rebuttal is something like removing trap choices so all choices are equal (to what ends?), but I think that's largely an illusory goal. Never heard of a system where every choice is equally valid for every goal. It's a contradiction in concepts. A lifepath is a class sub-system bolted onto a classless system while talents/perks/feats/skills are classless sub-systems bolted onto a class system. I think there are reasonable arguments for either, depending on genre, but I feel class systems are far too maligned for the value they obviously provide to various designs. Consider that most CRPGs also provide classed systems for niche protection and their other valuable traits.

I personally think most of the distaste for classed systems is that they tend to require linear progression on a strict pre-defined track. I often hear players complain that they don't find a particular option interesting at a certain level (and will often come up with their own interesting and unique takes on what kinds of powers or advantages/disadvantages their character should have). If you open up the choices a little bit to sprinkle different archetypes together or seek certain character options first over others, most of the issue recedes and becomes tolerable background noise while you get to the fun part of the game (which is actually playing it). Druid is a useful archetype. Maybe you can pick what order you want your animal companion, your ability to speak with animals, your spells, your whatever, in the order you find most interesting and useful for the campaign/setting you're actually playing. I find that more useful than most of the strict leveled paths.

I'm interested in your opinions or speculation on what or whom is sabotaging the indie RPG scene based on your experience moderating the rpgdesign subreddit, if you'd care to share. Are you alleging perhaps some kind of malice on behalf of someone/some corp or are you just asserting an "own goal" like you're implying with classed systems?

Again, you are mostly discussing poor implementations of classless systems. I am not saying that there are no problems with classless design; I generally think it requires a more experienced designer to make a classless system which doesn't have a major flaw, and one of those experiences usually has to be tinkering and homebrewing with classless systems so you know the things which can go wrong.

I am generally a fan of using career paths to provide clusters of skills rather than using a freeform point-buy. I think this is from Traveler, but I could be wrong because I haven't ever played it. Careers give you the roleplay and archetype information a class would normally provide, let the designer guarantee the player character has necessary skills, and it just feels natural to add some capstone points which are enough for the player to customize the character for what they want their character to do.

That said, one of the key problems I have with RPGs in general (classless or class-based) is that they don't let you adapt your character to the niche the party needs you to fill. I don't know about anyone else, but my experience with many RPGs is that the first 2 sessions are terrible, then when the players finally get an advancement, they have a frustrated metagame huddle, "you pick up a grapple, you pick up a range, you need some bloody skills." And THEN the campaign works.

As to the sabotage I've seen.

Numerous times on Reddit I tried to steer the RPGDesign community into the direction of balancing advanced discussion against the "help, my dice mechanic don't work!" posts. My attempts almost always had the same mostly-inactive-naysayer account post a suspicously well thought out comment with no capital letters, and this comment would get 10-20 upvotes within 2-3 hours, which was exactly enough to park it on the top of the conversation permanently. I did some searching and found out that there's a website, Boostupvotes, which literally allows you to buy upvotes as a business-to-business service. It lets you astroturf viral marketing on Reddit. This is something that a number of companies make  for themselves, as well. Social media manipulation isn't exactly "big" business, but it's a business that's available if you look, and Reddit is pretty easy to manipulate.

So yes, I now believe that someone is intentionally attempting to sabotage RPG design and development. In retrospect, I think it's likely a similar problem is why The Forge shut down so hastily and sloppily. If it's the same people that would mean this has been going on for about 15 years, occasionally finding an online community they dislike and stirring the pot.

There are two possible explanations. The first is that this is a copycat of Microsoft's "Extend, Embrace, Extinguish," meaning a publisher is attempting to curtail competition from the market. I don't think this is the case; the RPG scene is rather low profit margin and is cluttered with competition. Cutthroat business is only really the case if you stand to gain a lot from it, and that's just not the case here. I just don't see a lead editor or a CEO passing this as official policy because the business won't see any real rewards from it, whether you're talking WotC or a single person studio.

But already famous RPG writers who are on the convention circuit might do it to defend notoriety, especially if they have a personality already predisposed towards trolling. Otherwise this is a whole lot of effort for something with almost no apparent returns.

Quote from: Fheredin on May 24, 2023, 10:52:42 PM
Wall of text.

So, to cut that wall of text down to something digestible; your claim is that real classless rpg design hasn't been tried because there's a conspiracy to keep good design from happening in the ttrpg field (and this cabal is what shut down the Forge site)?

Uh huh.

Conversations like the above are the reason I enjoy reading these threads and coming here. There is more information shared here in these pages than in entire forums full of chatter and fart-sniffing.

Quote from: Fheredin on May 24, 2023, 10:52:42 PM
So yes, I now believe that someone is intentionally attempting to sabotage RPG design and development. In retrospect, I think it's likely a similar problem is why The Forge shut down so hastily and sloppily. If it's the same people that would mean this has been going on for about 15 years, occasionally finding an online community they dislike and stirring the pot.

The Forge shut down because it was essentially a circlejerk of people with massively inflated egos that were convinced to be prime rate Authors (capital 'A', of course) while instead having a generally bad understanding of RPG prior art, common practices, goals and basic design principles.

Apocalypse World and derivates, Burning Wheel, Dogs in the Vineyard and all the rest that came out of the Forge quite simply didn't have the impact on the gaming community that the forgies thought should have had.... and all the while things like Traveller, D&D and BRP kept having an overwhelming presence in the hobby that was simply impossible to explain using the forgies worldview.

No conspiracy at all, they were simply overwhelmed by facts: Forge game theory (being Pure Shit to begin with) doesn't work as well as they thought.

Quote from: estar on May 24, 2023, 03:21:30 PM

Quote from: VisionStorm on May 24, 2023, 10:08:44 AM
Meanwhile every single attempt to build a custom class I ran into back in the day was either ineffective, or this broken monstrosity that was overpowered compared to any core class in the game. Specially any time someone tried to recreate "Jedi" or any specialized role in an established IP. They always went full fanboi mode and made this bloated thing with too many abilities or weird benefits, and stuff that outclassed similar existing abilities in the core game.

The key thing I do to overcome this is to understand the setting or genre I am designing. I describe the different types of characters in plain English and then develop from there. Then I look at that is see how it hangs together and if needed do some further editing.

After that then I design the classes and I do not worry about any type of game/mechanical balance. The result will accurately reflect the balance that exist in the setting or genre as if it was a real place. The quality of the result for a specific group or audience depends on how well they enjoy that setting or genre.

If you developing a Middle Earth RPG there is no escaping the fact the elves are superior physically to humans. To be clear because of Tolkien vision this superiority is not 100% about being better in combat. It more about how they exist as part of the life of the setting of Middle Earth.

Thus Elven PCs in a Middle Earth RPG that true to the setting will be mechanically superior to a human. If you are a fan of Middle Earth this isn't a problem. You expect the Elven PCs to be what they are because that how they are depicted in Middle Earth. But if you not a fan of the setting then the problem isn't with the mechanics, it with the setting itself and how it portrays the difference between Elves and Men.

So the first step in designing a class based system is to make the audience will enjoy the setting or genre that the mechanics will reflect.


I

You've mentioned this to me during similar discussions in the past, and TBH this approach to game design tends to set off the autist in me because it tends to lead to too many disparities and inconsistencies in terms of power and usefulness of different components, like class, race, etc. And while I agree about setting emulation I don't like disparate power between characters unless they "pay" for it somehow.

In the case of point-buy or similar elements typically used in freeform/classless systems this isn't an issue because more powerful races or profession templates simply cost more points. Then I can emulate setting when building those and if a player wants the more powerful race or profession they simply pay more for it. If they don't have more points during character creation they either can't start as a full blown member of that profession or they could start with a point debt and pay for it once they earn more points through play. That makes the autist in me happy that the scales have been balanced out.

But part of the problem I was talking about in that quote is that sometimes these disparities are not about genre emulation, but about people making certain abilities stronger than they need to be compared to similar stuff that already exists within the system. Granted, this tends to be more typical of homebrewed stuff people make for their own games rather than publishing, but even when it comes to published stuff you can see a lot of disparities sometimes, like everyone's using a different barometer when writing splat books. Which goes to my original point that these balance issues are not unique or somehow emblematic to classless systems specifically. They appear all over TTRPG design.

Quote from: Fheredin on May 24, 2023, 10:52:42 PM
Again, you are mostly discussing poor implementations of classless systems. I am not saying that there are no problems with classless design; I generally think it requires a more experienced designer to make a classless system which doesn't have a major flaw, and one of those experiences usually has to be tinkering and homebrewing with classless systems so you know the things which can go wrong.

I think this drives at why I personally have not found this discussion remotely useful or relatable. I agree that constructive discussion most focus on when a game is done well. If you don't like X-type systems, any doofus can come up with a really bad example of an X-type system. That doesn't take anything insightful, and it doesn't go anywhere. But what exactly is a good implementation of a skill-based system? Is this something that there would even be any agreement on?

For instance,

Quote from: VisionStorm on May 24, 2023, 10:08:44 AM
All the problems with classless games tend to be either stuff not related to the classless component  or trying to reinvent the Attribute+Skill wheel (which doesn't necessarily lead to broken games, but is more likely to).

I have no dog in this fight at all. There are class-based games I love, and skill-based games I love. I don't think one is inherently better than the other. But the skill-based games I love do NOT do the attribute+skill thing. And the one that does, I merely tolerate that it does this. It strikes me as fundamentally stupid, really. Take on more math for, what, the benefit of redundancy? Interplay during character creation I'm fine with. But I feel once the game begins, it's better for skills to be independent of attributes.

Quote from: Fheredin on May 24, 2023, 10:52:42 PM
I am generally a fan of using career paths to provide clusters of skills rather than using a freeform point-buy. I think this is from Traveler, but I could be wrong because I haven't ever played it. Careers give you the roleplay and archetype information a class would normally provide, let the designer guarantee the player character has necessary skills, and it just feels natural to add some capstone points which are enough for the player to customize the character for what they want their character to do.

One of the skill-based games on my loved games list is Dark Conspiracy which does the whole career path thing. And it makes character creation a lot of fun, especially for a player. The problem I see in it is that in order to keep with the tone of Dark Conspiracy, occasionally PCs might die. And I want the player to be able to quickly jump back into the game. And for that, it would be helpful to have an alternative chargen that does not require walking through career paths, but rather one that just gets straight to the task of generating the stats and can get it done in 10-20 minutes.

To that end, I think it's just better to not have a gotcha-prone skill list in the first place where it's easy to miss some vital skill to make your character work. One sure-fire way to get that is for all skills to be defined as above-and-beyond capacities, where it is assumed all characters will have basic competence common to most people. However, it's possible even that might be enough at higher levels of play, where "basic competence" comes off a lot like no competence. And a fix to that is to assume capacities reasonable for the character. Like if a character is really good with a sword, the character probably also knows how to care for a sword, evaluate the quality of a sword, and possibly even be able to make modest repairs. Rather than having those abilities isolated into separate skills, they could be assumed part of the ability to use a sword.

QuoteThat said, one of the key problems I have with RPGs in general (classless or class-based) is that they don't let you adapt your character to the niche the party needs you to fill. I don't know about anyone else, but my experience with many RPGs is that the first 2 sessions are terrible, then when the players finally get an advancement, they have a frustrated metagame huddle, "you pick up a grapple, you pick up a range, you need some bloody skills." And THEN the campaign works.

Actually, I make this exact point often, though I don't have the experience of the first 2 sessions being terrible then the campaign working after that. I don't know that I've ever felt that way. But I do make the point that there is no such thing as "Niche Protection"--one of the benefits often ascribed to class-based games--that niches are something that are discovered organically through play and unique group dynamic. And that what you can have is Niche Specialization, which skill-based games tend to be better at because advancement tends to be more frequent and more customizable, and so players can respond more quickly and precisely as the character's niche emerges.

QuoteThere are two possible explanations. The first is that this is a copycat of Microsoft's "Extend, Embrace, Extinguish," meaning a publisher is attempting to curtail competition from the market. I don't think this is the case; the RPG scene is rather low profit margin and is cluttered with competition. Cutthroat business is only really the case if you stand to gain a lot from it, and that's just not the case here. I just don't see a lead editor or a CEO passing this as official policy because the business won't see any real rewards from it, whether you're talking WotC or a single person studio.

I've got some stories I could tell about sabotage attempts I witnessed up close in the Lejendary Adventure online community back in the day. It was initially an unmoderated forum, but some gooftard claimed offense at someone's inoffensive post, and because the claimed offense involved someone's religion, the operator decided to put moderators in place. As the most active member of the community (tied with Gary Gygax, really), I volunteered and was chosen. I enjoyed that it had been an unmoderated forum. And I made it a point to only nuke spam and enforce forum topics (we had a flame forum, so even personal attacks were fine, just redirected to the right forum). Once it became clear that I wasn't going to be a tool of the troublemakers, all of a sudden all the complaints went away.

The fake-offended party, by the way, in my assessment, was someone who did not believe in the game or the product, but it seemed like he was seeking an opportunity to get himself published along side Gary Gygax. And he did get a few articles published in the fan zine, and a couple of his cringeworthy examples that reeked of hatred for the game were ultimately added to the game's 2nd printing, because of course one of his complaints involved him claiming he was confused (with all the sincerity of the blue-haired Simpsons lawyer) about character creation and would like to see some examples. Funny. He was confused enough to need that in print. But understood it well enough to be the one to write the examples.

So there actually is this motive in the RPG world for sabotage and shenanigans. Wannabe designers. Or actual designers, I suppose. Because if you're going to create a game, and you're asking for feedback, almost every time one of the first things you're going to hear is someone asking, "What is it you're offering that I can't get from another RPG? What problem are you solving?" And if you're hopped up on your own bullshit or just chasing clout, there may not be any real problem you're solving. So you have to invent a problem. And sabotage can be a useful tool.

These threads always descend in to argument because some people simply can not process the idea that people may LEGITIMATELY enjoy different things, and find value in different things, without that other person being some combination or stupid, wrong, or ill informed.

The things you hate about a certain thing may be the reason another person loves it, and that doesn't make them wrong.

This shit always comes up with classes vs freeform, rolled stats vs points spend, "how can you enjoy a game where you can't 'win'/get no xp," etc.

I assume it has to do with the high number of gamers that are Autistic/Aspie/neuro-atypical. As someone who is definitely on some fucking sort of scale or spectrum myself, I'm at least aware enough to accept people are different, even when I don't understand it (which is also the secret of dealing with women btw, you're welcome.) Lots of peeps seem incapable of this acceptance.

Quote from: Grognard GM on May 25, 2023, 12:22:30 PM
These threads always descend in to argument because some people simply can not process the idea that people may LEGITIMATELY enjoy different things, and find value in different things, without that other person being some combination or stupid, wrong, or ill informed.

The things you hate about a certain thing may be the reason another person loves it, and that doesn't make them wrong.

This shit always comes up with classes vs freeform, rolled stats vs points spend, "how can you enjoy a game where you can't 'win'/get no xp," etc.

I assume it has to do with the high number of gamers that are Autistic/Aspie/neuro-atypical. As someone who is definitely on some fucking sort of scale or spectrum myself, I'm at least aware enough to accept people are different, even when I don't understand it (which is also the secret of dealing with women btw, you're welcome.) Lots of peeps seem incapable of this acceptance.

I generally agree, but there's no need to medicalize it. People, whether on some spectrum or not, can get passionate about what they like and want others to experience the same thing. Sometimes that desire gets expressed as a negative against opposing views, but that's just rhetoric.

Everyone does this, even you. I've read some of your criticism here of women gamers as tending to be only shallowly involved in the game. Setting aside whether that's true or not...shallow, casual, whatever, is also a legitimate way of playing if it doesn't antagonize the table.

But I agree. Accept people as different.

IMO, many D&D fans, especially "editions warriors" (i.e., those who fight seriously to defend one edition over others) are commonly affect by two logical fallacies: appeal to novelty (argumentum ad novitatem) on one hand, and appeal to tradition (argumentum ad antiquitatem) on the other.

They are both fallacies for a reason: a game is not better or worse because it is newer or older, and the fact that this was the first version of D&D you played does NOT affect quality whatsoever. It is obvious to me that improvements are inevitable, especially in a game that was born in a very rough shape like OD&D. However, some games are timeless (e.g., chess), and I'm sure certain parts of D&D share the same trait.

We are allowed to have our preferences, of course, but we can also separate good design from nostalgia and "the shiny new thing" (if we enjoy game design; many D&D players are simply not into this, and they'll just pick a sword without asking why all other B/X weapons are worse).

My favorite version of D&D is B/X, but it is also where I find more things to fix, just because I read it so often.

Quote from: Lunamancer on May 25, 2023, 11:04:30 AM

Quote from: VisionStorm on May 24, 2023, 10:08:44 AM
All the problems with classless games tend to be either stuff not related to the classless component or trying to reinvent the Attribute+Skill wheel (which doesn't necessarily lead to broken games, but is more likely to).

I have no dog in this fight at all. There are class-based games I love, and skill-based games I love. I don't think one is inherently better than the other. But the skill-based games I love do NOT do the attribute+skill thing. And the one that does, I merely tolerate that it does this. It strikes me as fundamentally stupid, really. Take on more math for, what, the benefit of redundancy? Interplay during character creation I'm fine with. But I feel once the game begins, it's better for skills to be independent of attributes.

TBH, I can't relate cuz I don't think that adding Attribute and Skill values together is such a hurdle, particularly when that's already supposed to be done in your character sheet, so you don't have to do it in the middle of play. You're not normally supposed to be adding up Attributes and Skills every time you make a roll, unless Attribute-Skill relations are variable and contextual in that system (and even then there might be a default pairing you could keep noted in your sheet).

I also don't like attributes separate from Skills cuz IMO most attributes (specially mental ones) generally don't serve any real or necessary function in an RPG other than to supplement skills or to serve as a stand in for them in games that don't have them. Other than that they just modify certain game rule stats like HP, damage or carry capacity, which can exist as stand alone characteristics even if attributes don't exist in the game, or for certain resistance or "strength" related rolls, which can also be handled as skills instead. So if you think that attributes+skills is such a hurdle you might as well get rid of attributes entirely and handle everything through skills alone (adding skills for "strength" and different types of resistances, like Will, Health, etc.), then use advantages ("feats") to cover bonuses to game rules stats.

But anyways that's besides the point I was making in that post, which is that classless design is not more difficult that class-based design. And if anything keeping skills separate from attributes (or better yet, getting rid of attributes entirely) would probably make it even more simple to build.

On the topic of Class-based vs Classless superiority, my main claim is that Classless is superior for customization specifically. But I don't think that classes are truly obsolete. And which approach you should use is primarily a matter of preference and what you're trying to get out of the system or accomplish.

I think which is "better" is highly genre dependent. The tighter the focus (ex. Mecha pilots, post-apocalypse survivors, cowboys, superspies, Federation starship crew) the more classless systems can cover most bases without needing so broad a menu of options as to overwhelm players with options.

The broader the focus (ex. Star War free for all, Kitchen sink Fantasy) the more classes as archetypes become helpful for players as something to focus on in creating a character... particularly if things like magic and super-science or both offer significant differences between characters who have them and those that don't.

Heck, what are starting packages and templates for a "classless" system, but classes with very open advancement options? If you need templates just to keep players from checking out then you're not really playing a truly classless system are you?

So again, it's not one or the other that is universally good for all things... it's more a matter of figuring out what's best for a given genre and the focus of the system within it.

Similarly, not all Fantasy requires classes; something like Conan where magic all the purview of NPC villains and the PCs are all warriors would probably be better with a classless system. Similarly, a modern warfare game (say everyone is part of a SEAL team) while normally a very focused genre might benefit from classes based on specific MOS's if you want more mechanical distinction between party members (or quicker PC generation if it's built as an "anyone can die" meat grinder).

In class and level systems they can say levels 4-8 but in RuneQuest (my go to example of a skill game) they say 4 skills of x% or higher. Is that  useful when it comes to a GM buying an off the shelf adventure?

Quote from: Lunamancer on May 25, 2023, 11:04:30 AMBut the skill-based games I love do NOT do the attribute+skill thing. And the one that does, I merely tolerate that it does this. It strikes me as fundamentally stupid, really. Take on more math for, what, the benefit of redundancy? Interplay during character creation I'm fine with. But I feel once the game begins, it's better for skills to be independent of attributes.

Near as I can see, there's only reason for doing attribute + skill as a dynamic thing during play:  That the system is explicitly designed to take advantage of that by having attributes and skills that combine in multiple, interesting ways.  I don't mean once in a blue moon either, like the D&D 5E suggestion to occasionally use a non-standard attribute for an oddball case.

Explicit design is required to get there because having such frequent, overlapping combinations necessarily says something about what attributes and skills are in the game to begin with. Also, the scope of each skill needs to be carefully considered.

Quote from: VisionStorm on May 25, 2023, 03:04:55 PM
TBH, I can't relate cuz I don't think that adding Attribute and Skill values together is such a hurdle, particularly when that's already supposed to be done in your character sheet, so you don't have to do it in the middle of play. You're not normally supposed to be adding up Attributes and Skills every time you make a roll, unless Attribute-Skill relations are variable and contextual in that system (and even then there might be a default pairing you could keep noted in your sheet).

Hurdle is your word, not mine. I would describe it as more of an extra step rather than a hurdle. And I don't mind taking extra steps. I do it all the time. I just expect a return on it. And not only am I not getting anything in return for it, I'm getting a redundancy that I consider to be a negative. If you're not addressing the absence of a tradeoff, you're missing the point.

QuoteI also don't like attributes separate from Skills cuz IMO most attributes (specially mental ones) generally don't serve any real or necessary function in an RPG other than to supplement skills or to serve as a stand in for them in games that don't have them. Other than that they just modify certain game rule stats like HP, damage or carry capacity, which can exist as stand alone characteristics even if attributes don't exist in the game, or for certain resistance or "strength" related rolls, which can also be handled as skills instead.

Opinion of not liking attributes separate from skills, fine. Prefacing a fact statement with IMO as a justification for that opinion seems a little weird. But I'm guessing that means you have doubts as to the veracity of the fact statement. And you have good reason to doubt it as I don't think it's that hard to point to RPGs where the attributes are actually used for their own sake.

QuoteSo if you think that attributes+skills is such a hurdle you might as well get rid of attributes entirely and handle everything through skills alone (adding skills for "strength" and different types of resistances, like Will, Health, etc.), then use advantages ("feats") to cover bonuses to game rules stats.

But why would I want to do that? Real people are capable of doing a lot of things for which they have no formal training or skill development. I don't think it's a smart idea to have that covered by skills in the game system. And one reason is what some of the people here are saying. That apparently the default is players are too stupid to pick skills. And if a player overlooks taking a skill to fill the gap of a basic life function, I guess the whole world implodes or something. This seems like the exact sort of thing attributes are for. But I guess then you wouldn't be able to say most attributes don't serve any necessary function in an RPG outside of supplementing skills.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on May 25, 2023, 05:46:16 PM
Near as I can see, there's only reason for doing attribute + skill as a dynamic thing during play:  That the system is explicitly designed to take advantage of that by having attributes and skills that combine in multiple, interesting ways.  I don't mean once in a blue moon either, like the D&D 5E suggestion to occasionally use a non-standard attribute for an oddball case.

Explicit design is required to get there because having such frequent, overlapping combinations necessarily says something about what attributes and skills are in the game to begin with. Also, the scope of each skill needs to be carefully considered.

*shrugs* Personally, making it dynamic seems like the more obvious way to go to me. I'm not sure what sort of explicit design work would be required. It would reduce the redundancy I don't like. Like Castles & Crusades prime system is just ridiculously redundant to me. And what makes it so painful is it would have been the easiest thing in the world to "prime" broad skill areas rather than an attribute.

I house rule in the secondary skill list from the 1E DMG as a starting place. A primed Forester would be able to do all kinds of forestry stuff. Climb trees, swim, build rudimentary shelters, hunt, taste random feces found on the ground to instantly know everything about whatever left it there. And then you apply whichever attribute would make the most sense, since that's what C&C calls for anyway. It's just if it's Forester stuff, a Forester gets the lower TN. There's not even any math involved!

This one little tweak turns C&C from being the worst offender to what I'm talking about to being a super simple, super effective skill system. And so it makes me wonder why so many game designers are mired in regurgitating the same old bullshit over and over again. If the way it's usually done were so satisfying, we wouldn't need new games.

Quote from: Vestragor on May 25, 2023, 08:54:19 AM

Quote from: Fheredin on May 24, 2023, 10:52:42 PM
So yes, I now believe that someone is intentionally attempting to sabotage RPG design and development. In retrospect, I think it's likely a similar problem is why The Forge shut down so hastily and sloppily. If it's the same people that would mean this has been going on for about 15 years, occasionally finding an online community they dislike and stirring the pot.

The Forge shut down because it was essentially a circlejerk of people with massively inflated egos that were convinced to be prime rate Authors (capital 'A', of course) while instead having a generally bad understanding of RPG prior art, common practices, goals and basic design principles.

Apocalypse World and derivates, Burning Wheel, Dogs in the Vineyard and all the rest that came out of the Forge quite simply didn't have the impact on the gaming community that the forgies thought should have had.... and all the while things like Traveller, D&D and BRP kept having an overwhelming presence in the hobby that was simply impossible to explain using the forgies worldview.

No conspiracy at all, they were simply overwhelmed by facts: Forge game theory (being Pure Shit to begin with) doesn't work as well as they thought.

Do we say the RPG site is a failure because the RPG hobby is still polluted with wokeness? This isn't a fair way of assessing value. I don't have any beef with or against the Forge because it's entire run happened while I was stepping away from RPGs. I have subsequently looted the corpse.


I think that there were some interesting ideas in The Forge, but GNS Theory and The Big Model were always flawed and became sacred cows attached to the community's identity. It also doesn't help that the Forge was always kinda clueless about marketing. When you're going up against a bulldog company like WotC, the small fry have to run circles around the big company's marketing department. But the real problem they had was that the community leaders claimed to have solved life, the universe, and everything, wanted to move onto other things, and the instant the Forge officially closed... God introduced smartphones and streaming campaigns.

Oops.

So yeah, the Forge is never going to have a legacy except as a footnote and likely a forerunner to something better. Wokeness is blocking that something better from emerging. 

I do think that there were some salvageable ideas, and I do like the idea of a community which actively pushes game design boundaries, even if you know the outcome will usually be an interesting failure. I also think that game design is useful in places most people don't see; a lot of the problems our legal system has is that our politicians are clueless when it comes to game design and incentive structures.

Quote from: Lunamancer on May 25, 2023, 06:44:49 PM

Quote from: VisionStorm on May 25, 2023, 03:04:55 PM
TBH, I can't relate cuz I don't think that adding Attribute and Skill values together is such a hurdle, particularly when that's already supposed to be done in your character sheet, so you don't have to do it in the middle of play. You're not normally supposed to be adding up Attributes and Skills every time you make a roll, unless Attribute-Skill relations are variable and contextual in that system (and even then there might be a default pairing you could keep noted in your sheet).

Hurdle is your word, not mine. I would describe it as more of an extra step rather than a hurdle. And I don't mind taking extra steps. I do it all the time. I just expect a return on it. And not only am I not getting anything in return for it, I'm getting a redundancy that I consider to be a negative. If you're not addressing the absence of a tradeoff, you're missing the point.

QuoteI also don't like attributes separate from Skills cuz IMO most attributes (specially mental ones) generally don't serve any real or necessary function in an RPG other than to supplement skills or to serve as a stand in for them in games that don't have them. Other than that they just modify certain game rule stats like HP, damage or carry capacity, which can exist as stand alone characteristics even if attributes don't exist in the game, or for certain resistance or "strength" related rolls, which can also be handled as skills instead.

Opinion of not liking attributes separate from skills, fine. Prefacing a fact statement with IMO as a justification for that opinion seems a little weird. But I'm guessing that means you have doubts as to the veracity of the fact statement. And you have good reason to doubt it as I don't think it's that hard to point to RPGs where the attributes are actually used for their own sake.

QuoteSo if you think that attributes+skills is such a hurdle you might as well get rid of attributes entirely and handle everything through skills alone (adding skills for "strength" and different types of resistances, like Will, Health, etc.), then use advantages ("feats") to cover bonuses to game rules stats.

But why would I want to do that? Real people are capable of doing a lot of things for which they have no formal training or skill development. I don't think it's a smart idea to have that covered by skills in the game system. And one reason is what some of the people here are saying. That apparently the default is players are too stupid to pick skills. And if a player overlooks taking a skill to fill the gap of a basic life function, I guess the whole world implodes or something. This seems like the exact sort of thing attributes are for. But I guess then you wouldn't be able to say most attributes don't serve any necessary function in an RPG outside of supplementing skills.

You're basically nitpicking the wording of my post and making a lot of loaded statements while paradoxically saying very little of substance to refute my points or advance your position at the same time. You nitpick my usage of the word "hurdle" then ignore where I mentioned that you don't really need to take this extra step you're claiming that exists (at least not during actual play), because you're supposed to have that value pre-calculated in your character sheet regardless. So it's not a "hurdle" (my word, not yours), but you wanna complain about it regardless, despite it being a nonissue that's supposed to be pre-calculated in your character sheet, which implies that it IS a "hurdle", or at the very least some other word that you prefer that basically means something similar. Otherwise it wouldn't be an issue for you.

You claim that you're not getting anything for the dubious extra effort of tracking Attributes+Skills, but you're not really telling me what you mean by that other than calling it a "redundancy" that you consider negative, then expect me to address that when you haven't even made the case why it's negative, only declared it to be so. Then by the end of your replies to me you reject my suggestion of getting rid of attributes if you don't like to combine them with skills on the basis that real people are capable doing things without training. But somehow miss that addressing that eventuality is precisely part of the reason that Attributes+Skills exists and what you're "getting in return" (despite your claims to the contrary at the start of your post) for tracking a core ability (Attribute) plus a specialty (Skill) that covers specialized tasks. Attributes are there so that people without specific training have something to fall back on when attempting basic tasks without having to pick levels (or whatever) in every single skill in the game.

But even then, I would still say that attributes aren't strictly necessary because skills basically cover everything you can do in the game. As long as the skill list is not too extensive (so as not to make picking all or most of them too prohibitive) you can pretty much cover every task related thing in the game with skills alone without relying on attributes to fall back on. And outside of covering your ability to handle tasks (including resistances and the like) attributes are practically useless. All they basically do other than that is modify game rule data like HP, carry capacity, etc. like I already mentioned. And if you can think of another function that they serve feel free to mention it or bring up those examples of games that do other stuff with them, rather than tease me with the notion that they exist, like claiming that without bringing them up or making the case for them that defeats my argument somehow.

Quote from: Fheredin on May 24, 2023, 10:52:42 PM
[...] one of the key problems I have with RPGs in general (classless or class-based) is that they don't let you adapt your character to the niche the party needs you to fill. I don't know about anyone else, but my experience with many RPGs is that the first 2 sessions are terrible, then when the players finally get an advancement, they have a frustrated metagame huddle, "you pick up a grapple, you pick up a range, you need some bloody skills." And THEN the campaign works.

I'll be fair, that sounds like a fantastic team building exercise for players: a negotiation of who gets what role, so no one is stuck having to play "healer bitch" (even though clerics are not technically obligated to drop everything and save a dying character in a game like D&D). However...

Quote from: Lunamancer on May 25, 2023, 06:44:49 PM
I house rule in the secondary skill list from the 1E DMG as a starting place. A primed Forester would be able to do all kinds of forestry stuff. Climb trees, swim, build rudimentary shelters, hunt, taste random feces found on the ground to instantly know everything about whatever left it there. And then you apply whichever attribute would make the most sense, since that's what C&C calls for anyway. It's just if it's Forester stuff, a Forester gets the lower TN. There's not even any math involved!

The above really simplifies that process if you can negotiate a preferred niche through play, without risk to a fight over who gets to be "the OP class" (whatever the case may be). What's advocated in Lunamancer's post is something we could call the "public education package"; OTOH, the more appropraite word that spans many genres is "culture." So at least the whole issue of "ancestry" can be previously accounted for against that pet project of the woke D&D players, since it's obvious why a dwarf might not now how to swim. Of course the woke's favourite phrase is "not all" which ironically is how you get all Drow charcters becoming Drizzt clones in those circles.


From here, I've got a hunch about how classless systems got to be seperate design (bear with me here on the lead up).

In the meat-grinder context of the original game, in the course of the sandbox adventuring career you are bound to encounter a variety of situations, which makes trying other classes appealing. But at some point, you find a player who really really really wants to play an elf for his next character, but the dice keep saying no under the random attributes mechanic. Since everyone is, to some extent, a min-maxer, albeit not necessarily one mandating the powergamer "personality" if I can make that distinction, you decide that don't want to just kick the guy out.* The only way to keep that player from leaving your table is to offer a compromise through the attribute point buy mechanic, and that's where the problems likely begin. Because this guy will want his next elf wizard to be the best wizard it can be (and now that he can point buy he is at his leisure to only craft elf wizards for the rest of his gamer life), he will habitually buy attributes in a consistent manner to optimize his favourite race/class combo... worse is the standard array under these circumstances because they both offer the illusionary problem of creating "formulaic characters" with class-based systems. "Antoher dwarf fighter? That's cliche, since I'm just going to dump Int/Cha again, and honestly why wouldn't you do that also?"

Once you're stuck in the attitude that point-buy or standard array aren't the cause of class-based systems being boring or broken, because its YOU that's choosing your optimizations and agency is alpha-omega (and why would your own choices ever be broken?), classless design looks really interesting: with GURPS etc you're free to point buy absolutely everything, as long as you take the time to build the charcter on a free afternoon well efore play begins, and to be fair these min-maxers never necessarily have to become the powergamers that gives any min-maxing its own bad name. I would give credit where it's due to GURPS for creating a system that allows players to potentially create very balanced races, classes, or career paths for honest players who like lots of this customization, as you also get a better feel for what works and what doesn't when examing other system features more critically, even if just for confirmation bias.

For those who think that GURPS goes too far, you've got Travller which extends the random roll for nearly every character feature for every career path, but the tack on it is obiviosly different. The skills themselves become specialized, since you can now write skills for a wide variety of weapons (eg phaser, radiation, laser, plasma, et al instead of just "energy weapon" because the laws of physics are so different between types, you couldn't possibly know how to work one if you know the other, and this leads to additional career path posibilities). Moving on though...

Quote from: VisionStorm on May 25, 2023, 09:11:11 AM
In the case of point-buy or similar elements typically used in freeform/classless systems this isn't an issue because more powerful races or profession templates simply cost more points. Then I can emulate setting when building those and if a player wants the more powerful race or profession they simply pay more for it. If they don't have more points during character creation they either can't start as a full blown member of that profession or they could start with a point debt and pay for it once they earn more points through play. That makes the autist in me happy that the scales have been balanced out.

"Point debt" is going to be very unpopular for very obvious reasons. It's one thing when AD&D classes have differnt experience point thresholds to level up, but that's due to the nature of how certain classes get more powerful over levelling up. In fact, the different rates of exprience point thresholds for different classes can really help with the problem of a sorceror being "better" than a rogue, but I don't see how that could be if the sorceror has to sleep for eight hours after casting all five "hide in shadows" spells he memorized earlier... that may depend on edition of course.

---

* I'm using min-maxer loosely here to allow the possibility of party optimization, to be charitble.

Quote from: Fheredin on May 25, 2023, 07:23:54 PM
Do we say the RPG site is a failure because the RPG hobby is still polluted with wokeness?

Of course not, since the purpose of this site is not "fight wokeness" but "talk of RPGs more or less without filters", it would have been a failure if the purpose was "make OSR the dominant style of play in the RPG community".
I'll leave the rest of rant alone since, well, it looks like your tinfoil hat has some holes in it.

Quote from: Lunamancer on May 25, 2023, 11:04:30 AM
But the skill-based games I love do NOT do the attribute+skill thing. And the one that does, I merely tolerate that it does this. It strikes me as fundamentally stupid, really. Take on more math for, what, the benefit of redundancy? Interplay during character creation I'm fine with. But I feel once the game begins, it's better for skills to be independent of attributes.

I don't think it's reasonable to use this specifically as a criticism for classless games.  Classed games do exactly the same things.  Frex, a strength bonus to attack in D&D is exactly the same as adding an attribute to a sword skill in a classless game.

In classless games, it actually serves a purpose that it doesn't in classed games:  it creates a bit of niche protection.  Players will generally select skills for the character that match their best attributes, as it gives them the greatest chance of using skills successfully.  So they guy with high strength will usually have a different set of skills than the guy with high intelligence.

And for once I find myself in agreement with Vision.  If you write the total on your character sheet there's no additional math burden.

Oh, and I prefer classless to classed because 1) classes games tend to have silly restrictions like "your wizard can't use a sword because he's a wizard" and 2) it makes for silly worldbuilding - every swordsman in the world is going to be very, very similar.  There are classed games that try to deal with these issues, but they do so by moving in some degree towards a classless paradigm, with multiclassing, subclasses, a multiplicity of options, or a multiplicity of classes.  I would rather just do classless from the get-go.

Good vid and it makes sense... I think most good games have followed in D&Ds footsteps and in some cases improved on it. I think that's why some games have stood the test of time like FASERIP, D100 or D6. All very playable games.

Vampire was a classic game and was very playable WHEN the GM fixed the wonky mechanics. Depending on how you define what a story game is I always thought Vamp was a true RPG.

It's kind of odd because all the hot story games like Forged in the Dark or PbtA are super class focused (playbooks)

Quote from: PencilBoy99 on May 26, 2023, 09:28:22 AM
It's kind of odd because all the hot story games like Forged in the Dark or PbtA are super class focused (playbooks)

Storygames are not RPGs, it doesn't matter what they do or don't do.
If you're talking about cars comparing them to boats is useless and irrelevant.

Quote from: VisionStorm on May 25, 2023, 09:35:39 PM
You're basically nitpicking the wording of my post and making a lot of loaded statements while paradoxically saying very little of substance to refute my points

Why would I provide a substantial refutation to an opinion statement? My exact criticism of your wording was that you prefaced a fact statement with "IMO." So if you intended it to be a fact statement up for debate and I wasn't clear on that due to your wording, then that isn't a mere nitpick. Your wording is unclear. I said as much. You could have replied with a clarification. Instead you're choosing to cry about it like you're being unfairly treated. You're not.

QuoteYou nitpick my usage of the word "hurdle" then ignore where I mentioned that you don't really need to take this extra step you're claiming that exists (at least not during actual play), because you're supposed to have that value pre-calculated in your character sheet regardless.

I ignored it because it was irrelevant. A step is a step. Whether you're doing it in real time or before hand. It's only as good a point as you think it is when you insist on the term "hurdle." Which, again, makes my criticism of your use of that word not a nitpick. Your own reply proves the substantial confusion generated by your word choice.

QuoteYou claim that you're not getting anything for the dubious extra effort of tracking Attributes+Skills, but you're not really telling me what you mean by that other than calling it a "redundancy" that you consider negative, then expect me to address that when you haven't even made the case why it's negative, only declared it to be so.

The issue is I'm getting nothing in the tradeoff. The fact that I also perceive a negative attached to it as well is just extra shit frosting on the cake. But itself doesn't make or break the cake, so there's no reason for me to say anything more about it at this time. The real issue is I'm getting nothing positive. And I'm not sure what you could possibly expect me to explain further about nothing. Nothing means nothing. Nothing to describe or elaborate on further. You don't need me to explain nothing if you want to refute it. You just need to make the case that I actually am getting something, just make sure it's something I actually want. And if you can manage that, then and only then will I need to get into redundancy as an additional negative that your proposed benefit must also overcome.

QuoteThen by the end of your replies to me you reject my suggestion of getting rid of attributes if you don't like to combine them with skills on the basis that real people are capable doing things without training. But somehow miss that addressing that eventuality is precisely part of the reason that Attributes+Skills exists and what you're "getting in return" (despite your claims to the contrary at the start of your post) for tracking a core ability (Attribute) plus a specialty (Skill) that covers specialized tasks. Attributes are there so that people without specific training have something to fall back on when attempting basic tasks without having to pick levels (or whatever) in every single skill in the game.

But even then, I would still say that attributes aren't strictly necessary because skills basically cover everything you can do in the game. As long as the skill list is not too extensive (so as not to make picking all or most of them too prohibitive) you can pretty much cover every task related thing in the game with skills alone without relying on attributes to fall back on. And outside of covering your ability to handle tasks (including resistances and the like) attributes are practically useless. All they basically do other than that is modify game rule data like HP, carry capacity, etc. like I already mentioned. And if you can think of another function that they serve feel free to mention it or bring up those examples of games that do other stuff with them, rather than tease me with the notion that they exist, like claiming that without bringing them up or making the case for them that defeats my argument somehow.

I'll go with a nice, easy example. The Lejendary Adventure RPG. It's a skill-based game. With three "attributes,"  Health, Precision, and Speed (and an optional fourth one, Intellect).

Speed acts as the character's base movement rate. No. It doesn't modify it or any of this weird round-about business. It is the movement rate. It does a bunch of other reaction/reflex type of things, like whether or not you can act out of turn to parry on a losing initiative. But it's literally point for point tells how fast your character can walk. Could you have a walking skill in the game? Sure. You could. It's make believe. But I wouldn't ever want to do that. Because moving around on two legs is a pretty basic capacity. Some do it faster than others. So there's reason to allow it to vary. But it's not a skill.

Health is the thing that works like hit points. It does a few other things as well. But I would emphasize that it doesn't modify hit points. It is hit points. What am I going to do if I remove this attribute? Make up hit points and say, yeah, your character has these hit points. It's not an attribute, though. Just so I can have my Nigel Tufnel moment,  "But this game doesn't have attributes."

Precision calls for a bit more nuance. It's the base stat for grappling, among other things (in the broader game, where monsters use the same stats, it's for natural attacks in general). But again, it represents natural ability. Someone specially trained in Unarmed Combat would use that score rather than precision, as they would be using techniques they are trained to use and not necessarily the same techniques that come instinctively. So there's no reason for the abilities would stack. You can, however, switch back and forth to each, bringing an optionality advantage rather than an arithmetic one.

These three Base Ratings, as they're called, are used to stat all the monsters in the game as well. For most monsters, these are the only stats they have. Which drives home the point that you could technically play this game with these three game stats alone, without any skills at all. You want the skills because they're cool. But it's the attributes that are indispensable.

First off, you raise some good points and I appreciate your reply.

Quote from: VisionStorm on May 25, 2023, 09:11:11 AM
You've mentioned this to me during similar discussions in the past, and TBH this approach to game design tends to set off the autist in me because it tends to lead to too many disparities and inconsistencies in terms of power and usefulness of different components, like class, race, etc. And while I agree about setting emulation I don't like disparate power between characters unless they "pay" for it somehow.

The question I had to face what is "disparate power" between characters. I get where you coming from but after two decades of working with systems like GURPS and Hero System, it became obvious that "points" are not a universal yardstick and that despite the equal number of points "disparate power" existed between characters.

But I also observed the problem wasn't a design flaw. But with RPG campaigns circumstances varied so much that what the "best" for one situation, is not relevant for another. If a campaign is only about kicking down doors, killing monsters, and killing shit. Then yes there would be a narrow range of "best" options with a given system.

But my campaigns were about the players trashing the setting in whatever manner they feel is interesting. So as a result, I have to referee a wide variety of situations with the system I use.

But what I have noticed is that because I used the same setting regardless of the system, elements of my setting have a natural balance of their own. Paladins have magical powers on top of being highly trained fighters making them far more effective in combat and supernatural situation than a regular fighter with the same amount of life experience. However, Paladins in the Majestic Wilderlands also are not free agents like regular fighters. They are divine champions of a specific deity with all the complications that accompany that.

Now it can argue that systems like GURPS handle that with disadvantages and similar mechanics so there is a cost.  True but the true cost varies so much across campaigns and circumstances that I found it to be virtually useless. It is one thing to be a Paladin of Mitra in a realm where the dominant cultures worship Mitra, and another where the dominant cultures worship Set.  Costs look good at first especially when starting out but over time the sheer uselessness overwhelm whatever utility they have.

What endures is how the element works within the setting. If it makes sense and is interesting it remained as part of my setting. Some players would explore it in more detail. For example following the Fivefold Path of Mitra as opposed to the Laws of Ma'at of Set.

So these days I just tell people, you don't have to wait for 10, 20, or 30 years to discover this. Just jettison and make (or use) a good setting where things make sense and are interesting to play or deal with. Then find, make, or use the system that expresses those things as mechanics of a system that reflect how they hang together in a setting.

Quote from: VisionStorm on May 25, 2023, 09:11:11 AM
In the case of point-buy or similar elements typically used in freeform/classless systems this isn't an issue because more powerful races or profession templates simply cost more points. Then I can emulate setting when building those and if a player wants the more powerful race or profession they simply pay more for it. If they don't have more points during character creation they either can't start as a full blown member of that profession or they could start with a point debt and pay for it once they earn more points through play. That makes the autist in me happy that the scales have been balanced out.

Yes but if the players don't care if one of them is a Tolkeinian Elf who has superior capabilities for the same amount of life experience, why worry about it?

I am not criticizing your preference but now that I am in my late 50s something that I worried about when I was in my early 20s doesn't seem like a big deal if..... this is something that players are fine with. Trust me if I am referee a group, like with a game store campaign, where the players are semi-competitive and/or power gamers, then I would just present a more traditional palette of options. A Paladin of Mitra isn't going to be an option if none of the players are interested in roleplaying the complications of a Paladin of Mitra.

Let's face it trying to make a system where everything has a cost less to a certain amount of blandness. So what are we gaining by trying to do this? My counterproposal is to focus on the setting first, and mechanics second. Make the setting and the character types that inhabit it interesting.

For example, say you make The Holy Republic of Sirius for a science fiction campaign, and that is the main focus of the campaign. And you have a cool character type (or build) that is Psy-Templars. And Psy-Templar is generally more capable than other more mundane characters.

In my experience what could happen boils down to the following

-Nobody will play a Psy-Templar because of the mechanical and roleplaying complications of the case.
-There is a Psy-Templar or two in the group, they are just another member of the party.
-There is a Psy-Templar or two in the group, but they dominate the group.
-Most if not all the group are Psy-Templars.

All these outcomes in my book are equally valid and led to equally interesting campaigns. A lot of folks would point out that the third possibility is a problem. And yes it could be. But here the thing, when it is a problem it is because it is a metagame issue. Changing the system won't fix the issue. You have to address it outside of the game with the players and the group.

I had campaigns where one player was basically the dominant character and the rest of the group was happy with being his (or her) lackeys. Doesn't happen often but does happen. In fact it happening right now with my current campaign. The first 3/4 of the campaign was spent adventuring in the City-State of the Invincible Overlord and nobody was main focus for more than a session or two.

One of the players was a Viking Prince and an exiled heir. Around late January, things came together, the group did well, so now that player has a shot at reclaiming his throne. Since then that is what the campaign has been about with the rest of the group more or less the Viking Prince's henchmen.  They didn't have to do this, but they choose to do this.

Quote from: VisionStorm on May 25, 2023, 09:11:11 AMBut part of the problem I was talking about in that quote is that sometimes these disparities are not about genre emulation, but about people making certain abilities stronger than they need to be compared to similar stuff that already exists within the system. Granted, this tends to be more typical of homebrewed stuff people make for their own games rather than publishing, but even when it comes to published stuff you can see a lot of disparities sometimes, like everyone's using a different barometer when writing splat books. Which goes to my original point that these balance issues are not unique or somehow emblematic to classless systems specifically. They appear all over TTRPG design.

When I get a rulebook, I look at what it focuses on. Is it more about being a toolkit for a genre, or it is about the setting. If it is a genre, I look at what the author's take on it. The same for a setting. If a mechanic doesn't reflect what the author says about the genre and setting, then I will consider it a design flaw.

As to whether I like the rulebooks will depend on whether I like their take on a genre or a setting. For example, I really like how staff of the One Ring RPG (both editions) present Middle Earth. I do not care for The One Ring as a system, but I do like AiME and LotR RPG. I feel that the One Ring RPG express their vision of Middle Earth one way. And that AiME/LotR RPG expresses the same vision in another way.

I like the Expanse setting a lot. But I find the Expanse RPG for AGE to be weak because it is way overwritten. And part of why it is overwritten in that they lean too much into the AGE system being used in the Expanse Setting.

Hope that makes sense.

This is what happens when one engages the Twitter Yanderu.

D&D 'aint perfect - what is? Gygax made the fkn thing and even HE had house-rules.

But 5e is hard act to follow game design-wise: they powered-up the PCs, gave 'em more rests to reload resources, nerfed the monsters, trashed situational modifiers with AD/DISAD, tossed incremental bonuses with bounded accuracy, blahblahblah. The end result is 5e's a player's paradise in ways older editions can't touch. It's brilliant design when you really think about it, if your goal is getting players hooked on playing your game.

Quote from: Fheredin on May 22, 2023, 04:43:33 PM
Note that obsolete does not mean unplayable. An obsolete game is potentially just as enjoyable as it ever was, but it also has a flaw which people have mulled over, articulated in abstraction, and found at least one solution. Game design is an iterative process, not just individually for single games, but also as an industry-wide collective.  Players who have seen better often reluctantly return to obsolete games because they know they will now experience the flaws much more clearly. It's that ratchet of progress that players do not want to go backwards when they have seen better which defines game obsolescence.

For something to be even considered obsolete, it must be in some way surpassed or else be no longer used or produced.  Having a flaw that there's a fix for means Jack and Shit as long as people still play the game not caring about or even being aware of the flaw.  When you start bringing in people's preferences into the mix renders the whole concept pointless because your "flaw" isn't seen as a bug, it's a feature.

For some reason people still try to declare their preferences as Objective Truth or a Technological Advance and reality keeps proving them wrong.

Quote from: Lunamancer on May 26, 2023, 12:58:28 PM

Quote from: VisionStorm on May 25, 2023, 09:35:39 PM
You're basically nitpicking the wording of my post and making a lot of loaded statements while paradoxically saying very little of substance to refute my points

Why would I provide a substantial refutation to an opinion statement? My exact criticism of your wording was that you prefaced a fact statement with "IMO." So if you intended it to be a fact statement up for debate and I wasn't clear on that due to your wording, then that isn't a mere nitpick. Your wording is unclear. I said as much. You could have replied with a clarification. Instead you're choosing to cry about it like you're being unfairly treated. You're not.

QuoteYou nitpick my usage of the word "hurdle" then ignore where I mentioned that you don't really need to take this extra step you're claiming that exists (at least not during actual play), because you're supposed to have that value pre-calculated in your character sheet regardless.

I ignored it because it was irrelevant. A step is a step. Whether you're doing it in real time or before hand. It's only as good a point as you think it is when you insist on the term "hurdle." Which, again, makes my criticism of your use of that word not a nitpick. Your own reply proves the substantial confusion generated by your word choice.

QuoteYou claim that you're not getting anything for the dubious extra effort of tracking Attributes+Skills, but you're not really telling me what you mean by that other than calling it a "redundancy" that you consider negative, then expect me to address that when you haven't even made the case why it's negative, only declared it to be so.

The issue is I'm getting nothing in the tradeoff. The fact that I also perceive a negative attached to it as well is just extra shit frosting on the cake. But itself doesn't make or break the cake, so there's no reason for me to say anything more about it at this time. The real issue is I'm getting nothing positive. And I'm not sure what you could possibly expect me to explain further about nothing. Nothing means nothing. Nothing to describe or elaborate on further. You don't need me to explain nothing if you want to refute it. You just need to make the case that I actually am getting something, just make sure it's something I actually want. And if you can manage that, then and only then will I need to get into redundancy as an additional negative that your proposed benefit must also overcome.

QuoteThen by the end of your replies to me you reject my suggestion of getting rid of attributes if you don't like to combine them with skills on the basis that real people are capable doing things without training. But somehow miss that addressing that eventuality is precisely part of the reason that Attributes+Skills exists and what you're "getting in return" (despite your claims to the contrary at the start of your post) for tracking a core ability (Attribute) plus a specialty (Skill) that covers specialized tasks. Attributes are there so that people without specific training have something to fall back on when attempting basic tasks without having to pick levels (or whatever) in every single skill in the game.

But even then, I would still say that attributes aren't strictly necessary because skills basically cover everything you can do in the game. As long as the skill list is not too extensive (so as not to make picking all or most of them too prohibitive) you can pretty much cover every task related thing in the game with skills alone without relying on attributes to fall back on. And outside of covering your ability to handle tasks (including resistances and the like) attributes are practically useless. All they basically do other than that is modify game rule data like HP, carry capacity, etc. like I already mentioned. And if you can think of another function that they serve feel free to mention it or bring up those examples of games that do other stuff with them, rather than tease me with the notion that they exist, like claiming that without bringing them up or making the case for them that defeats my argument somehow.

I'll go with a nice, easy example. The Lejendary Adventure RPG. It's a skill-based game. With three "attributes,"  Health, Precision, and Speed (and an optional fourth one, Intellect).

Speed acts as the character's base movement rate. No. It doesn't modify it or any of this weird round-about business. It is the movement rate. It does a bunch of other reaction/reflex type of things, like whether or not you can act out of turn to parry on a losing initiative. But it's literally point for point tells how fast your character can walk. Could you have a walking skill in the game? Sure. You could. It's make believe. But I wouldn't ever want to do that. Because moving around on two legs is a pretty basic capacity. Some do it faster than others. So there's reason to allow it to vary. But it's not a skill.

Health is the thing that works like hit points. It does a few other things as well. But I would emphasize that it doesn't modify hit points. It is hit points. What am I going to do if I remove this attribute? Make up hit points and say, yeah, your character has these hit points. It's not an attribute, though. Just so I can have my Nigel Tufnel moment,  "But this game doesn't have attributes."

Precision calls for a bit more nuance. It's the base stat for grappling, among other things (in the broader game, where monsters use the same stats, it's for natural attacks in general). But again, it represents natural ability. Someone specially trained in Unarmed Combat would use that score rather than precision, as they would be using techniques they are trained to use and not necessarily the same techniques that come instinctively. So there's no reason for the abilities would stack. You can, however, switch back and forth to each, bringing an optionality advantage rather than an arithmetic one.

These three Base Ratings, as they're called, are used to stat all the monsters in the game as well. For most monsters, these are the only stats they have. Which drives home the point that you could technically play this game with these three game stats alone, without any skills at all. You want the skills because they're cool. But it's the attributes that are indispensable.

Dude, you're nitpicking the fact that I prefaced something with the expression "IMO", which is a SIMPLE sign of epistemic humility and openness to be proven wrong (blasphemy in these boards, I know). Yet you're doubling down and clinging to that toss away expression, like the fact that I didn't just assert something as complete irrefutable fact means that you just uncovered the biggest gaping hole in my argument. Which is the absolute fucking height of internet gotcha nitpicking. "You didn't assert something with the utmost, unshakable confidence in the absolute irrefutability of your statement, therefore your argument is necessarily WRONG" is basically what your whole word salad just amounts to. You're basically trying to claim victory on the basis that someone didn't rub their dick on you face as they were claiming something on the internet.

You also do get some trade-offs for having Attributes+Skills in a game, and I just mentioned one in the very post that you're replying to. The trade-off being that it gives unskilled characters something to fall back on, which incidentally also addresses the point that you mentioned about people being able to try stuff untrained in real life. And you may not like that trade-off, or prefer to handle it some other way. But the fact that you nitpick my terminology like that refutes my point entirely, then dismiss things that are clearly something as "nothing" when they're even mentioned in the very post you're replying to, while treating this like I'm the only one making claims here that need to be supported doesn't give me confidence that you have the intelligence to handle this discussion in an intellectually honest capacity.

You were the one who originally claimed that you didn't like Attributes+Skills as an approach, and are also claiming that handling things that way is a "negative" for reason only you can understand, cuz I sure as hell don't see how that's the case. If you don't want to elaborate then fine, but the burden of proof is not on me to proof that you're wrong about something that you haven't even fully expressed the reasons why you feel that way about them. Maybe you have perfectly good reasons, IDK. Or maybe there not that good, but understandable from a certain POV. But instead of just bowing out or saying what you really mean you're extending this discussion by tossing the ball over to me and pretending I'm the only one making claims here, and that the burden of proof is on me to sell you on something when you haven't even told me what you want or don't want. You just know I'm wrong about it cuz I prefaced something with "IMO".

Then you end this off by bringing up ONE single game (but hey, at least you're addressing actual points, that's progress) that supposedly refutes my previous statements that attributes are basically useless outside of handling tasks/action resolution or stuff that's game rule related. Yet attributes in that game (or "Base Ratings", which to me imply game rule stats) are either about handling game rule stuff or task resolution—the very things I said attributes were only good for. Meaning that this doesn't really refute my point—it reinforces it.

Attributes are ONLY good for task resolution and game rule data, but you don't really need them for either of those things. You can just use skills alone to handle tasks, and handle game rule data directly, as this game you bring up appears to do with some of these Base Ratings, since you claim that Health = HP essentially and Speed = Movement Rate (which is EXACTLY what I was claiming originally when I said you could just handle game rule data directly). And even if you were to find a game that uses attributes some other way (you still haven't done that) that doesn't prove that attributes are NECESSARY, which was specifically my original claim (not that it just couldn't be done, period). It would just prove that in SOME games some designers MIGHT come up with a clever way to handle attributes some other way that applies in THAT game specifically. But pointing out an exception to my claim doesn't prove that my claim is wrong, because a single one-off game, or even a handful, doesn't prove necessity across the board for all TTRPGs. It would just prove that there are other ways to potentially do it (hypothetically).

I've probably mixed up the chronology of my hunch with my last post.

---

Quote from: Mishihari on May 26, 2023, 02:53:59 AM
Oh, and I prefer classless to classed because 1) classes games tend to have silly restrictions like "your wizard can't use a sword because he's a wizard" and 2) it makes for silly worldbuilding - every swordsman in the world is going to be very, very similar.  There are classed games that try to deal with these issues, but they do so by moving in some degree towards a classless paradigm, with multiclassing, subclasses, a multiplicity of options, or a multiplicity of classes.  I would rather just do classless from the get-go.

In the historical sense of D&D, this seems to be a misunderstanding. While the original boxed set and its derived basic sets all stipulate that magic-users can only use daggers, the entry for the same class under AD&D's PHB doesn't enforce any weapon restrictions on them whatsoever. Reading the language for the class description, wizards are only combat-weak in the sense that they gain fewer attacks per round and fewer weapon proficiencies overall while levveling up, relative to other classes. Unless I'm totally missing something in the AD&D PHB, wizards start with one weapon proficiency and no armour, but that first wepaon by all means could be a longsword or a heavy crossbow, and anything else later. Important since there wasn't a simple/martial/exotic weapon description for that edition.

Compared references:
OD&D M&M, pg 6
AD&D PHB, pg 25, pg36-37


Thinking on this, people have always wanted to make a spellsword class in D&D for decades, and since its a "genre" set of rules it might make sense for some wizards to be better at combat. I wonder if you could offer wizards with high Str a chance (every 3rd level?) to sacrifice gaining a spell slot for a weapon proficiency, or else a step up from the present armour type to the next highest and then impose arcance failure from 3rdE, reduced by Dex mod... Tangent to the discussion though.

Quote from: Mr. Ordinary, Esq. on May 26, 2023, 03:27:36 PM
In the historical sense of D&D, this seems to be a misunderstanding. While the original boxed set and its derived basic sets all stipulate that magic-users can only use daggers, the entry for the same class under AD&D's PHB doesn't enforce any weapon restrictions on them whatsoever. Reading the language for the class description, wizards are only combat-weak in the sense that they gain fewer attacks per round and fewer weapon proficiencies overall while levveling up, relative to other classes. Unless I'm totally missing something in the AD&D PHB, wizards start with one weapon proficiency and no armour, but that first wepaon by all means could be a longsword or a heavy crossbow, and anything else later. Important since there wasn't a simple/martial/exotic weapon description for that edition.

No, each class has a list of weapons they can gain proficiency in. M-U's only good one is darts for the FR 3.

Quote from: Fheredin on May 22, 2023, 02:19:03 PMThis means that the supermajority of Forge games did not age well at all, and suffer even worse irreducible complexity problems than WotC D&D. Fiasco is brilliant, but you can't alter the games and make anything other than Fiasco..

But you can with PbtA, which is a Forge game (or at the very least, Forge-inspired). See all the hacks that came from Apocalypse World, and the games it inspired with it's fail forward, playbooks, player-facing rules, "play to find", "don't prep plots" etc.

Interesting post, by the way. I agree there are better "technologies" being developed by iteration that end up molding subsequent design. For instance, I don't think a game as complex and slow as those 80s beasts (Phoenix Command anyone?) would find much traction nowadays. On the other hand, lean designs and quickness to prep & play are becoming more and more dominant "techs" these days. I still don't know about games getting obsolete though? I mean, at the end of the day TTRPGs are a social activity, more about the people around the table and their stories than whatever rules they use to help with that.

Quote from: Mr. Ordinary, Esq. on May 26, 2023, 03:27:36 PM
I've probably mixed up the chronology of my hunch with my last post.

---

Quote from: Mishihari on May 26, 2023, 02:53:59 AM
Oh, and I prefer classless to classed because 1) classes games tend to have silly restrictions like "your wizard can't use a sword because he's a wizard" and 2) it makes for silly worldbuilding - every swordsman in the world is going to be very, very similar.  There are classed games that try to deal with these issues, but they do so by moving in some degree towards a classless paradigm, with multiclassing, subclasses, a multiplicity of options, or a multiplicity of classes.  I would rather just do classless from the get-go.

In the historical sense of D&D, this seems to be a misunderstanding. While the original boxed set and its derived basic sets all stipulate that magic-users can only use daggers, the entry for the same class under AD&D's PHB doesn't enforce any weapon restrictions on them whatsoever. Reading the language for the class description, wizards are only combat-weak in the sense that they gain fewer attacks per round and fewer weapon proficiencies overall while levveling up, relative to other classes. Unless I'm totally missing something in the AD&D PHB, wizards start with one weapon proficiency and no armour, but that first wepaon by all means could be a longsword or a heavy crossbow, and anything else later. Important since there wasn't a simple/martial/exotic weapon description for that edition.

Compared references:
OD&D M&M, pg 6
AD&D PHB, pg 25, pg36-37


Thinking on this, people have always wanted to make a spellsword class in D&D for decades, and since its a "genre" set of rules it might make sense for some wizards to be better at combat. I wonder if you could offer wizards with high Str a chance (every 3rd level?) to sacrifice gaining a spell slot for a weapon proficiency, or else a step up from the present armour type to the next highest and then impose arcance failure from 3rdE, reduced by Dex mod... Tangent to the discussion though.

I think you missed the table on the bottom of the AD&D PHB on page 19.

Regardless of this specific point, there are many examples of arbitrary restriction.  While there are good balance and niche related reasons for these restrictions, I would like to have the option of my magic user being able to use a sword, probably in return for giving something else up.  Making up an entirely new rebalanced class with this feature is a lot of work, and swapping out the one ability for another is a long step towards a classless system, but without any guidelines to get it right.  I still prefer the classless approach for this reason.

Quote from: S'mon on May 26, 2023, 03:54:48 PM
No, each class has a list of weapons they can gain proficiency in. M-U's only good one is darts for the FR 3.

Quote from: Mishihari on May 26, 2023, 04:24:21 PM
I think you missed the table on the bottom of the AD&D PHB on page 19.

Yup there it is. Been lots on my mind lately.

Quote from: Mishihari on May 26, 2023, 04:24:21 PM
Regardless of this specific point, there are many examples of arbitrary restriction.  While there are good balance and niche related reasons for these restrictions, I would like to have the option of my magic user being able to use a sword, probably in return for giving something else up.  Making up an entirely new rebalanced class with this feature is a lot of work, and swapping out the one ability for another is a long step towards a classless system, but without any guidelines to get it right.  I still prefer the classless approach for this reason.

They're not all that restrictive:

Quote from: Theory of Games on May 26, 2023, 02:52:55 PM
D&D 'aint perfect - what is? Gygax made the fkn thing and even HE had house-rules.

Why does the concept of house rules cease to exist in the advocacy of D&D overall as the flawed system? I've also noticed the assertion that D&D is flawed with either implicit or explicit statements which gets justified with preference regardless, even your own. "Classed is too restrictive, classed doesn't offer good customization, classed doesn't have articulation." People pick up a rule book and assume that nothing in it can be slightly adjusted, otherwise you've vetoed your right to refer to the system you use by its name and edition. Forge theorists see the permission to make any adjustments as a refutation of the validity of the system altogether at the other extreme, and though I've been interested in classless design philosophy somewhat, I'm no longer confident why that requires an entirely separate system.

Again:
Races+ 0th level characters + secondary skills/professions or backgrounds + kits (3rd also had starting packages at bare minimum) + feats - the XP system "as is"; here you essentially have a Traveller style ruleset for session play, though without the mishap and life events tables (honestly those are a cool idea, and 5E only sort of touches on that with their backgrounds character feature). But if what I proposed is invalid, just as one example for the flexibility of D&D, its plausible that you might be buying into alternative systems for something other than function/playability entirely.

You kind of won't engage with the flaws in "classless"/template design though. Classless design's biggest flaw is due to the elaborate skill system solving all the encounters for the player. Stringing together the right combination of skill checks, from a metagame perspective, is a lot like having the character sheet itself playing the game for you. Its not that having zero prompts is the way to go, but how do you get to play the game without the sheet potentially playing it all out for you? Maybe in that sense it's good for new players to build familiarity with the setting, but I bet that if you play that sort of system long enough, your sessions will begin to play out as formulaic, even though that was supposed to be the fault of classed/archetype design. At some point, you'll wind up switching subgenres across your campaigns to keep things fresh for the players. Grognards never needed these extra steps for their own gaming however. The first ever runs of the game was marketed to tweens back when no such game ever existed before, so how hard could cd/a play be relative to a cl/t design which, at best, only gets you used to spoon-fed play? In that mindset, how much confidence can you really have in any adventures which you design being not much more than a super-chain skill challenge?

The most specific example: Knowledge checks are already a button masher for as long as they've been in the D&D game. It would be very tempting for every modern player to choose at least one knowledge skill (especially in 5thE reduced list) because it can provide catch all framing to get unlimited bardic lore lifelines from the GM, which from an adventure design perspective is going to be its own problem. If you can justify why any field of knowledge might have an interest in owlbears, the GM has to figure out a unique way to lend out a DC appropriate hint for the encounter, and that hint can using something as boring as regional trades in wheat for sheep for owlbear pelts. Once the players have that kind of information, they don't have to fuss trying to talk to other NPCs in the world, or encounter any owlbears at all without first knowing exactly how to kill one before they've even see one. Its now just point A to point B gaming, and they get smug instead of having any real fun because the need to actually explore is removed. Plus, Traveller sort of began the trend of using any attribute with any skill, where you can provide a justification for that combination. This will have contributed to the idea that attributes simply don't matter, and it will have given a leg up to how much leeway PbtA games could give with the powers of "justification" alone.

I guess in some way, you could accomplish something similar of this bardic lore lifeline issue with the secondary skill/profession optional mechanic from AD&D. Foresters might have their own myths and legends about owlbears in the woods, its just that, typically speaking, there's no need to write out a separate "forester lore" skill out on your character sheet. Figuring out that sort of unwritten application of the character in the context of his/her own setting was the kind of thing a GM might reward bonus XP for, like with good roleplaying. When everyone can have a bardic lore ability like this, the bard's special lore power in D&D doesn't really seem all that niche anymore; at least not as it has been written up to now.

Quote from: Chris24601 on May 25, 2023, 07:52:04 AM

Quote from: Fheredin on May 24, 2023, 10:52:42 PM
Wall of text.

So, to cut that wall of text down to something digestible; your claim is that real classless rpg design hasn't been tried because there's a conspiracy to keep good design from happening in the ttrpg field (and this cabal is what shut down the Forge site)?

Uh huh.

...I listed three in subsequent posts. Savage Worlds and Savage Worlds Pathfinder, Cyberpunk Red, Traveller.  Not all the tools I list have been used all at once because that would be overkill feature-bloat and that's not really the point. Classless design has tools available to do anything you could have in classless design, but the reverse is much harder, so if you know what you are doing, classless will probably serve you better. I do admit that if you don't know what you're doing it can and will get you in trouble.

Quote from: Lunamancer on May 25, 2023, 11:04:30 AM
I've got some stories I could tell about sabotage attempts I witnessed up close in the Lejendary Adventure online community back in the day. It was initially an unmoderated forum, but some gooftard claimed offense at someone's inoffensive post, and because the claimed offense involved someone's religion, the operator decided to put moderators in place. As the most active member of the community (tied with Gary Gygax, really), I volunteered and was chosen. I enjoyed that it had been an unmoderated forum. And I made it a point to only nuke spam and enforce forum topics (we had a flame forum, so even personal attacks were fine, just redirected to the right forum). Once it became clear that I wasn't going to be a tool of the troublemakers, all of a sudden all the complaints went away.

The fake-offended party, by the way, in my assessment, was someone who did not believe in the game or the product, but it seemed like he was seeking an opportunity to get himself published along side Gary Gygax. And he did get a few articles published in the fan zine, and a couple of his cringeworthy examples that reeked of hatred for the game were ultimately added to the game's 2nd printing, because of course one of his complaints involved him claiming he was confused (with all the sincerity of the blue-haired Simpsons lawyer) about character creation and would like to see some examples. Funny. He was confused enough to need that in print. But understood it well enough to be the one to write the examples.

So there actually is this motive in the RPG world for sabotage and shenanigans. Wannabe designers. Or actual designers, I suppose. Because if you're going to create a game, and you're asking for feedback, almost every time one of the first things you're going to hear is someone asking, "What is it you're offering that I can't get from another RPG? What problem are you solving?" And if you're hopped up on your own bullshit or just chasing clout, there may not be any real problem you're solving. So you have to invent a problem. And sabotage can be a useful tool.

Oh, yeah. The mysterious poster on reddit is the only time I know for sure I was dealing with a saboteur whose goal was to prevent high level discussion from happening. There was also a sub schism back in 2020, which is when I retired as a mod. It might not be related (I can't rule out an angry ex) but it makes for some fascinating reading.

RPGDesign had a legacy link to a Discord run by a retired member, and a reddit user approached one of our mods with some "evidence" that the Discord was racist. The material was EXTREMELY dubious. One was an academic discussion about if the word gypsy is inherently discriminatory, and another was a member of the discord actively harassing the Discord's Admin by saying his studio name, "Stormforge Productions" was Nazi. Two weeks later the reddit user posted about how we (the mods) were knowingly abetting racists because we had the link in the sidebar and we'd done nothing.

I wanted to exonerate the Discord because we all knew there was nothing to it, and the other moderators out-voted me. I kinda understand; this was right after George Floyd.

The sub schism was definitely a well-orchestrated hit. It included privately approaching one of RPGDesign's mods about two weeks beforehand, timing the incident with a weekend and Reddit announcing a pro-diversity hire, crossposting the worst material on r/RPG to upvote farm (and possibly buying some upvotes, as well), and either searching for or planting the material on the Discord. Gypsy is not a common slur, and there are dozens of channels on that Discord, so even if none of the material was planted, we're still talking about a "troll" spending several hours of work searching for usable material. If it was planted (and I suspect the "Stormforge is Nazi" was) then we are talking about several months of preparation.

This is not the work of a garden variety troll.

The perpetrator used the account iloveponies, the current lead mod of RPGCreation (the sub which resulted from the schism.) I am not sure the person using the account is the same person who ran the attack. I looked at the account history at the time and to me it looked like the account was getting passed around. It might be the same person, but if I had an account like that and was willing to spend weeks planning an incident, I would totally hock the account off on someone who liked RPGs, thought that being a mod on an RPG design sub might give them clout or something, and who didn't know the account had a history.

Quote from: Mr. Ordinary, Esq. on May 25, 2023, 09:54:57 PM

Quote from: Fheredin on May 24, 2023, 10:52:42 PM
[...] one of the key problems I have with RPGs in general (classless or class-based) is that they don't let you adapt your character to the niche the party needs you to fill. I don't know about anyone else, but my experience with many RPGs is that the first 2 sessions are terrible, then when the players finally get an advancement, they have a frustrated metagame huddle, "you pick up a grapple, you pick up a range, you need some bloody skills." And THEN the campaign works.

I'll be fair, that sounds like a fantastic team building exercise for players: a negotiation of who gets what role, so no one is stuck having to play "healer bitch" (even though clerics are not technically obligated to drop everything and save a dying character in a game like D&D). However...

Quote from: Lunamancer on May 25, 2023, 06:44:49 PM
I house rule in the secondary skill list from the 1E DMG as a starting place. A primed Forester would be able to do all kinds of forestry stuff. Climb trees, swim, build rudimentary shelters, hunt, taste random feces found on the ground to instantly know everything about whatever left it there. And then you apply whichever attribute would make the most sense, since that's what C&C calls for anyway. It's just if it's Forester stuff, a Forester gets the lower TN. There's not even any math involved!

The above really simplifies that process if you can negotiate a preferred niche through play, without risk to a fight over who gets to be "the OP class" (whatever the case may be). What's advocated in Lunamancer's post is something we could call the "public education package"; OTOH, the more appropraite word that spans many genres is "culture." So at least the whole issue of "ancestry" can be previously accounted for against that pet project of the woke D&D players, since it's obvious why a dwarf might not now how to swim. Of course the woke's favourite phrase is "not all" which ironically is how you get all Drow charcters becoming Drizzt clones in those circles.


From here, I've got a hunch about how classless systems got to be seperate design (bear with me here on the lead up).

In the meat-grinder context of the original game, in the course of the sandbox adventuring career you are bound to encounter a variety of situations, which makes trying other classes appealing. But at some point, you find a player who really really really wants to play an elf for his next character, but the dice keep saying no under the random attributes mechanic. Since everyone is, to some extent, a min-maxer, albeit not necessarily one mandating the powergamer "personality" if I can make that distinction, you decide that don't want to just kick the guy out.* The only way to keep that player from leaving your table is to offer a compromise through the attribute point buy mechanic, and that's where the problems likely begin. Because this guy will want his next elf wizard to be the best wizard it can be (and now that he can point buy he is at his leisure to only craft elf wizards for the rest of his gamer life), he will habitually buy attributes in a consistent manner to optimize his favourite race/class combo... worse is the standard array under these circumstances because they both offer the illusionary problem of creating "formulaic characters" with class-based systems. "Antoher dwarf fighter? That's cliche, since I'm just going to dump Int/Cha again, and honestly why wouldn't you do that also?"

Once you're stuck in the attitude that point-buy or standard array aren't the cause of class-based systems being boring or broken, because its YOU that's choosing your optimizations and agency is alpha-omega (and why would your own choices ever be broken?), classless design looks really interesting: with GURPS etc you're free to point buy absolutely everything, as long as you take the time to build the charcter on a free afternoon well efore play begins, and to be fair these min-maxers never necessarily have to become the powergamers that gives any min-maxing its own bad name. I would give credit where it's due to GURPS for creating a system that allows players to potentially create very balanced races, classes, or career paths for honest players who like lots of this customization, as you also get a better feel for what works and what doesn't when examing other system features more critically, even if just for confirmation bias.

For those who think that GURPS goes too far, you've got Travller which extends the random roll for nearly every character feature for every career path, but the tack on it is obiviosly different. The skills themselves become specialized, since you can now write skills for a wide variety of weapons (eg phaser, radiation, laser, plasma, et al instead of just "energy weapon" because the laws of physics are so different between types, you couldn't possibly know how to work one if you know the other, and this leads to additional career path posibilities).

(chuckle) The core gameplay loop of my game is all about triggering metagame discussions as if they were character discussions specifically because I enjoy it when players do this and I think it's a good habit for players to learn. I also don't really draw distinctions between min-maxing and roleplay. I think that's because D&D-formula games over-rely on character creation to customize characters and under-rely on gameplay to express character uniqueness. If players can only control character creation, optimization is a logical means of self-expression. If players can express themselves with every die roll and rolls reflect what characters are good at, then min-max process optimization and roleplay become two sides of the same thing.

The downside is that players can only express themselves if the core mechanic is pretty darn complex. A D20 roll doesn't cut it for this application, which causes its own host of problems. But I digress.

The Traveller approach to character creation is in the right direction, but ultimately fails. I tolerate point-buys when they are really well streamlined (Savage Worlds) because character creation gets out of the way, but there's a chance of making a bland character if you don't know what you're doing.

I think the best results tend to come when the rules give you one or two curveballs you can't control, or don't have good control over, and then build your character from there. I remember playtesting a homebrew with friends and character creation started with the GM shuffling a deck of random character attributes and dealing one card to each players. He handed me the "Berserker" ability. And then I consulted the campaign's pitch. Highschool students attending a private highschool in upstate New York in the early 30s get roped into a paranormal adventure.

It was at that moment I knew I was playing the captain of the school's hockey team.

Quote from: VisionStorm on May 26, 2023, 03:14:29 PM
Dude, you're nitpicking the fact that I prefaced something with the expression "IMO", which is a SIMPLE sign of epistemic humility and openness to be proven wrong (blasphemy in these boards, I know).

No. I'm not. I'm right here. You don't need to tell me what I'm doing. You could just ask.

QuoteYet you're doubling down

No. I'm not. I never nitpicked in the first place, so there's nothing to double down on. What I was doing is alerting you to the fact that you're wrong in your nitpicking claim. And now here you're the one doubling down in being wrong. As I say, I'm right here. If you have any questions as to what I'm doing, you can just ask. And I will tell you, I was not and am not nitpicking.

Quoteand clinging to that toss away expression, like the fact that I didn't just assert something as complete irrefutable fact means that you just uncovered the biggest gaping hole in my argument. Which is the absolute fucking height of internet gotcha nitpicking. "You didn't assert something with the utmost, unshakable confidence in the absolute irrefutability of your statement, therefore your argument is necessarily WRONG" is basically what your whole word salad just amounts to.

No. It doesn't. First, just like nitpicking, word salad is not just any old thing that you don't like. Words mean things. But more to the point, I never said anything like what you're describing. Again. I'm right here. You don't have to put words in my mouth. I'll say again here, like I did in my so-called "doubling down," like I did in my so-called original "nitpick," I just wasn't taking your claim as seriously up for debate. I took it as a statement of preference with nothing to refute and no Earthly reason to begin presenting evidence or formulating a counter-argument. People are allowed to have their preferences, and I was respecting yours. If I did so in error, consider it duly noted.

QuoteYou also do get some trade-offs for having Attributes+Skills in a game, and I just mentioned one in the very post that you're replying to. The trade-off being that it gives unskilled characters something to fall back on, which incidentally also addresses the point that you mentioned about people being able to try stuff untrained in real life.

Actually, it doesn't address the point I was making. My point had nothing to do with being able to try stuff untrained. It's that there are basic capacities that require no training to do that have nothing to do with skills. They're their own separate circle on the Venn Diagram perhaps having some overlap but largely independent. That's not the same thing as calling everything a skill and giving those poor unskilled souls a pittance of a chance. I'm not a big fan of defaults or fallbacks for characters lacking a skill. So, no, I don't see this as a benefit.

QuoteAnd you may not like that trade-off, or prefer to handle it some other way. But the fact that you nitpick my terminology like that refutes my point entirely, then dismiss things that are clearly something as "nothing" when they're even mentioned in the very post you're replying to, while treating this like I'm the only one making claims here that need to be supported doesn't give me confidence that you have the intelligence to handle this discussion in an intellectually honest capacity.

I haven't nitpicked.
I have never claimed nor implied to have refuted your point at all, let alone entirely.
I never dismissed anything that was relevant.
The only thing I called nothing was literally nothing. It was not a dismissal. It referred to absence (of a benefit).
I haven't said you need to support your claims.
My own claims have mainly dealt with my own personal preferences.
The only fact-claims I've made is to say there exists games that do things differently.

For you to be so far off the mark on all these points, you might seriously want to consider looking in the mirror when it comes to who is or isn't able to handle a discussion in an intellectually honest way.

QuoteYou were the one who originally claimed that you didn't like Attributes+Skills as an approach, and are also claiming that handling things that way is a "negative" for reason only you can understand, cuz I sure as hell don't see how that's the case. If you don't want to elaborate then fine, but the burden of proof is not on me to proof that you're wrong about something that you haven't even fully expressed the reasons why you feel that way about them. Maybe you have perfectly good reasons, IDK. Or maybe there not that good, but understandable from a certain POV. But instead of just bowing out or saying what you really mean you're extending this discussion by tossing the ball over to me and pretending I'm the only one making claims here, and that the burden of proof is on me to sell you on something when you haven't even told me what you want or don't want. You just know I'm wrong about it cuz I prefaced something with "IMO".

Yeah, I get to make claims about my own preferences and I have no burden whatsoever to prove them. Could I elaborate on them? Sure. But why would I when you're making dishonest statements that I've claimed you're wrong just because you said IMO? I haven't gotten into much of substance with you because you aren't exercising even the most basic of civility or honesty.

QuoteThen you end this off by bringing up ONE single game (but hey, at least you're addressing actual points, that's progress) that supposedly refutes my previous statements that attributes are basically useless outside of handling tasks/action resolution or stuff that's game rule related. Yet attributes in that game (or "Base Ratings", which to me imply game rule stats) are either about handling game rule stuff or task resolution—the very things I said attributes were only good for. Meaning that this doesn't really refute my point—it reinforces it.

Okay. So you got me. And this is why I only gave you one game. You are not trustworthy enough for me to show all my cards. Let the record show that when I do address whatever points you want me to address without sifting through your language to nail down to a specific position, you play these gotcha tactics. And when I do, you accuse me of nitpicking. No win, no matter what I do. So quit the crying, quit playing the victim, quit accusing me of nitpicking you, quit twisting everything I say to what you need it to be, quit putting words in my mouth, quit attributing motives to me and stick to the issue.

What in blue blazes do you mean by "attributes are basically useless outside of handling tasks/action resolution or stuff that's game rule related."?

Specifically, what do you mean by "stuff that's game rule related."? Because that sounds a lot like a catch-all. It sounds like any example of any rule from any RPG I could possibly site could be met with a response of "well, that's game rule related." And if I make up something not in a rule book, that could be met with, "well, that's not an actual game rule."

Give an example of something that can be cited as an actual example from a rulebook, that is also not rule-related, that is also not "handling tasks/action resolution."

QuoteAttributes are ONLY good for task resolution and game rule data, but you don't really need them for either of those things. You can just use skills alone to handle tasks,

Sure.  You could. I already literally said as much. The problem is it's just stupid. I don't want to call things skills that are not really skills to just satisfy some urge for theory wank. I mean I can see how that might not bother someone who butchers language and has no respect for clarity. But it's not for me. You can do it. It just won't be good in my view. And so I would never consider it acceptable. If I thought there were any merit to the idea, I'd be over on coursera boosting my hit points or completing my apprenticeship in venom/toxin immunity rather than posting here.

Quoteand handle game rule data directly, as this game you bring up appears to do with some of these Base Ratings, since you claim that Health = HP essentially and Speed = Movement Rate (which is EXACTLY what I was claiming originally when I said you could just handle game rule data directly).

"Rule data" could have meant anything. Color me unimpressed. Oddly while trying to keep it brief so as not to stray from the main idea, I did allude to the fact that there are other things these attributes do. So your victory lap here may prove quite premature. I'm just dying to see you come up with more precise explanations of what you're talking about and what "game rule related" means.

QuoteAnd even if you were to find a game that uses attributes some other way (you still haven't done that) that doesn't prove that attributes are NECESSARY, which was specifically my original claim (not that it just couldn't be done, period). It would just prove that in SOME games some designers MIGHT come up with a clever way to handle attributes some other way that applies in THAT game specifically. But pointing out an exception to my claim doesn't prove that my claim is wrong, because a single one-off game, or even a handful, doesn't prove necessity across the board for all TTRPGs. It would just prove that there are other ways to potentially do it (hypothetically).

As I hinted at with Lejendary Adventure, the game uses the same 3 base ratings for all monsters in the game as well, and that's part of what keeps the game running simple and cleanly. I would argue it is necessary for LA in the sense that it may be the best, most effective way of expressing what it needs to express. Failure to meet this "necessity" would make it a worse game. And yeah, some chuckle head with no respect for language could always come along and start twisting the definitions of words and suddenly start calling everything skills like a bad early 90's JRPG calling every monster in the fantasy realm a demon (looking at you, Lagoon). But that would neither make your case nor defeat mine. It only shows some people suffer from definition diarrhea. And I have no interest in cleaning up one of those spills.

Quote from: Theory of GamesD&D 'aint perfect - what is? Gygax made the fkn thing and even HE had house-rules.

I'd always assumed that was because he knew the difference between what appealed to him personally, and what would appeal to a wider market. A distinction lost on many game-writers.

Quote from: Brad on May 23, 2023, 09:47:20 PM
Deleted...this is idiotic

Yeah, it's getting a bit Forgey, eh?

Quote from: Fheredin on May 26, 2023, 07:49:27 PM
...I listed three in subsequent posts. Savage Worlds and Savage Worlds Pathfinder, Cyberpunk Red, Traveller.  Not all the tools I list have been used all at once because that would be overkill feature-bloat and that's not really the point. Classless design has tools available to do anything you could have in classless design, but the reverse is much harder, so if you know what you are doing, classless will probably serve you better. I do admit that if you don't know what you're doing it can and will get you in trouble.

[s ]Great selling point there.[/s]

Quote from: Fheredin on May 26, 2023, 07:49:27 PM

Quote from: Lunamancer on May 25, 2023, 11:04:30 AM
I've got some stories I could tell about sabotage attempts I witnessed up close in the Lejendary Adventure online community back in the day. It was initially an unmoderated forum, but some gooftard claimed offense at someone's inoffensive post, and because the claimed offense involved someone's religion, the operator decided to put moderators in place. As the most active member of the community (tied with Gary Gygax, really), I volunteered and was chosen. I enjoyed that it had been an unmoderated forum. And I made it a point to only nuke spam and enforce forum topics (we had a flame forum, so even personal attacks were fine, just redirected to the right forum). Once it became clear that I wasn't going to be a tool of the troublemakers, all of a sudden all the complaints went away.

The fake-offended party, by the way, in my assessment, was someone who did not believe in the game or the product, but it seemed like he was seeking an opportunity to get himself published along side Gary Gygax. And he did get a few articles published in the fan zine, and a couple of his cringeworthy examples that reeked of hatred for the game were ultimately added to the game's 2nd printing, because of course one of his complaints involved him claiming he was confused (with all the sincerity of the blue-haired Simpsons lawyer) about character creation and would like to see some examples. Funny. He was confused enough to need that in print. But understood it well enough to be the one to write the examples.

So there actually is this motive in the RPG world for sabotage and shenanigans. Wannabe designers. Or actual designers, I suppose. Because if you're going to create a game, and you're asking for feedback, almost every time one of the first things you're going to hear is someone asking, "What is it you're offering that I can't get from another RPG? What problem are you solving?" And if you're hopped up on your own bullshit or just chasing clout, there may not be any real problem you're solving. So you have to invent a problem. And sabotage can be a useful tool.

Oh, yeah. The mysterious poster on reddit is the only time I know for sure I was dealing with a saboteur whose goal was to prevent high level discussion from happening. There was also a sub schism back in 2020, which is when I retired as a mod. It might not be related (I can't rule out an angry ex) but it makes for some fascinating reading.

RPGDesign had a legacy link to a Discord run by a retired member, and a reddit user approached one of our mods with some "evidence" that the Discord was racist. The material was EXTREMELY dubious. One was an academic discussion about if the word gypsy is inherently discriminatory, and another was a member of the discord actively harassing the Discord's Admin by saying his studio name, "Stormforge Productions" was Nazi. Two weeks later the reddit user posted about how we (the mods) were knowingly abetting racists because we had the link in the sidebar and we'd done nothing.

I wanted to exonerate the Discord because we all knew there was nothing to it, and the other moderators out-voted me. I kinda understand; this was right after George Floyd.

The sub schism was definitely a well-orchestrated hit. It included privately approaching one of RPGDesign's mods about two weeks beforehand, timing the incident with a weekend and Reddit announcing a pro-diversity hire, crossposting the worst material on r/RPG to upvote farm (and possibly buying some upvotes, as well), and either searching for or planting the material on the Discord. Gypsy is not a common slur, and there are dozens of channels on that Discord, so even if none of the material was planted, we're still talking about a "troll" spending several hours of work searching for usable material. If it was planted (and I suspect the "Stormforge is Nazi" was) then we are talking about several months of preparation.

This is not the work of a garden variety troll.

The perpetrator used the account iloveponies, the current lead mod of RPGCreation (the sub which resulted from the schism.) I am not sure the person using the account is the same person who ran the attack. I looked at the account history at the time and to me it looked like the account was getting passed around. It might be the same person, but if I had an account like that and was willing to spend weeks planning an incident, I would totally hock the account off on someone who liked RPGs, thought that being a mod on an RPG design sub might give them clout or something, and who didn't know the account had a history.

None of this surprises me, they live to usurp and upend anything they can worm themselves into. I guess they weren't happy under the rocks they crawled out from. Perhaps I'm not completely sold on the classless paradigm but I'd rather that both methods stay in the hands of those who actually love roleplaying games for the fun of them.

Quote
[...] The Traveller approach to character creation is in the right direction, but ultimately fails. I tolerate point-buys when they are really well streamlined (Savage Worlds) because character creation gets out of the way, but there's a chance of making a bland character if you don't know what you're doing.

I think the best results tend to come when the rules give you one or two curveballs you can't control, or don't have good control over, and then build your character from there. I remember playtesting a homebrew with friends and character creation started with the GM shuffling a deck of random character attributes and dealing one card to each players. He handed me the "Berserker" ability. And then I consulted the campaign's pitch. Highschool students attending a private highschool in upstate New York in the early 30s get roped into a paranormal adventure.

It was at that moment I knew I was playing the captain of the school's hockey team.

From your experience with Savage Worlds, what exactly constitutes an interesting character, or evena well rounded one? Might help me narrow down where I'm headed in this debate.

I like that card trick, good way to focus on the character concept when using a point buy system.

Quote from: Lunamancer on May 26, 2023, 09:27:43 PM
Give an example of something that can be cited as an actual example from a rulebook, that is also not rule-related, that is also not "handling tasks/action resolution."

I could trust this guy to give you an example, but not one that makes any sense.

Consider:

Quote from: VisionStorm on May 26, 2023, 03:14:29 PM
Attributes are ONLY good for task resolution and game rule data, but you don't really need them for either of those things. You can just use skills alone to handle tasks,

"I'd like to use the Athletics skill, even though I have no way to show that he's strong enough to have even learned the skill at all."

From another angle, this line of thought will trap you into making characters that are obviously strong due to the listed Athletics bonus, but is only smart because you wrote "Is intelligent" somewhere into the character background; yet without any skills to express that intelligence, it's now just scribbles on the character sheet, a plain character factoid potentially uninteresting enough even for roleplay.

Quote
But pointing out an exception to my claim doesn't prove that my claim is wrong, because a single one-off game, or even a handful, doesn't prove necessity across the board for all TTRPGs. It would just prove that there are other ways to potentially do it (hypothetically).

Clearly its the other way around, or there would be famous examples of systems without attributes - famous enough to rival the industry giants, or effective enough to get at least as prominent as PbtA games. There are examples of games that don't use any dice however, if you don't have any.

Quote from: Fheredin on May 22, 2023, 02:19:03 PM
I hate to be blunt, but OSR is barely played more than Forge games relative to D&D.

Well this is just fundamentally wrong. Look at details on social media; both OSR and Storygamers brag about buying tons of games; but then look at the ones playing it: you'll see that most of the people who buy or talk about Storygames don't ever actually brag about playing it, and the minority who do appear to have mostly one-shots.
On the other hand, the OSR is full of accounts of people playing games, and of playing very long-term campaigns.

Quote from: Vestragor on May 22, 2023, 04:31:32 PM

Quote from: PencilBoy99 on May 22, 2023, 03:42:06 PM
Aren't PBtA and Blades in the Dark games pretty popular?

On reddit ? Sure, nobody plays anything else.
In the real world ? Probably all of PbtA combined reaches about 10% of D&D's player base.

LOL. It wouldn't get anywhere near that. Maybe 0.1%.

Quote from: VisionStorm on May 22, 2023, 04:50:33 PM


I'm also firmly on the camp that "min-maxing"—to the degree that that is arguably a "bad" thing—is 100% on the system and not the player. If someone else making an optimized character really bothers you that much there's either something wrong with you, or the system must be so broken it needs to be fixed. And no, the "problem" player adjusting their build decisions to fit someone else's undefined and completely subjective and arbitrary opinion about what is or is not acceptable as a character build isn't a solution.

Well, I would certainly agree that the problem is mainly with the system. Again, that's part of Bad Design.
But of course, there's a certain kind of player who will strongly favor point-buy, and utterly despise games that don't let them min-max, because maximizing their character through cheap tricks from meticulous reading and gaming of the system is part of the key of their perception of success, which is mainly based on making characters that are just better than anyone else's.

The bad design of the min-maxing point-buy system will allow those players to behave badly, where a well designed system will limit their ability to do so.

I'm on the Dragonbane discord - so bunch of Swedes & Americans, not D&D, not OSR, not Storygame. When people talk about what to adapt for Dragonbane, or what non-Free League campaigns they're running with Dragonbane, people (not me!) bring up stuff like Stonehell and Barrowmaze all the time, along with a few 5e 3pp things like Dungeons of Drakkenheim. No WoTC 5e, no Storygame stuff of course - the closest to that would be Forbidden Lands stuff from FL. Given that Dragonbane isn't D&D-based at all, never mind OSR, I'm very struck by the reach of the OSR into gaming as it's actually played.

Quote from: RPGPundit on May 27, 2023, 02:20:38 AM

Well this is just fundamentally wrong. Look at details on social media; both OSR and Storygamers brag about buying tons of games; but then look at the ones playing it: you'll see that most of the people who buy or talk about Storygames don't ever actually brag about playing it, and the minority who do appear to have mostly one-shots.
On the other hand, the OSR is full of accounts of people playing games, and of playing very long-term campaigns.

Well, to be fair to the Storygames, you aren't wrong, but most Storygames aren't designed for long-term play.  Because the designer has a very narrow view of what the game should be about, and then makes the game ruthlessly pursue that to the exclusion of all else.  Which means if you really like that X, whatever it is, then you can have some fun in a few short games with it.  The problem is that most people don't like X that much relative to all the other things they could be doing.  I like broccoli.  I don't want to eat it exclusively for days on end. 

Which means that the design issue is less about the craft of putting the game together than the design judgment of what the game should be doing.

It's also in no way an accident that Burning Wheel is the most traditional of the most known story games and also one suitable to at least mid-term play.  It's pretty ruthless about its core focus, but then it piles layers and layers of stuff on it that at least resembles a traditional game.  I may have broccoli every session, but darn it, it will at least be cooked in a bunch of different ways that are appealing.  It's only later when you think, "broccoli with teriyaki sauce is great, but it's still broccoli," that it wears thin.

Quote from: Mr. Ordinary, Esq. on May 26, 2023, 11:09:57 PM
From your experience with Savage Worlds, what exactly constitutes an interesting character, or evena well rounded one? Might help me narrow down where I'm headed in this debate.

I like that card trick, good way to focus on the character concept when using a point buy system.

Generally, the best trait of Savage Worlds is that character creation is so fast and easy you don't need the book for most of it. I know when I was actively playing it I could draft a Novice character without consulting the book except for Edges, Hindrances, and Equipment.

That said, I think the trick to get a good Savage Worlds character is to start with a Major Hindrance. It forces you to start with what your character is bad at, which makes the contrast of what your character is good at (and brings to the party) and how your character should roleplay obvious all at once. Savage Worlds does have some character creation flaws--it can produce vanilla characters if you aren't already experienced at roleplay--but for being so lightweight, it's hard not to forgive the faults.

Quote from: RPGPundit on May 27, 2023, 02:20:38 AM

Quote from: Fheredin on May 22, 2023, 02:19:03 PM
I hate to be blunt, but OSR is barely played more than Forge games relative to D&D.

Well this is just fundamentally wrong. Look at details on social media; both OSR and Storygamers brag about buying tons of games; but then look at the ones playing it: you'll see that most of the people who buy or talk about Storygames don't ever actually brag about playing it, and the minority who do appear to have mostly one-shots.
On the other hand, the OSR is full of accounts of people playing games, and of playing very long-term campaigns.

Do you have any earthly idea how many robots are on these platforms? OSR is probably one of the RPG market's larger side niches--statistics are really hard to come by, but I would eyeball it as no smaller than Call of C'thulu and all its derivatives--but that still means its pretty small compared to WotC D&D. OSR could be several times larger than Forge games and it would still have roughly the same position compared to D&D (and I think that's being generous for Forge games; OSR sees active development and most Forge games have either gone their own way or haven't seen development in a decade.)

The internet by its nature favors the active participants, and active participants like obscure stuff almost as much as they like memes. You have to balance your interpretation of the data with this in mind.

Quote from: Lunamancer on May 26, 2023, 09:27:43 PM
*snip totally not nitpicky, sentence by sentence break down reply of my post*

Whatever you need to tell yourself, dude. You're a nitpicking imbecile literally arguing about terminology and inventing deeper meanings to people's choice of terms that are completely immaterial to whatever is being said. Then making definitive statements about things while denying that you're making them.

WHO GIVES A FUCK if I used the expression "IMO"? Seriously! Adding the online acronym "IMO" to a statement means next to nothing. I've seen people argue that it's redundant to do so, but here you feel the need to bring it up, then when I accuse you of nitpicking and mention ANOTHER word ("hurdle") as an example of nitpicking you have to go bring up "IMO" again like you're obsessed with it.

But somehow I'm the one responsible for it and you're not really "nitpicking", you're just helpfully policing people's use of terms and making an issue about them, like it means anything. Just like Attributes+Skills is not really a "hurdle" for you, it's just an extra step that supposedly brings nothing as a payoff for the effort (totally not a fact statement), which is totally not something that could be described as an obstacle or difficulty.

hur·dle
noun
1.
one of a series of upright frames over which athletes in a race must jump.
"a hurdle race"
2.
an obstacle or difficulty.
"there are many hurdles to overcome"

Quote from: VisionStorm on May 27, 2023, 12:34:56 PM

Quote from: Lunamancer on May 26, 2023, 09:27:43 PM
*snip totally not nitpicky, sentence by sentence break down reply of my post*

(https://media1.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExZDMxNzFhMzBjOGE5ZGNlNzljODMzMDFiM2RlOTczMDBlZWEzMDQzNSZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZzX2dpZklkJmN0PWc/l41YdDNnasCOd2TWo/giphy.gif)

hur·dle
noun
1.
one of a series of upright frames over which athletes in a race must jump.
"a hurdle race"
2.
an obstacle or difficulty.
"there are many hurdles to overcome"

I have a degree in mathematics. A simple addition of two numbers is in no way, on no planet, and in no twisted meaning of any of these words, an obstacle nor a difficulty nor a hurdle for me. You were objectively wrong in your claim that "hurdle" has anything to do with what I said. And that after I informed you of this, that you insist on continuing to use it. Your insistence on putting that word in my mouth makes you disrespectful and liar. So, sorry, but you don't get to claim you were taking a position of humility where you admit you're wrong, because you clearly can't. And you don't get to accuse me of being unfair to you in any way at all, nitpicking or otherwise, when you deliberately and dishonestly substitute words with different meanings.

 8) Indeed, playability matters. It is like that old saw, "the proof of the pudding is in the tasting." Results, not theory, matters.

My favorite personal testament to this is the AD&D 2e Punching & Wrestling Table. It. just. works. AND it's fun! :D And it's concise enough to copy pasta onto a GM Screen!  ;D All the theory crafting, manifestoes, spreadsheets, & matrices fell supine, impotent before Actual Play and Desirable Results.

And it did it all in a dense table with a few paragraphs on how to use it. At this point I find it my gold standard of sublime elegance for a very murky and troubled RPG design space of hand-to-hand, (typically) non-lethal combat. People read it and laughed, yet when I ask, "But have you try it?" their oft refrain is "No. But it shouldn't work."

Well experience is a better teacher. Speak less, try more, & pay attention to the results.  8)

Quote from: RPGPundit on May 27, 2023, 02:20:38 AM

Quote from: Fheredin on May 22, 2023, 02:19:03 PM
I hate to be blunt, but OSR is barely played more than Forge games relative to D&D.

Well this is just fundamentally wrong. Look at details on social media; both OSR and Storygamers brag about buying tons of games; but then look at the ones playing it: you'll see that most of the people who buy or talk about Storygames don't ever actually brag about playing it, and the minority who do appear to have mostly one-shots.
On the other hand, the OSR is full of accounts of people playing games, and of playing very long-term campaigns.

While I find this point moot, various sources suggest that forge-inspired games (like PbtA and Blades in the Dark) are getting played as much or more than OSR games. Examples:

1. https://www.dramadice.com/blog/the-most-played-tabletop-rpgs-in-2021/ (https://www.dramadice.com/blog/the-most-played-tabletop-rpgs-in-2021/)

Notice there aren't OSR games in there. 


2. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/top_100.php (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/top_100.php)

Notice the "forgites" Blades in the Dark and Avatar: the Last Airbender on the list. This one has OSR products too.


TL;DR: Fheredin's point stands. Bringing the argument of popularity as a qualifier is moot for anything besides official D&D. Like Dodgeball players bragging their sport is more played worldwide than Wife Carrying (yes, it's a sport (https://sportsmonkie.com/least-popular-sports/)).

Also, I find it a little weird seeing the Forge and it's offspring criticized when talking about playability, which I agree is the most important atribute in a RPG (and what makes me appreciate OSR too). See, Forgite games always prioritized playability first and foremost: Fiasco, Sorcerer, My Life with Master, Dogs in the Vineyard, The Mountain Witch, Don't Rest Your Head, Lady Blackbird, Apocalypse World, Blades in the Dark, etc, etc. are as much about playability as any OSR game.

Where I DO see the criticism valid is for things like Vampire the Masquerade or those high concept 90s games that presented super cool premises but had everybody scratching their heads saying "okay but... what do I do with this?" Like Everway, Continuum, Unknown Armies, Gurps Transhuman Space, Noumenon, etc.

Quote from: Lunamancer on May 27, 2023, 01:52:18 PM

Quote from: VisionStorm on May 27, 2023, 12:34:56 PM

Quote from: Lunamancer on May 26, 2023, 09:27:43 PM
*snip totally not nitpicky, sentence by sentence break down reply of my post*

(https://media1.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExZDMxNzFhMzBjOGE5ZGNlNzljODMzMDFiM2RlOTczMDBlZWEzMDQzNSZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZzX2dpZklkJmN0PWc/l41YdDNnasCOd2TWo/giphy.gif)

hur·dle
noun
1.
one of a series of upright frames over which athletes in a race must jump.
"a hurdle race"
2.
an obstacle or difficulty.
"there are many hurdles to overcome"

I have a degree in mathematics. A simple addition of two numbers is in no way, on no planet, and in no twisted meaning of any of these words, an obstacle nor a difficulty nor a hurdle for me. You were objectively wrong in your claim that "hurdle" has anything to do with what I said. And that after I informed you of this, that you insist on continuing to use it. Your insistence on putting that word in my mouth makes you disrespectful and liar. So, sorry, but you don't get to claim you were taking a position of humility where you admit you're wrong, because you clearly can't. And you don't get to accuse me of being unfair to you in any way at all, nitpicking or otherwise, when you deliberately and dishonestly substitute words with different meanings.

You're ability to overcome an obstacle is IRRELEVANT to whether or not that thing is an obstacle, you goddamn fucking imbecile. You're such a moronic fucking retard you don't even know you're making up your own definition for words and attaching significance to other people's posts that isn't there. But somehow it's other people who're putting words in your mouth and "lying". What a goddamn walking argument for eugenics.

Quote from: RPGPundit on May 27, 2023, 02:26:04 AM
But of course, there's a certain kind of player who will strongly favor point-buy, and utterly despise games that don't let them min-max, because maximizing their character through cheap tricks from meticulous reading and gaming of the system is part of the key of their perception of success, which is mainly based on making characters that are just better than anyone else's.

A few comments.

1) Min-maxers can indeed be annoying, but no more annoying that low-interest players. At least min-maxers have to learn the rules well in order to min-max. How many people prefer making characters with rolls and limited choices, because they just turn up and roll dice when prodded with a stick?


2) There's a distinct kind of player that enjoys points build that are not min-maxers, although they share attributes of them. I'd call these people something like fine tuners, or efficiency nerds. I am such a person myself.

My joy is learning rule systems and then building characters that allow me to represent my character concept to an absolute perfect degree. If I'm playing a cool spy, I'm the coolest fucking spy that ever spied something. If I'm a bare knuckle fighter, some knuckles are getting fought.

The differences between this and a min-maxer is intention and restraint.

The intent of a Min-maxer is to "win" the game, at any cost. They don't give a shit what they play as, as long as it's broken. they'll crank out a cookie cutter build from a website, that thousands have already made, just to "win." My intent is to create the most successful emulation of my concept as mechanically possible. This includes intentional flaws.

Likewise min-maxers have no restraint. If there's  "win" button, they will push it till it breaks. They don't care about theme, group harmony, or GM sanity. Whereas if I, say, create the world's strongest man, and see a way I could cheaply make him the world's strongest man who can take 17 actions per round, I will not take it. To do so would be thematically incorrect AND would be so broken that the GM will drop the game or kill me off. Restraint.

Quote from: RPGPundit on May 27, 2023, 02:26:04 AM
The bad design of the min-maxing point-buy system will allow those players to behave badly, where a well designed system will limit their ability to do so.

This seems a little authoritarian, and condescending. As I said earlier, at least a min-maxer cares enough to min-max, even if at the extremes they can be an annoyance. Rather than tie their hands with locked-down systems, I prefer to only ban the outright broken rules, then let them run wild as long as there's an actual character attached to the stats.

Worse case scenario I can just eject a truly toxic player. Why limit the creative/engaged of character building complexity?

Quote from: Itachi on May 28, 2023, 12:03:21 PM
Also, I find it a little weird seeing the Forge and it's offspring criticized when talking about playability, which I agree is the most important atribute in a RPG (and what makes me appreciate OSR too). See, Forgite games always prioritized playability first and foremost: Fiasco, Sorcerer, My Life with Master, Dogs in the Vineyard, The Mountain Witch, Don't Rest Your Head, Lady Blackbird, Apocalypse World, Blades in the Dark, etc, etc. are as much about playability as any OSR game.

Where I DO see the criticism valid is for things like Vampire the Masquerade or those high concept 90s games that presented super cool premises but had everybody scratching their heads saying "okay but... what do I do with this?" Like Everway, Continuum, Unknown Armies, Gurps Transhuman Space, Noumenon, etc.

I suspect this is mostly politics speaking. To say that Forge designers are strongly associated with Wokeness and politically excused misanthropy is an understatement.

All I really want is freedom. The freedom to criticize the Forge Alumni (and the majority of the industry's convention circuit) for selling their creative souls in exchange for influence and position. The freedom to use mechanics which aren't based off D20. The freedom to make a game which doesn't use D&D gameplay loops. The freedom to talk in abstract patterns and long trends of the market. The freedom to make a game which doesn't work just for the sake of seeing what will happen. Apparently this combination makes me some sort of ronin who doesn't belong anywhere.

The only part of "good design" i would cite offhand from dnd is the treasure-monster treasure type-random dungeon/treasure generation sequence, which is a game for me on the gm side of the screen as well, and very engaging in itself. The marvel FASERIP game's concept of power or tier ranking in opposed roll interaction is a point of good design i would cite. Pendragon is a good design in another aspect, that being pendragon knows what it wants to do and laser focuses on that alone. Some would call that bad design because it leaves you floundering if you try to go off the rails but i like having everything outside of knights up to me to define with knights as the standard of comparison.

I consider D6 system to be the best designed game ever in that it does what it should consistently and quickly, its failing is lack of detail/flavor, which if you filled in, would preclude the ruleset from adapting as readily to any genre.

A game that requires referencing a dvd is poor design, i had owned at one point some dinky potc game where you race pirate ships and have to reference the dvd to complete minigame challenges after each move...novel at first but tiresome very quickly and the whole thing would have been better if you replaced the dvd with a deck of cards or a random table.

Quote from: Itachi on May 28, 2023, 11:43:56 AM

Quote from: RPGPundit on May 27, 2023, 02:20:38 AM

Quote from: Fheredin on May 22, 2023, 02:19:03 PM
I hate to be blunt, but OSR is barely played more than Forge games relative to D&D.

Well this is just fundamentally wrong. Look at details on social media; both OSR and Storygamers brag about buying tons of games; but then look at the ones playing it: you'll see that most of the people who buy or talk about Storygames don't ever actually brag about playing it, and the minority who do appear to have mostly one-shots.
On the other hand, the OSR is full of accounts of people playing games, and of playing very long-term campaigns.

While I find this point moot, various sources suggest that forge-inspired games (like PbtA and Blades in the Dark) are getting played as much or more than OSR games. Examples:

1. https://www.dramadice.com/blog/the-most-played-tabletop-rpgs-in-2021/ (https://www.dramadice.com/blog/the-most-played-tabletop-rpgs-in-2021/)

Notice there aren't OSR games in there. 


2. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/top_100.php (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/top_100.php)

Notice the "forgites" Blades in the Dark and Avatar: the Last Airbender on the list. This one has OSR products too.


TL;DR: Fheredin's point stands. Bringing the argument of popularity as a qualifier is moot for anything besides official D&D. Like Dodgeball players bragging their sport is more played worldwide than Wife Carrying (yes, it's a sport (https://sportsmonkie.com/least-popular-sports/)).

Also notice the 0.82% of PbtA in the "% of played games" table ---> nobody plays that.
And also notice the "any edition" between brackets ----> nobody plays that in any form.

The RPG market is a bit unusual, it's largely composed by experienced people with a very keen sense of what works and what doesn't.
When you have games like Masks that are acclaimed as masterpieces by the PbtA crowd (for the unknowing: Masks is a "superhero" game where no superpower is ever described in the whole rulebook and that doesn't have rules to create superpowers), the logical result is to start doubting the actual competence of the PbtA crowd and the real value of PbtA games as a whole.....and once you have actual data to pick from, the doubt vanishes: PbtA is pure shit, and vastly recognized as that by the hobby.

..and yet PbtA influenced lots of authors and games since it's creation, from Year Zero engine to OSR and even 5E (see "success with a cost" in the DMG). One thinks if a design is so shit it should be ignored, and not inspiring other games.  ::)

Anyway, that's besides the point. Love or hate PbtA and OSR, both are equally insignifcant in face of official D&D. Ergo, your argument of popularity is moot.

Quote from: Fheredin on May 28, 2023, 02:55:58 PM

Quote from: Itachi on May 28, 2023, 12:03:21 PM
Also, I find it a little weird seeing the Forge and it's offspring criticized when talking about playability, which I agree is the most important atribute in a RPG (and what makes me appreciate OSR too). See, Forgite games always prioritized playability first and foremost: Fiasco, Sorcerer, My Life with Master, Dogs in the Vineyard, The Mountain Witch, Don't Rest Your Head, Lady Blackbird, Apocalypse World, Blades in the Dark, etc, etc. are as much about playability as any OSR game.

Where I DO see the criticism valid is for things like Vampire the Masquerade or those high concept 90s games that presented super cool premises but had everybody scratching their heads saying "okay but... what do I do with this?" Like Everway, Continuum, Unknown Armies, Gurps Transhuman Space, Noumenon, etc.

I suspect this is mostly politics speaking. To say that Forge designers are strongly associated with Wokeness and politically excused misanthropy is an understatement.

Yeah, makes sense.

QuoteAll I really want is freedom. The freedom to criticize the Forge Alumni (and the majority of the industry's convention circuit) for selling their creative souls in exchange for influence and position. The freedom to use mechanics which aren't based off D20. The freedom to make a game which doesn't use D&D gameplay loops. The freedom to talk in abstract patterns and long trends of the market. The freedom to make a game which doesn't work just for the sake of seeing what will happen. Apparently this combination makes me some sort of ronin who doesn't belong anywhere.

Such a clear and unbiased vision about the hobby, devoid of demagogy or one-true-wayisms, is a rare thing in these virtual halls. Hats off to you good sir. You're not a ronin, but a wise old man at the mountain.

If we're talking popularity, wasn't V:TM the second most played game in the world at one point? I don't know if the stats still exist, but it certainly seemed like it in the early 00s.

Quote from: Itachi on May 29, 2023, 12:31:13 PM
..and yet PbtA influenced lots of authors and games since it's creation, from Year Zero engine to OSR and even 5E (see "success with a cost" in the DMG). One thinks if a design is so shit it should be ignored, and not inspiring other games.  ::)

The defining factor of PbtA, it's statistically unsound model of "failure is effectively impossible and random consequences happen each and every time you try to do something" has not been adopted by anyone who knows how game design works.

Quote from: Itachi on May 29, 2023, 12:31:13 PM
Anyway, that's besides the point. Love or hate PbtA and OSR, both are equally insignifcant in face of official D&D. Ergo, your argument of popularity is moot.

Still shit, however you look at it.
From basic premise to execution, PbtA is only good as a negative example: look at it and do the opposite, then quite probably you'll have something good.

I'm not a fan of PbtA games, but they do come up pretty frequently at another board I visit, and many people there (#NotAll) seem to like them and play them regularly (others still hate them, but still). My general impression of PbtA is that most of the criticism about them in this forum comes down to them being caught up as part of the feud many people here seem to have with the Forge. Which makes that criticism exaggerated due to that bias. But I'm not sure that they're as "unplayed" as some here like to claim.

I dislike the Forge's mentality and its legacy, but mostly because I think most of the ideas spawned there by Ron Edwards and others were fairly harmful to the hobby and stink of elitism. Nevertheless, I don't dislike PbtA because of the Forge, I dislike PbtA games because they're so narrowly focused on emulating very narrow aspects of a genre (and often just the stereotypical aspects of the genre). This focus is often the reason why people enjoy these games - they do pretty much one thing. I'm not sure how you can really sustain a campaign of play centered on stereotypical genre play. I much prefer game systems which are less prescriptive about exactly how you engage with them as well (I dislike playbooks). Instead, I prefer descriptive mechanics that describe resolution of actions that the players take rather than relying on a playbook.

I dislike most story games for the same reason. They're essentially only good for one-shots with an extremely narrow focus. Why learn a system just to play a single game that lasts a couple hours and has no real hope of anything longer-term? In general, I wish the RPG hobby would produce less half-finished games (where there is pretty much just a dice mechanic and a bunch of hand-waiving and "vibes" for the rest of the game). I just have no use for that, I could deliver the same thing without paying money.

Edit: removing stuff intended for another thread.

Quote from: Itachi on May 29, 2023, 12:34:12 PM

Quote from: Fheredin on May 28, 2023, 02:55:58 PM

Quote from: Itachi on May 28, 2023, 12:03:21 PM
Also, I find it a little weird seeing the Forge and it's offspring criticized when talking about playability, which I agree is the most important atribute in a RPG (and what makes me appreciate OSR too). See, Forgite games always prioritized playability first and foremost: Fiasco, Sorcerer, My Life with Master, Dogs in the Vineyard, The Mountain Witch, Don't Rest Your Head, Lady Blackbird, Apocalypse World, Blades in the Dark, etc, etc. are as much about playability as any OSR game.

Where I DO see the criticism valid is for things like Vampire the Masquerade or those high concept 90s games that presented super cool premises but had everybody scratching their heads saying "okay but... what do I do with this?" Like Everway, Continuum, Unknown Armies, Gurps Transhuman Space, Noumenon, etc.

I suspect this is mostly politics speaking. To say that Forge designers are strongly associated with Wokeness and politically excused misanthropy is an understatement.

Yeah, makes sense.

QuoteAll I really want is freedom. The freedom to criticize the Forge Alumni (and the majority of the industry's convention circuit) for selling their creative souls in exchange for influence and position. The freedom to use mechanics which aren't based off D20. The freedom to make a game which doesn't use D&D gameplay loops. The freedom to talk in abstract patterns and long trends of the market. The freedom to make a game which doesn't work just for the sake of seeing what will happen. Apparently this combination makes me some sort of ronin who doesn't belong anywhere.

Such a clear and unbiased vision about the hobby, devoid of demagogy or one-true-wayisms, is a rare thing in these virtual halls. Hats off to you good sir. You're not a ronin, but a wise old man at the mountain.

Thank you. I don't suppose that would change anything, though; the trip down the mountain will be necessary soon, and will likely be as short as it will be bloody.

Quote from: Old Aegidius on May 29, 2023, 05:34:14 PM
I dislike the Forge's mentality and its legacy, but mostly because I think most of the ideas spawned there by Ron Edwards and others were fairly harmful to the hobby and stink of elitism. Nevertheless, I don't dislike PbtA because of the Forge, I dislike PbtA games because they're so narrowly focused on emulating very narrow aspects of a genre (and often just the stereotypical aspects of the genre). This focus is often the reason why people enjoy these games - they do pretty much one thing. I'm not sure how you can really sustain a campaign of play centered on stereotypical genre play. I much prefer game systems which are less prescriptive about exactly how you engage with them as well (I dislike playbooks). Instead, I prefer descriptive mechanics that describe resolution of actions that the players take rather than relying on a playbook.

This is something that the average forgie/storygamer doesn't seem to understand: writing a story and playing a game are two different things and have vastly different goals to achieve.
A lot (nearly all, actually) of the design principles used in PbtA are quite good.....if you're a writer and you have to come out with a script or a novel. They're simply wrong when applied to RPGs, for the very simple reason that RPGs are not novels, are not a passive medium, and the "story" is an emergent feature of the act of gaming and not the goal of the game itself.
This is also the main reason that leads me to refuse to call PbtA and derivatives "RPGs": they are storygames, something superficially similar to RPGs but too different in scope, goal and underlying principles to be considered part of the same category.

Quote from: Old Aegidius on May 29, 2023, 05:34:14 PMI don't dislike PbtA because of the Forge, I dislike PbtA games because they're so narrowly focused on emulating very narrow aspects of a genre

Fair. Most PbtA and Forge descendants overall are designed for one-shots or quick campaigns. I understand this can be off-putting for some groups.

Quote(and often just the stereotypical aspects of the genre).

Hmm.. not always true. See, some games don't even pertain to a traditional genre, being explorations of unique premises and situations (like Dogs in the Vineyard), while those that do try to emulate traditional genres usually bring enough interchangeable parts to let the group to give their own spin on things (like the Psychic Maelstrom and custom moves in Apocalypse World). But yeah, some stick to their genres to a T.

QuoteThis focus is often the reason why people enjoy these games - they do pretty much one thing.

That's me.  :D

QuoteI dislike most story games for the same reason. They're essentially only good for one-shots with an extremely narrow focus. Why learn a system just to play a single game that lasts a couple hours and has no real hope of anything longer-term?

Speaking only for me and my group(s): we play these "specialized" games for the way they gamify their genres/premises, usually 1) guaranteeing we'll be exploring their main themes, and 2) providing tailor-made, thematic rules that are fun to engage and not usually seen in more traditional games.   

That said, we also play more traditional TTRPGs. Though to be fair, we prefer the more "specialized" among those too (like Beyond the Wall, for eg).

Quote from: Fheredin on May 26, 2023, 07:49:27 PM
Gypsy is not a common slur, and there are dozens of channels on that Discord, so even if none of the material was planted, we're still talking about a "troll" spending several hours of work searching for usable material. If it was planted (and I suspect the "Stormforge is Nazi" was) then we are talking about several months of preparation.

This is not the work of a garden variety troll.

What if several months from now there's this big kerfuffle that this forum is wrapped up in. Then someone looks back and finds this:

Quote from: VisionStorm on May 25, 2023, 09:35:39 PM
What a goddamn walking argument for eugenics.

Which of course nobody is going to take seriously right now given the level of clownishness in the exchange from which this comment emerged.

Quote from: VisionStorm on May 25, 2023, 09:35:39 PM

Quote from: Lunamancer on May 25, 2023, 06:44:49 PM

Quote from: VisionStorm on May 25, 2023, 03:04:55 PM
TBH, I can't relate cuz I don't think that adding Attribute and Skill values together is such a hurdle,

Hurdle is your word, not mine. I would describe it as more of an extra step rather than a hurdle. And I don't mind taking extra steps. I do it all the time. I just expect a return on it.

So it's not a "hurdle" (my word, not yours), but you wanna complain about it regardless, despite it being a nonissue

Quote from: VisionStorm on May 28, 2023, 12:28:19 PM

Quote from: Lunamancer on May 27, 2023, 01:52:18 PM

Quote from: VisionStorm on May 27, 2023, 12:34:56 PM
hur·dle
noun
1.
one of a series of upright frames over which athletes in a race must jump.
"a hurdle race"
2.
an obstacle or difficulty.
"there are many hurdles to overcome"

I have a degree in mathematics. A simple addition of two numbers is in no way, on no planet, and in no twisted meaning of any of these words, an obstacle nor a difficulty nor a hurdle for me. You were objectively wrong in your claim that "hurdle" has anything to do with what I said.

You're ability to overcome an obstacle is IRRELEVANT to whether or not that thing is an obstacle, you goddamn fucking imbecile. You're such a moronic fucking retard you don't even know you're making up your own definition for words and attaching significance to other people's posts that isn't there.

Right now, we're probably thinking garden variety troll. A ways down the road when something weird happens, this could end up looking like a pre-meditated plant.

Quote from: Vestragor on May 30, 2023, 08:06:53 AM

Quote from: Old Aegidius on May 29, 2023, 05:34:14 PM
I dislike the Forge's mentality and its legacy, but mostly because I think most of the ideas spawned there by Ron Edwards and others were fairly harmful to the hobby and stink of elitism. Nevertheless, I don't dislike PbtA because of the Forge, I dislike PbtA games because they're so narrowly focused on emulating very narrow aspects of a genre (and often just the stereotypical aspects of the genre). This focus is often the reason why people enjoy these games - they do pretty much one thing. I'm not sure how you can really sustain a campaign of play centered on stereotypical genre play. I much prefer game systems which are less prescriptive about exactly how you engage with them as well (I dislike playbooks). Instead, I prefer descriptive mechanics that describe resolution of actions that the players take rather than relying on a playbook.

This is something that the average forgie/storygamer doesn't seem to understand: writing a story and playing a game are two different things and have vastly different goals to achieve.
A lot (nearly all, actually) of the design principles used in PbtA are quite good.....if you're a writer and you have to come out with a script or a novel. They're simply wrong when applied to RPGs, for the very simple reason that RPGs are not novels, are not a passive medium, and the "story" is an emergent feature of the act of gaming and not the goal of the game itself.
This is also the main reason that leads me to refuse to call PbtA and derivatives "RPGs": they are storygames, something superficially similar to RPGs but too different in scope, goal and underlying principles to be considered part of the same category.

I agree and disagree. RPGs have a lot more passive play than you let on.

While there are a number of scenes where all the characters in a party contribute, that contribution is almost never equally spread. More to the point, it's more common for scenes and dialogues to only involve one PC and an NPC, or two PCs conversing with each other. And, of course, when one player starts to take a turn in combat, the other players wait their turn. I would say that at least 75% of the "game experience" your ordinary player gets playing an ordinary RPG is...listening to an audio drama. And if you're streaming, that's true 100% of the time for listeners.

Consequently, I don't think that conveying a story is a bad goal for an RPG to have. It's arguably the best goal for improving the game because even when you're playing, the bulk of play is passive and the story is the part which has the most potential for sharing after the session is over. Compromising the gameplay while you're actively playing is usually a bridge too far, but making the game's story better is not itself a bad goal.

I admire Vincent Baker for bringing an open source-like methodology to the RPG space, and I generally like the idea of prompting players to do specific worldbuilding tasks when given a cue. I can see flaws in both, but this was a very early implementation of either of these ideas. Some mistakes are to be expected. In this sense, I really like what Apocalypse World represents.

But every time I sit down with the book, I have an immediate and visceral reaction to the design choices of the system. Moves have always disrupted my immersion with how metagamey they can be, and character creation in practically all PbtA games is an exercise in turning fluff into a character. What's worse...I don't think it makes the game's story better. There's no real three act structure baked into the story unless the GM brings it, so really you're bringing everything which doesn't make a story tick.

While I like what the game represents, I despise the game itself for being far too fluffy, and I really believe that most PbtA games out there could be written by ChatGPT.

Quote from: Lunamancer on May 30, 2023, 06:27:07 PM

Quote from: Fheredin on May 26, 2023, 07:49:27 PM
Gypsy is not a common slur, and there are dozens of channels on that Discord, so even if none of the material was planted, we're still talking about a "troll" spending several hours of work searching for usable material. If it was planted (and I suspect the "Stormforge is Nazi" was) then we are talking about several months of preparation.

This is not the work of a garden variety troll.

What if several months from now there's this big kerfuffle that this forum is wrapped up in. Then someone looks back and finds this:

(snip for brevity)


Right now, we're probably thinking garden variety troll. A ways down the road when something weird happens, this could end up looking like a pre-meditated plant.

I interpret the above statement as classic internet edgelording, and you'd have to make a solid case it means otherwise. This group is very inured to controversy. Not so much with the Reddit plush toy people.

Quote from: Lunamancer on May 30, 2023, 06:27:07 PM

Quote from: Fheredin on May 26, 2023, 07:49:27 PM
Gypsy is not a common slur, and there are dozens of channels on that Discord, so even if none of the material was planted, we're still talking about a "troll" spending several hours of work searching for usable material. If it was planted (and I suspect the "Stormforge is Nazi" was) then we are talking about several months of preparation.

This is not the work of a garden variety troll.

What if several months from now there's this big kerfuffle that this forum is wrapped up in. Then someone looks back and finds this:

Quote from: VisionStorm on May 25, 2023, 09:35:39 PM
What a goddamn walking argument for eugenics.

Which of course nobody is going to take seriously right now given the level of clownishness in the exchange from which this comment emerged.

Quote from: VisionStorm on May 25, 2023, 09:35:39 PM

Quote from: Lunamancer on May 25, 2023, 06:44:49 PM

Quote from: VisionStorm on May 25, 2023, 03:04:55 PM
TBH, I can't relate cuz I don't think that adding Attribute and Skill values together is such a hurdle,

Hurdle is your word, not mine. I would describe it as more of an extra step rather than a hurdle. And I don't mind taking extra steps. I do it all the time. I just expect a return on it.

So it's not a "hurdle" (my word, not yours), but you wanna complain about it regardless, despite it being a nonissue

Quote from: VisionStorm on May 28, 2023, 12:28:19 PM

Quote from: Lunamancer on May 27, 2023, 01:52:18 PM

Quote from: VisionStorm on May 27, 2023, 12:34:56 PM
hur·dle
noun
1.
one of a series of upright frames over which athletes in a race must jump.
"a hurdle race"
2.
an obstacle or difficulty.
"there are many hurdles to overcome"

I have a degree in mathematics. A simple addition of two numbers is in no way, on no planet, and in no twisted meaning of any of these words, an obstacle nor a difficulty nor a hurdle for me. You were objectively wrong in your claim that "hurdle" has anything to do with what I said.

You're ability to overcome an obstacle is IRRELEVANT to whether or not that thing is an obstacle, you goddamn fucking imbecile. You're such a moronic fucking retard you don't even know you're making up your own definition for words and attaching significance to other people's posts that isn't there.

Right now, we're probably thinking garden variety troll. A ways down the road when something weird happens, this could end up looking like a pre-meditated plant.

My usage of the terms "IMO" and "hurdle" were all part of an elaborate plot to get you into an extended multiple post back and forward semantic argument (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_argument) (which are totally not nitpicking) to make a big deal about toss away terms that were completely beside the point. My work here is done, but my cover has been blown. Time to cook up a different strategy to troll these boards by using innocuous terminology in my posts.

Quote from: VisionStorm on May 30, 2023, 08:27:37 PM
My usage of the terms "IMO" and "hurdle" were all part of an elaborate plot to get you into an extended multiple post back and forward semantic argument (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_argument) (which are totally not nitpicking) to make a big deal about toss away terms that were completely beside the point. My work here is done, but my cover has been blown. Time to cook up a different strategy to troll these boards by using innocuous terminology in my posts.

I gave up back on page 3....you are much more dedicated to your craft, sir.

Although I will chime in a bit about all the Dungeonworld garbage...imagine thinking you're improving role playing games by making a narrativist version of D&D that is harder to play and comprehend. Those Forge clowns literally just cannot admit they could only do what people have done five seconds after D&D was released and simply reimplement it, they keep acting like they're visionaries.

To be honest, I don't hate story games.  They have their place.  When I was part of a regular group, if we did not have a full crew, a story game one shot or mini-arc was a perfect fit. 

If I had to pick out a single game design flaw, it would be trying to hide the numbers with fluff.  Fate, Fudge, and Marvel FASERIP are guilty of this.  I don't want to have to constantly look up tables or memorize wordlists when a simple numerical value will do.

Quote from: Itachi on May 28, 2023, 12:03:21 PM
Also, I find it a little weird seeing the Forge and it's offspring criticized when talking about playability, which I agree is the most important atribute in a RPG (and what makes me appreciate OSR too). See, Forgite games always prioritized playability first and foremost: Fiasco, Sorcerer, My Life with Master, Dogs in the Vineyard, The Mountain Witch, Don't Rest Your Head, Lady Blackbird, Apocalypse World, Blades in the Dark, etc, etc. are as much about playability as any OSR game.

Where I DO see the criticism valid is for things like Vampire the Masquerade or those high concept 90s games that presented super cool premises but had everybody scratching their heads saying "okay but... what do I do with this?" Like Everway, Continuum, Unknown Armies, Gurps Transhuman Space, Noumenon, etc.

I think there's a problem with how you're defining "playability" when every single game you listed in the second paragraph got more play and longer continued play than any of the games you posted in the first paragraph (with the possible exception of fiasco, which is really just a party game).

Quote from: Grognard GM on May 28, 2023, 02:02:09 PM

Quote from: RPGPundit on May 27, 2023, 02:26:04 AM
The bad design of the min-maxing point-buy system will allow those players to behave badly, where a well designed system will limit their ability to do so.

This seems a little authoritarian, and condescending. As I said earlier, at least a min-maxer cares enough to min-max, even if at the extremes they can be an annoyance. Rather than tie their hands with locked-down systems, I prefer to only ban the outright broken rules, then let them run wild as long as there's an actual character attached to the stats.

Worse case scenario I can just eject a truly toxic player. Why limit the creative/engaged of character building complexity?

This is a bit like saying "well, at least this corrupt politician cares enough about the procedures of government to bother figuring out how to steal money from it".

Also, lists of "products bought" or "products searched for on google" does not actually say anything about how much they are PLAYED.  I don't deny that some very badly designed games are bought in significant numbers, I said as much in the video. They just aren't played. Usually they aren't bought to be played; they're bought for some other reason (to be read, to put on a bookshelf, or more recently to virtue signal about).

Games played on roll20 is at least slightly more relevant, but that table was fairly biased in that it didn't even bother to categorize non-3.5 non-5e D&D. There's a chance that a huge part of the "uncategorized" and "other" are either older editions of D&D or OSR games.
Beyond that, there's a lot of people who DON'T play online, and some games, particularly old-school games, tend to be played more in person.

Quote from: RPGPundit on May 31, 2023, 02:55:50 AM

Quote from: Itachi on May 28, 2023, 12:03:21 PM
Also, I find it a little weird seeing the Forge and it's offspring criticized when talking about playability, which I agree is the most important atribute in a RPG (and what makes me appreciate OSR too). See, Forgite games always prioritized playability first and foremost: Fiasco, Sorcerer, My Life with Master, Dogs in the Vineyard, The Mountain Witch, Don't Rest Your Head, Lady Blackbird, Apocalypse World, Blades in the Dark, etc, etc. are as much about playability as any OSR game.

Where I DO see the criticism valid is for things like Vampire the Masquerade or those high concept 90s games that presented super cool premises but had everybody scratching their heads saying "okay but... what do I do with this?" Like Everway, Continuum, Unknown Armies, Gurps Transhuman Space, Noumenon, etc.

I think there's a problem with how you're defining "playability" when every single game you listed in the second paragraph got more play and longer continued play than any of the games you posted in the first paragraph (with the possible exception of fiasco, which is really just a party game).

Right?

Imagine gathering a bunch of names most people have barely heard of, and trying to use them to dunk on a game line that was the only one to ever outsell D&D, and had actual cultural impact in the 90's.

Absolute echo chamber thinking.

Quote from: RPGPundit on May 31, 2023, 02:58:13 AM

Quote from: Grognard GM on May 28, 2023, 02:02:09 PM

Quote from: RPGPundit on May 27, 2023, 02:26:04 AM
The bad design of the min-maxing point-buy system will allow those players to behave badly, where a well designed system will limit their ability to do so.

This seems a little authoritarian, and condescending. As I said earlier, at least a min-maxer cares enough to min-max, even if at the extremes they can be an annoyance. Rather than tie their hands with locked-down systems, I prefer to only ban the outright broken rules, then let them run wild as long as there's an actual character attached to the stats.

Worse case scenario I can just eject a truly toxic player. Why limit the creative/engaged of character building complexity?

This is a bit like saying "well, at least this corrupt politician cares enough about the procedures of government to bother figuring out how to steal money from it".

To continue that analogy, your solution is voting cards with one name on them, because you don't trust the electorate to vote 'correctly.'

Quote from: RPGPundit on May 31, 2023, 03:07:53 AM
Also, lists of "products bought" or "products searched for on google" does not actually say anything about how much they are PLAYED.  I don't deny that some very badly designed games are bought in significant numbers, I said as much in the video. They just aren't played. Usually they aren't bought to be played; they're bought for some other reason (to be read, to put on a bookshelf, or more recently to virtue signal about).

Games played on roll20 is at least slightly more relevant, but that table was fairly biased in that it didn't even bother to categorize non-3.5 non-5e D&D. There's a chance that a huge part of the "uncategorized" and "other" are either older editions of D&D or OSR games.
Beyond that, there's a lot of people who DON'T play online, and some games, particularly old-school games, tend to be played more in person.

Ignoring the fact that the argument that games are good because they're played is a form of the bandwagon fallacy, if you step outside the digital platforms (which are getting cited here because they occasionally provide numbers) then what do you really have? Surveys of what games are running at LGSes? At this point I have to conclude that this is pulling figures out of the air, so even if you are correct (and you might be) there's still no reason to concede the point.

I will grant that PbtA, Forged in the Dark, and Lasers and Feelings are super-popular games to design for and less popular to actually play. But right there we have a problem because while Apocalypse World was released in 2010 at the very tail end of the Forge, Lasers and Feelings is 2013 and Blades in the Dark is 2017. These games came years after the Forge, so I really have to ask how solid the assertion that they are Forge games really is. At this point, I think this is less about the substance of the matter and more an impotent family feud between the Carters and the Wakefields.

Quote from: Fheredin on May 31, 2023, 08:14:02 AM
Ignoring the fact that the argument that games are good because they're played is a form of the bandwagon fallacy

A game no one plays is a failure. Are you going to continue to be this fucking retarded?

Quote from: RPGPundit on May 31, 2023, 02:55:50 AM

Quote from: Itachi on May 28, 2023, 12:03:21 PM
Also, I find it a little weird seeing the Forge and it's offspring criticized when talking about playability, which I agree is the most important atribute in a RPG (and what makes me appreciate OSR too). See, Forgite games always prioritized playability first and foremost: Fiasco, Sorcerer, My Life with Master, Dogs in the Vineyard, The Mountain Witch, Don't Rest Your Head, Lady Blackbird, Apocalypse World, Blades in the Dark, etc, etc. are as much about playability as any OSR game.

Where I DO see the criticism valid is for things like Vampire the Masquerade or those high concept 90s games that presented super cool premises but had everybody scratching their heads saying "okay but... what do I do with this?" Like Everway, Continuum, Unknown Armies, Gurps Transhuman Space, Noumenon, etc.

I think there's a problem with how you're defining "playability" when every single game you listed in the second paragraph got more play and longer continued play than any of the games you posted in the first paragraph (with the possible exception of fiasco, which is really just a party game).

I think we're using different definitions of "playability" here. I'm meaning "a game that comes with a clear play loop out of the box, and enough rules substance to be played with by players, that coherently taps into whetever theme there is on the tin". I think it's what the Forge used to call gamism?

By this metric, OSR, Shadowrun and Dogs in the Vineyard are games with good playability, for instance, as they present a play structure with beginning-middle-end, and enough nuts & bolts to be replayable and be "played with"/allow different tactics/choices. While say, Nobilis 2e or Unknown Armies 2e are games full of cool ideas but that struggled to make them playable, either by not providing a clear structure with beginning-middle-end, or enough rules substance for players to "play with". Thus are examples with low playability. The 90s was full of the later.

Quote from: Brad on May 31, 2023, 11:37:12 AMA game no one plays is a failure. Are you going to continue to be this fucking retarded?

Statistically speaking, no game is played outside of official D&D.

Quote from: FheredinI will grant that PbtA, Forged in the Dark, and Lasers and Feelings are super-popular games to design for and less popular to actually play. But right there we have a problem because while Apocalypse World was released in 2010 at the very tail end of the Forge, Lasers and Feelings is 2013 and Blades in the Dark is 2017. These games came years after the Forge, so I really have to ask how solid the assertion that they are Forge games really is. At this point, I think this is less about the substance of the matter and more an impotent family feud between the Carters and the Wakefields.

Fair point. Even if I see a lot of the Forge DNA in those, I think a better label would be Forge-inspired or something like it.

Quote from: Fheredin on May 31, 2023, 08:14:02 AM

Quote from: RPGPundit on May 31, 2023, 03:07:53 AM
Also, lists of "products bought" or "products searched for on google" does not actually say anything about how much they are PLAYED.  I don't deny that some very badly designed games are bought in significant numbers, I said as much in the video. They just aren't played. Usually they aren't bought to be played; they're bought for some other reason (to be read, to put on a bookshelf, or more recently to virtue signal about).

Games played on roll20 is at least slightly more relevant, but that table was fairly biased in that it didn't even bother to categorize non-3.5 non-5e D&D. There's a chance that a huge part of the "uncategorized" and "other" are either older editions of D&D or OSR games.
Beyond that, there's a lot of people who DON'T play online, and some games, particularly old-school games, tend to be played more in person.

Ignoring the fact that the argument that games are good because they're played is a form of the bandwagon fallacy, if you step outside the digital platforms (which are getting cited here because they occasionally provide numbers) then what do you really have?

Well, for example, social media and forum posts of people talking about actually playing games. When any of the Forge games are mentioned at all, which is rare, they're talking about some one-shot or some micro-campaign of two or three sessions. Whereas the number of people talking about campaigns of D&D/OSR and other well designed RPGs that they've been running for six months or longer is vastly more.

Now, I suppose you could try to claim that somehow the woke forge/storygamer crowd are just more shy and retiring than normal gamers and so they play decades-long campaigns of the Shab Al-Hiri Roach but just feel way too bashful to ever mention it, but literally EVERYTHING about these narcissists, including how much they love to brag about their KS virtue-signal support and what games they think are so intellectually and morally superior to basically-nazi 5e D&D (to say nothing of Literally-hitler OSR books), as well as every other aspect of their lives including things that are deranged, degenerate or pathetic makes the "they're just shy" argument pretty ridiculous.

Anecdotal evidence, but from my experience I've only seen Stroygames (other then WoD) played at three Conventions despite multiple Conventions I've been to having tables or booths dedicated to them. Meanwhile I've never seen a story game besides one my friend ran played in a LGS, in all the online boards and groups I'm in only myself and two friends actively run games for them. And the only place where I see talk of open games are Roll20 and the Big Purple (in these cases, those games hardly last more then 1 session).

Meanwhile, OSR, 3.5, PF1, WoD, CoC/Delta Green and D&D all have an overwhelming presence of people playing and looking for players. Hell, I've found more Palladium Rifts games online then I have Storygames, that should say something when Palladium has more people playing it.

Something I did find interesting and why I haven't gone to any big events for a few years, the virus aside. There's normally more booths and sellers dedicated to Storygames then anything else at these conventions. And they tend to sell alot of product unless, they had the same product the previous year. In which case they are hard press to sell anything. On the other hand, other games tend to have fewer sales but will still sell the same products the following year.

It all feels like one big echo chamber of these Storygames masquerading as popular due to the cult mentality to support and buy anything associated with them. But then, no one goes off to play the games. You'd think that with how much product is sold (which is alot) you'd see a chunk of games played online looking for players, hundreds of decent sized streamers (1000+ viewers) playing them and the occasional game at a LGS. Instead, you might see a streamer and you might see a game online looking for players.

I just cannot believe that storygames are played out in the wild.

Quote from: Brad on May 31, 2023, 11:37:12 AM

Quote from: Fheredin on May 31, 2023, 08:14:02 AM
Ignoring the fact that the argument that games are good because they're played is a form of the bandwagon fallacy

A game no one plays is a failure. Are you going to continue to be this fucking retarded?

All games start with zero players.

Quote from: Itachi on May 31, 2023, 12:34:10 PM

Quote from: Brad on May 31, 2023, 11:37:12 AMA game no one plays is a failure. Are you going to continue to be this fucking retarded?

Statistically speaking, no game is played outside of official D&D.

Quote from: FheredinI will grant that PbtA, Forged in the Dark, and Lasers and Feelings are super-popular games to design for and less popular to actually play. But right there we have a problem because while Apocalypse World was released in 2010 at the very tail end of the Forge, Lasers and Feelings is 2013 and Blades in the Dark is 2017. These games came years after the Forge, so I really have to ask how solid the assertion that they are Forge games really is. At this point, I think this is less about the substance of the matter and more an impotent family feud between the Carters and the Wakefields.

Fair point. Even if I see a lot of the Forge DNA in those, I think a better label would be Forge-inspired or something like it.

There's definitely an ancestry in The Forge. Apocalypse World was basically a Forge game, Blades in the Dark is an admitted PbtA game, and Forged in the Dark games like Critical Role's Candela Obscura are made from Blades in the Dark. So there's a connection, but it's also three game generations removed from the present.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 01, 2023, 08:11:53 AM

Quote from: Brad on May 31, 2023, 11:37:12 AM

Quote from: Fheredin on May 31, 2023, 08:14:02 AM
Ignoring the fact that the argument that games are good because they're played is a form of the bandwagon fallacy

A game no one plays is a failure. Are you going to continue to be this fucking retarded?

All games start with zero players.

And good ones rise to more than single digits players once enough time passes; it helps immensely if the games allow for campaigns with durations measured in months of play time instead of hours.

@Kahoona:
World of Darkness and Chronicles of Darkness games, despite using the Storyteller System in various incarnations, are not storygames; they tend to be a lot more "character squabbling" friendly than, say, AD&D, but they're still RPGs.
True storygames arose from the Forge as a sort of reaction to the popularity of WoD because, according to good ol' Ronnie himself, playing Vampire and the like caused "brain damage".

Quote from: RPGPundit on June 01, 2023, 06:32:54 AM

Quote from: Fheredin on May 31, 2023, 08:14:02 AM

Quote from: RPGPundit on May 31, 2023, 03:07:53 AM
Also, lists of "products bought" or "products searched for on google" does not actually say anything about how much they are PLAYED.  I don't deny that some very badly designed games are bought in significant numbers, I said as much in the video. They just aren't played. Usually they aren't bought to be played; they're bought for some other reason (to be read, to put on a bookshelf, or more recently to virtue signal about).

Games played on roll20 is at least slightly more relevant, but that table was fairly biased in that it didn't even bother to categorize non-3.5 non-5e D&D. There's a chance that a huge part of the "uncategorized" and "other" are either older editions of D&D or OSR games.
Beyond that, there's a lot of people who DON'T play online, and some games, particularly old-school games, tend to be played more in person.

Ignoring the fact that the argument that games are good because they're played is a form of the bandwagon fallacy, if you step outside the digital platforms (which are getting cited here because they occasionally provide numbers) then what do you really have?

Well, for example, social media and forum posts of people talking about actually playing games. When any of the Forge games are mentioned at all, which is rare, they're talking about some one-shot or some micro-campaign of two or three sessions. Whereas the number of people talking about campaigns of D&D/OSR and other well designed RPGs that they've been running for six months or longer is vastly more.

Now, I suppose you could try to claim that somehow the woke forge/storygamer crowd are just more shy and retiring than normal gamers and so they play decades-long campaigns of the Shab Al-Hiri Roach but just feel way too bashful to ever mention it, but literally EVERYTHING about these narcissists, including how much they love to brag about their KS virtue-signal support and what games they think are so intellectually and morally superior to basically-nazi 5e D&D (to say nothing of Literally-hitler OSR books), as well as every other aspect of their lives including things that are deranged, degenerate or pathetic makes the "they're just shy" argument pretty ridiculous.

This is basically a self-fulfilling prophecy because your feed customizes to your interests, which are OSR, not story games. I can attest that there are plenty of discussions about these games, but I would also say that the discussion is rather lopsided towards design and away from actual play. You really don't need to understand game design particularly well to make a Forged in the Dark game, which leads to a glut of minimum effort products.

Even if you were able to confirm that OSR sees more online discussion, I do not grant that popularity equals good. All games start with zero players, therefore game quality exists in abstraction, before any players actually picked up the game. Appealing to popularity means you understand these factors exist, but rather than actually trying to understand them...you just take popularity on face value.

(https://media.tenor.com/_ckasC-0CAUAAAAC/golum-not-listening.gif)

Quote from: Kahoona on June 01, 2023, 07:37:11 AM
Something I did find interesting and why I haven't gone to any big events for a few years, the virus aside. There's normally more booths and sellers dedicated to Storygames then anything else at these conventions. And they tend to sell alot of product unless, they had the same product the previous year. In which case they are hard press to sell anything. On the other hand, other games tend to have fewer sales but will still sell the same products the following year.

This is normal, considering what they're selling. Would you buy twice the same campaign setting, especially after having played it already ?
Storygames are little more than ready to play single campaigns with integrated rules that allow for very little variance in play and effectively zero replay value.

Quote from: FheredinThis is basically a self-fulfilling prophecy because your feed customizes to your interests, which are OSR, not story games.

Yup, this. A quick look at the Reddit pages for say, Blades in the Dark and Dungeon World shows there's a buncha people playing those right now, same with pages of say, Black Hack or DCC. And if anecdotes are on the table, my 2 current groups play both PbtA and OSR equally, and only a small portion are active on internet forums (3 out of 15 people).

So, the difference is in the eye algorithm of the beholder. Receiving constant feeds about X game on your Youtube/Twitter page only says about your own interests.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 01, 2023, 08:26:54 AM
Even if you were able to confirm that OSR sees more online discussion, I do not grant that popularity equals good. All games start with zero players, therefore game quality exists in abstraction, before any players actually picked up the game. Appealing to popularity means you understand these factors exist, but rather than actually trying to understand them...you just take popularity on face value.

We are 17 years in from the release of OSRIC (2006), 21 years after the rise of the first major classic D&D communities (2002). Maybe you had a point back in 2013. But it is 2023 and the OSR i.e. classic D&D-related is not slowing down in terms of quantity or quality. It is easily equal to two or three mid-tier RPGs in terms of the niche it occupies in the hobby and industry.

Let me put on the devil's advocate hat for a minute or two...

In my practical experience, some story games have replayability.  For example, while someone may not use the same PbtA playbooks twice in a row, they can be customized enough to appear different when re-used by others.  Is that any different from classes in D&D?  Some games like Monsterhearts also have a stupendous number of fan made playbooks.  Uncharted Worlds had a strong classic Traveller vibe and has what it needs for campaign play.  Traveller itself offered fairly stagnant characters after generation so that is far from something new.

I also see a fair amount of focused indie stuff in the solo game community.  There is a tendency for lighter weight mechanics there.  Ironsworn and Starforged are PbtA powered and very popular for campaign play.  Me, Myself, and Die is a stellar example of that (season two used Ironsworn, https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDvunq75UfH_Z92nrYPUsTO_fTHnLTNaT) Of course, there are folks that also use solo tools for traditional games like D&D or Call of Cthulhu.

Having said all that.  I don't think the game system matters as much as is implied.  The demographics, the gamers themselves, have changed.  Even WotC has admitted that campaigns are much shorter than they used to be.  (The average being six sessions.)  So, I think the one-shot and mini-arc thing is actually a reflection of people's changes in desire, attention span, and commitment.  It could be argued that story games are a reaction to that and not a flaw at all.  Many traditional RPGs have great sprawling epic stories, but it takes years to get there and a lot story games offer a sweet and short path to get there.

Tangent time, have you all seen the Candela Obscura quick start?  It is specifically geared to one shots and mini-arcs.  It appears to be direct opposite to the intent of the yet to be seen Daggerheart.  Critical Role thinks there is room for both styles of game in the market.  From the biggest mistake in RPG design perspective, with will be interesting to see how these play out.

The CO rules appear to have a strong PbtA influence.  While it uses a dice pool, the results do the standard PbtA results thing; miss, hit with complications, hit, and hit with multiple successes/bonuses.   

Quote from: estar on June 01, 2023, 02:12:14 PM
We are 17 years in from the release of OSRIC (2006), 21 years after the rise of the first major classic D&D communities (2002). Maybe you had a point back in 2013. But it is 2023 and the OSR i.e. classic D&D-related is not slowing down in terms of quantity or quality. It is easily equal to two or three mid-tier RPGs in terms of the niche it occupies in the hobby and industry.

Yup.

In my opinion; the play of past editions of D&D has never been a bigger part of the hobby than it is now.

Part of it is due to the OGL, and part a reaction to various Wotzi shenanigan's over the years.

It doesn't hurt their cause that these system still basically do what it says on the tin when you actually sit down and play them.

Quote from: zircher on June 01, 2023, 02:45:43 PM
Tangent time, have you all seen the Candela Obscura quick start?  It is specifically geared to one shots and mini-arcs.  It appears to be direct opposite to the intent of the yet to be seen Daggerheart.  Critical Role thinks there is room for both styles of game in the market.  From the biggest mistake in RPG design perspective, with will be interesting to see how these play out.

The CO rules appear to have a strong PbtA influence. While it uses a dice pool, the results do the standard PbtA results thing; miss, hit with complications, hit, and hit with multiple successes/bonuses.   

CO is just a Blades in the Dark hack. Which itself is a PBtA derivative.

Quote from: Vestragor on June 01, 2023, 08:17:41 AM
@Kahoona:
World of Darkness and Chronicles of Darkness games, despite using the Storyteller System in various incarnations, are not storygames; they tend to be a lot more "character squabbling" friendly than, say, AD&D, but they're still RPGs.
True storygames arose from the Forge as a sort of reaction to the popularity of WoD because, according to good ol' Ronnie himself, playing Vampire and the like caused "brain damage".

Fair enough, and I do recall Ronnie saying such. I just got some reason had "story teller system" paired with Storygames. Probably because the name.

Quote from: Vestragor on June 01, 2023, 08:30:50 AM

Quote from: Kahoona on June 01, 2023, 07:37:11 AM
There's normally more booths and sellers dedicated to Storygames then anything else at these conventions. And they tend to sell alot of product unless, they had the same product the previous year. In which case they are hard press to sell anything. On the other hand, other games tend to have fewer sales but will still sell the same products the following year.

This is normal, considering what they're selling. Would you buy twice the same campaign setting, especially after having played it already ?
Storygames are little more than ready to play single campaigns with integrated rules that allow for very little variance in play and effectively zero replay value.

The people buying the same games the next year aren't the same people, and that's the point. The poster is seeing OSR games maintain a long tail of new players, while storygames flash in the pan and are gone.

Quote from: estar on June 01, 2023, 02:12:14 PM
But it is 2023 and the OSR i.e. classic D&D-related is not slowing down in terms of quantity or quality.

I'm not sure this is true. (EDIT: probably better to say I'm not sure if I agree with this, as phrased)  As far as quantity goes, maybe. There are lots of new OSR games published every year, but they're kind of all the same, and nobody seems to play the vast majority of them (similar to PBTA, come to think of it). As far as quality goes, the quality of OSR games is going to be pretty stable, because again they're all very similar. They haven't really gotten worse, but it's hard to argue they've gotten any better either.

Thing is, if you look at the the OSR games that any significant number of people seem to be playing: OSE, DCC and C&C, primarily, but you could potentially add in LOTFP and Hyperborea as well. All of them have been around since at least the early teens, sometimes earlier. Has any new OSR game released in the last five years made any kind of a splash in the RPG scene?

I'm genuinely asking, because the best example I can think of is Shadowdark. Firstly, it remains to be seen if anyone will be playing that game a year from now. Secondly, Shadowdark was mostly remarkable for being totally unremarkable. The people who like it say "it's great because it's got all the stuff we like from other games" and the people who don't say "it sucks because it has all the stuff we have in other games".

Quote from: zircher on June 01, 2023, 02:42:39 PM
Having said all that.  I don't think the game system matters as much as is implied.  The demographics, the gamers themselves, have changed.  Even WotC has admitted that campaigns are much shorter than they used to be.  (The average being six sessions.)  So, I think the one-shot and mini-arc thing is actually a reflection of people's changes in desire, attention span, and commitment.  It could be argued that story games are a reaction to that and not a flaw at all.  Many traditional RPGs have great sprawling epic stories, but it takes years to get there and a lot story games offer a sweet and short path to get there.

I think you're right, here. I was trying to think of what there has been in terms of general design trends in RPGs lately, and this might be the big one. There have been a huge number of products (especially games and settings) published in recent years which are designed for running one specific campaign, seemingly once. And at the same time, an apparent drop in the release of games setting out to be "the game you play for the next 30 years". This seems to be true both in the story-game and traditional RPG worlds. However, I'm not sure if this is purely the result of changing tastes, or just because that kind of project seems to be perfect Kickstarter-bait.

Quote from: estar on June 01, 2023, 02:12:14 PM

Quote from: Fheredin on June 01, 2023, 08:26:54 AM
Even if you were able to confirm that OSR sees more online discussion, I do not grant that popularity equals good. All games start with zero players, therefore game quality exists in abstraction, before any players actually picked up the game. Appealing to popularity means you understand these factors exist, but rather than actually trying to understand them...you just take popularity on face value.

We are 17 years in from the release of OSRIC (2006), 21 years after the rise of the first major classic D&D communities (2002). Maybe you had a point back in 2013. But it is 2023 and the OSR i.e. classic D&D-related is not slowing down in terms of quantity or quality. It is easily equal to two or three mid-tier RPGs in terms of the niche it occupies in the hobby and industry.

This really misses the point of discussing popularity in the first place. In the video at the start of the thread, Pundit equated popularity with quality. This has never really been about if OSR is popular, but if that popularity is enough that it does things like make storytelling games redundant or theorycrafting unnecessary.

I see a great deal of sectarianism here, and a strong desire to not give rivals an inch.

Ultimately, the root cause here is ignorance of broader game design theorycrafting. Popularity is a fallback metric for when you don't actually understand what virtues make a game good. I am willing to wager that if Pundit understood game design theory, he probably would have articulated his position using a different metric, because popularity is so broad as to practically be useless.

And bear in mind I mean broader game design theorycrafting and not just The Forge. Yeah, I've studied the material from The Forge, but I really consider myself more a student of video game and board game design. Video games especially are a multi-billion dollar industry, so the theorycrafting behind them tends to be razor-tight. If I had to describe my design approach, it would be to use board games as a parts bin to take game experiences and theory structures from video games and bring them into tabletop RPGs. Frankly, the theorycrafting and single-player experiences found in the cream of the crop of video games far eclipses the experience in tabletop RPGs. Why? Because video game design theories include haptic feedback. They call it game feel. And board games have a wide variety of mechanics and tool-sets designed to create a similar sense of haptic feedback in the tabletop game space.

How much use was the Forge, really? Well, it told me what not to do, which is itself a useful thing.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 01, 2023, 08:26:54 AM

Even if you were able to confirm that OSR sees more online discussion, I do not grant that popularity equals good. All games start with zero players, therefore game quality exists in abstraction, before any players actually picked up the game. Appealing to popularity means you understand these factors exist, but rather than actually trying to understand them...you just take popularity on face value.

That statement was so pretentious I got a film degree just for reading it...

First of all, people aren't disagreeing with you because they don't "understand" game design theory.  They are disagreeing with you because they think you are wrong (which you are).  Maybe you don't understand as much as you think you do.

As to popularity, popularity is directly nor inversely related to quality... but that doesn't mean they aren't related.  Some games are high quality and popular.  Some are low quality and popular.  Some are low quality and unpopular.  And some very few are high quality and unpopular.  These ratios are not proportional.  You will find that most high quality games are also pretty popular.  You will find a decent number of low quality games are also popular.  So positive popularity does not insure quality.  There are a handful of high quality games that, for some odd reasons, never become popular.  But these are rare, compared with the reverse.  And there are many low quality games that are unpopular.  In fact, this is probably the norm.

So seeing that a game is popular does not ensure it is high quality.  But seeing a game is unpopular is overwhelmingly indicative of low quality.  That's the domain inhabited by most storygames...

Quote from: ForgottenF on June 01, 2023, 08:26:04 PM
nobody seems to play the vast majority of them

That has not been my experience. What is true that there isn't a single dominant product line out there. There are some that are used more often than others but in the OSR kitbashing is the norm, not the exception. Most OSR gamers will focus on a single version and then leaven it with other material.

Over the 14 years as Bat in the Attic games I have sold 8,300+ units totaling over $60,000 in sales. As for free stuff, there isn't a day that goes by where at least a handful of people download Blackmarsh from DriveThruRPG. Resulting 15,000 unique downloads from 2010. I am not a top tier OSR publisher but solidly in the middle tier. And I am just one of dozens of authors out there who sell in the low hundreds clearing a grand or two every year. 

More importantly, is the feedback I get. About people who use my stuff in various ways for their campaigns. From talking to other OSR authors, I am not unique in this.

Individually, we are all minuscule publishers. But when you tally all of our efforts, and look on social media for actual play accounts, various conventions, the number becomes staggering. Hence I confidently can state that the OSR as a whole is equal to two or three mid-tier RPGs. With the advantage that without a central publisher we are not vulnerable to a company disappearing. And thanks to Wizards releasing the 5e SRD under Creative Commons not even the revocation of the OGL can kill the OSR. The same hack that was used to make retro-clones from the d20 SRD can be applied to the 5e SRD.

The fact this the OSR is centered on the classic editions is what keeps the whole thing from flying apart. They are what they are resulting OD&D, B/X, BECMI, AD&D 1e/2e providing common foundation

Quote from: ForgottenF on June 01, 2023, 08:26:04 PM
Thing is, if you look at the the OSR games that any significant number of people seem to be playing: OSE, DCC and C&C, primarily, but you could potentially add in LOTFP and Hyperborea as well. All of them have been around since at least the early teens, sometimes earlier. Has any new OSR game released in the last five years made any kind of a splash in the RPG scene?

Old School Essentials
Worlds without Number
Shadowdark
DM Yourself
Knave 1e
Black Hack 2e
Gardens of Ynn

Quote from: ForgottenF on June 01, 2023, 08:26:04 PM
I'm genuinely asking, because the best example I can think of is Shadowdark. Firstly, it remains to be seen if anyone will be playing that game a year from now. Secondly, Shadowdark was mostly remarkable for being totally unremarkable. The people who like it say "it's great because it's got all the stuff we like from other games" and the people who don't say "it sucks because it has all the stuff we have in other games".

Look at the metal level on DriveThru. Look at the OSR category on DriveThru. Do a kickstarter search and look at the high dollar OSR games. It is not hard to find through search. However don't rely on Enworld, RPG.net or any of the news sites to be reporting this. Like all mid tier RPGs, the OSR only gets mentioned once a great while.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 01, 2023, 09:40:36 PM
This really misses the point of discussing popularity in the first place. In the video at the start of the thread, Pundit equated popularity with quality. This has never really been about if OSR is popular, but if that popularity is enough that it does things like make storytelling games redundant or theorycrafting unnecessary.

I see a great deal of sectarianism here, and a strong desire to not give rivals an inch.

The Pundit don't agree on a lot but one of the things we both agree on that the industry has skewed the perception of hobbyists into thinking that RPG editions are like software upgrades. That the newer editions are "better" objectively than older editions.

Storytelling games has in large part rested on marketing themselves as the next generation of RPGs. Roleplaying 2.0. Parallel to that is the emergence of the idea that RPG design can be rationalized in a theory. And somehow older editions of D&D seem to wind up in the category of "stuff not to do" or held up as a "bad example" in these theories.

Then there is the fact that Storygames have a very different focus than OSR RPGs and supplements.

Finally, the OSR was the first niche of independent publishers to take advantage of print on demand and internet distribution. And after a time left the old independents who were wedded to print runs and traditional distribution in the dust. But to be clear by the late 2010s pretty much everybody was caught up in that regard. But having actively published, and promoted OSR I ran into more than a few ex-Forge publishers who couldn't believe the success the OSR was having circa 2010 to 2015.

What this add up to is a disinterest if not disdain for Storygames and RPG theories among folks involved in the OSR including myself. For my part I could not give two shits about helping hobbyists tell stories with my stuff. I focused on creating compelling settings and interesting situations for adventures. Compelling enough to make some folks go "Interesting, I wonder what would be like to visit there as a character looking for adventure.". After it all is said and done, they may have fond memories and use them to tell stories of their exploits.

None of what I do is covered by any theory I read since I first ran into them in the 1990s. The only maxims I follow is to make sure that I have what a referee needs to in order to describe or adjudicate something. And that the players have enough information to understand what the referee is describing so they can make an informed choice about what they want to do as their character.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 01, 2023, 09:40:36 PMUltimately, the root cause here is ignorance of broader game design theorycrafting. Popularity is a fallback metric for when you don't actually understand what virtues make a game good. I am willing to wager that if Pundit understood game design theory, he probably would have articulated his position using a different metric, because popularity is so broad as to practically be useless.

For a leisure activity like tabletop roleplaying, people don't play things they consider stupid. There is a reason why we have a sizable community of hobbyists playing certain RPGs especially when you combine it with time. Because those RPGs are interesting and fun.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 01, 2023, 09:40:36 PM
And bear in mind I mean broader game design theorycrafting and not just The Forge. Yeah, I've studied the material from The Forge, but I really consider myself more a student of video game and board game design. Video games especially are a multi-billion dollar industry, so the theorycrafting behind them tends to be razor-tight. If I had to describe my design approach, it would be to use board games as a parts bin to take game experiences and theory structures from video games and bring them into tabletop RPGs. Frankly, the theorycrafting and single-player experiences found in the cream of the crop of video games far eclipses the experience in tabletop RPGs. Why? Because video game design theories include haptic feedback. They call it game feel. And board games have a wide variety of mechanics and tool-sets designed to create a similar sense of haptic feedback in the tabletop game space.

What one has to do to make a good videogame and a good boardgame is not relevant to writing material to help people run tabletop roleplaying campaigns.

I will repeat this point again. The point of running a campaign is NOT to play a particular game. It about, players pretending to be characters having adventures in a setting. What makes it work is the human referee and the procedure I outlined in other posts I made. The rules are an aid to make it easier and more fun. But the rules are NOT the point. Until you realize this then RPG design will be for you frustrating.

Quote from: estar on June 02, 2023, 12:33:17 AM

Quote from: Fheredin on June 01, 2023, 09:40:36 PM
This really misses the point of discussing popularity in the first place. In the video at the start of the thread, Pundit equated popularity with quality. This has never really been about if OSR is popular, but if that popularity is enough that it does things like make storytelling games redundant or theorycrafting unnecessary.

I see a great deal of sectarianism here, and a strong desire to not give rivals an inch.

The Pundit don't agree on a lot but one of the things we both agree on that the industry has skewed the perception of hobbyists into thinking that RPG editions are like software upgrades. That the newer editions are "better" objectively than older editions.

Storytelling games has in large part rested on marketing themselves as the next generation of RPGs. Roleplaying 2.0. Parallel to that is the emergence of the idea that RPG design can be rationalized in a theory. And somehow older editions of D&D seem to wind up in the category of "stuff not to do" or held up as a "bad example" in these theories.

Then there is the fact that Storygames have a very different focus than OSR RPGs and supplements.

Finally, the OSR was the first niche of independent publishers to take advantage of print on demand and internet distribution. And after a time left the old independents who were wedded to print runs and traditional distribution in the dust. But to be clear by the late 2010s pretty much everybody was caught up in that regard. But having actively published, and promoted OSR I ran into more than a few ex-Forge publishers who couldn't believe the success the OSR was having circa 2010 to 2015.

What this add up to is a disinterest if not disdain for Storygames and RPG theories among folks involved in the OSR including myself. For my part I could not give two shits about helping hobbyists tell stories with my stuff. I focused on creating compelling settings and interesting situations for adventures. Compelling enough to make some folks go "Interesting, I wonder what would be like to visit there as a character looking for adventure.". After it all is said and done, they may have fond memories and use them to tell stories of their exploits.

None of what I do is covered by any theory I read since I first ran into them in the 1990s. The only maxims I follow is to make sure that I have what a referee needs to in order to describe or adjudicate something. And that the players have enough information to understand what the referee is describing so they can make an informed choice about what they want to do as their character.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 01, 2023, 09:40:36 PMUltimately, the root cause here is ignorance of broader game design theorycrafting. Popularity is a fallback metric for when you don't actually understand what virtues make a game good. I am willing to wager that if Pundit understood game design theory, he probably would have articulated his position using a different metric, because popularity is so broad as to practically be useless.

For a leisure activity like tabletop roleplaying, people don't play things they consider stupid. There is a reason why we have a sizable community of hobbyists playing certain RPGs especially when you combine it with time. Because those RPGs are interesting and fun.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 01, 2023, 09:40:36 PM
And bear in mind I mean broader game design theorycrafting and not just The Forge. Yeah, I've studied the material from The Forge, but I really consider myself more a student of video game and board game design. Video games especially are a multi-billion dollar industry, so the theorycrafting behind them tends to be razor-tight. If I had to describe my design approach, it would be to use board games as a parts bin to take game experiences and theory structures from video games and bring them into tabletop RPGs. Frankly, the theorycrafting and single-player experiences found in the cream of the crop of video games far eclipses the experience in tabletop RPGs. Why? Because video game design theories include haptic feedback. They call it game feel. And board games have a wide variety of mechanics and tool-sets designed to create a similar sense of haptic feedback in the tabletop game space.

What one has to do to make a good videogame and a good boardgame is not relevant to writing material to help people run tabletop roleplaying campaigns.

I will repeat this point again. The point of running a campaign is NOT to play a particular game. It about, players pretending to be characters having adventures in a setting. What makes it work is the human referee and the procedure I outlined in other posts I made. The rules are an aid to make it easier and more fun. But the rules are NOT the point. Until you realize this then RPG design will be for you frustrating.

Greetings!

Brilliant, Estar! I agree entirely! Especially with this salient commentary:

"I will repeat this point again. The point of running a campaign is NOT to play a particular game. It about, players pretending to be characters having adventures in a setting. What makes it work is the human referee and the procedure I outlined in other posts I made. The rules are an aid to make it easier and more fun. But the rules are NOT the point. Until you realize this then RPG design will be for you frustrating." (Quoting Estar.)


Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Zalman on June 01, 2023, 06:53:54 PM
The people buying the same games the next year aren't the same people, and that's the point. The poster is seeing OSR games maintain a long tail of new players, while storygames flash in the pan and are gone.

Nope, the point is that since storygames (especially PbtA) are effectively campaign guides with massive hardwired limits on party size, composition, interaction and player action (the almighty playbook is a lot more restrictive than a class in this regard), they have practically zero replay value.
If you've been a player in a campaign "long" lasting string of games the chances that you'll want to see the other side of the screen are next to none.

Quote from: estar on June 02, 2023, 12:33:17 AM
I will repeat this point again. The point of running a campaign is NOT to play a particular game. It about, players pretending to be characters having adventures in a setting. What makes it work is the human referee and the procedure I outlined in other posts I made. The rules are an aid to make it easier and more fun. But the rules are NOT the point. Until you realize this then RPG design will be for you frustrating.

I agree, but I'll go further. I think it's a common sentiment that people can roleplay in any game system by simply adhering to the basic procedure you outlined. It's valid in the sense that that's the true core of the game. It's also not the whole picture - I genuinely don't think I could roleplay as well with certain rules systems (such as PbtA) over others. That isn't because of the way the rules force me to think mechanically or narratively or whatever else, but rather it's the problem that a game needs to provide ways of revealing the significance of setting elements to players without just pulling the curtain back and revealing the innerworkings of how the system "works". PbtA and many story games actually reveal quite a lot of the innerworkings of the "setting" because the setting is actually just a backdrop on an imagined stage, and all of the world functions according to rules decided for the sake of narrative. That revelation undermines the roleplaying even though it ought to strengthen it or provide a useful framework. I can't unsee the man behind the curtain because he's always looking me in the face when I read a PbtA playbook.

A positive example of rules are saving throws. They're great because a saving throw let's you know something is acting upon you, but not necessarily what, and most certainly not it's ultimate nature. If I fail the saving throw and I start feeling sick, my Strength score might be lowered. That's a hint at the significance of what I'm facing and some elements of its nature, but an impact on Strength need not be the totality of what is actually happening. This poison or disease or magic (whatever its nature) might have myriad effects and the mechanics are a prompting point to remind you to engage with what's happening to your character. So, saving throws (or their equivalents) are quite nice to facilitate roleplaying because just saying "you feel sick" doesn't really convey much information to a player to help them make useful decisions.

The better the understanding of most people around the table about the nature of how the setting works, the more the rules can be allowed to recede in lieu of the basic procedure and GM adjudication. A good example of a setting like this is the modern world - we live in it, most adults know the essence of it, so a lot of detailed rules about the setting are frivolous, we just need the contact points with the natural uncertainty and complexity of the world which we need to model in the game. In a fantasy setting, it's harder to have that shared understanding of the world without rules to help illustrate aspects of that setting without outright revealing its secret ingredients and ruining the magic (or conversely, feeling totally mysterious and arbitrary).

So rules are frameworks for establishing and maintaining a shared imaginary space (the setting). Once that core objective is accomplished, good rules will facilitate play so it's easier to manage, faster, easier to grasp, and ultimately more fun. The fun aspect and the recognition that this is a game is important because campaigns naturally hit lulls and the fun can keep momentum going to the next peak. It's part of the importance of something like verisimilitude in the rules, because once you've lost that you've already lost a cornerstone of the underlying concept of establishing an imaginary world.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on June 01, 2023, 10:30:00 PM

Quote from: Fheredin on June 01, 2023, 08:26:54 AM

Even if you were able to confirm that OSR sees more online discussion, I do not grant that popularity equals good. All games start with zero players, therefore game quality exists in abstraction, before any players actually picked up the game. Appealing to popularity means you understand these factors exist, but rather than actually trying to understand them...you just take popularity on face value.

That statement was so pretentious I got a film degree just for reading it...

First of all, people aren't disagreeing with you because they don't "understand" game design theory.  They are disagreeing with you because they think you are wrong (which you are).  Maybe you don't understand as much as you think you do.

As to popularity, popularity is directly nor inversely related to quality... but that doesn't mean they aren't related.  Some games are high quality and popular.  Some are low quality and popular.  Some are low quality and unpopular.  And some very few are high quality and unpopular.  These ratios are not proportional.  You will find that most high quality games are also pretty popular.  You will find a decent number of low quality games are also popular.  So positive popularity does not insure quality.  There are a handful of high quality games that, for some odd reasons, never become popular.  But these are rare, compared with the reverse.  And there are many low quality games that are unpopular.  In fact, this is probably the norm.

So seeing that a game is popular does not ensure it is high quality.  But seeing a game is unpopular is overwhelmingly indicative of low quality.  That's the domain inhabited by most storygames...

By your own admission popularity is not a solid reflection of quality because there are more variables at stake. So why fixate on it? It's my thesis that if you brain-hole game design theorycrafting, you literally lack the vocabulary and concepts necessary to assess a game in something besides popularity, but if you have an alternative suggestion, I'm open to it.

Quote from: estar on June 02, 2023, 12:33:17 AM

Quote from: Fheredin on June 01, 2023, 09:40:36 PM
And bear in mind I mean broader game design theorycrafting and not just The Forge. Yeah, I've studied the material from The Forge, but I really consider myself more a student of video game and board game design. Video games especially are a multi-billion dollar industry, so the theorycrafting behind them tends to be razor-tight. If I had to describe my design approach, it would be to use board games as a parts bin to take game experiences and theory structures from video games and bring them into tabletop RPGs. Frankly, the theorycrafting and single-player experiences found in the cream of the crop of video games far eclipses the experience in tabletop RPGs. Why? Because video game design theories include haptic feedback. They call it game feel. And board games have a wide variety of mechanics and tool-sets designed to create a similar sense of haptic feedback in the tabletop game space.

What one has to do to make a good videogame and a good boardgame is not relevant to writing material to help people run tabletop roleplaying campaigns.

I will repeat this point again. The point of running a campaign is NOT to play a particular game. It about, players pretending to be characters having adventures in a setting. What makes it work is the human referee and the procedure I outlined in other posts I made. The rules are an aid to make it easier and more fun. But the rules are NOT the point. Until you realize this then RPG design will be for you frustrating.

Video game design is literally derived from tabletop RPG design. The Fallout SPECIAL attribute system resulted when Obsidian lost the rights to adapt GURPS into a video game medium and hand to re-brand. The fact you don't see a connection doesn't mean no such connection exists; it just means you don't see it.

That is also what limits a human referee game model; the human referee only has so many skills and knowledges. There are things that individual GMs can't do if you over-rely on the GM because, while the GM might know everything about the game, the GM also almost certainly doesn't know everything there is to know about game design. You need to have a fair three-way handshake between the game designer, the GM, and the players.

Poor human GMs, unable to reach the lofty heights of a videogame program with its expert design.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 02, 2023, 07:46:47 AM
The fact you don't see a connection doesn't mean no such connection exists; it just means you don't see it.

I coded video games back when the tech was such that it was possible for a programmer to make something decent in their hobby time. Later, I coded up a complete simulation of the Mercury Space Capsule that was accurate enough that you could use the original NASA check lists using the Orbiter Space Simulator.
https://www.ibiblio.org/mscorbit/. In my day job I deal with user interfaces for metal cutting machines as one of my primary responsibilities. Coupled with the fact my company is a small manufacturing firm, there isn't an area of software development that I don't code for at some point during the year ranging from web interfaces, database development, 3D graphics, and computer-machine I/O. Also, I had several suggestions accepted by various researchers working on the design patterns for software development.

Any particular qualification I am lacking to render an opinion on the difference between videogame and RPGs?

Quote from: Fheredin on June 02, 2023, 07:46:47 AM
Video game design is literally derived from tabletop RPG design. The Fallout SPECIAL attribute system resulted when Obsidian lost the rights to adapt GURPS into a video game medium and hand to re-brand.

A tabletop RPG is where players interact with a setting as their characters where their actions are adjudicated by a human referee.

A computer RPG is where players interact with a setting as their characters where their actions are adjudicated by a software algorithm.

Sound pretty close right? Except for one thing. What a software algorithm can deal with versus what a human referee can deal with. That one element makes the two completely different experiences even if they use the same mechanics under the hood.

Tabletop roleplaying campaigns work because there is a human referee listening to what a player wants to attempt, adjudicating, and describing their circumstances. How does a human referee adjudicate? They have options, they can adjudicate on the basis of their life experiences, what they know about the setting, or using procedures found in a wargame. The human referee can judge that given the circumstance the outcome is certain and describe the results accordingly. Or it is uncertain and the use of dice is called for.

In contrast, a software algorithm is a series of predetermined judgment calls. The developer along with their team imagine as many circumstances as they can for the setting of the game and then code the responses. Yes they have similar options to the human referee before they decide to code. But once decided it is baked in stone until they have a chance to make an update and change their mind. As a result, CRPGS are just more sophisticated "Choose your own adventure" books. Even if you introduce the latest AI models, it is still an elaborate "Choose your own adventure" style book.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 02, 2023, 07:46:47 AMThat is also what limits a human referee game model; the human referee only has so many skills and knowledges. There are things that individual GMs can't do if you over-rely on the GM because, while the GM might know everything about the game, the GM also almost certainly doesn't know everything there is to know about game design. You need to have a fair three-way handshake between the game designer, the GM, and the players.

Other forms of roleplaying such as LARPS, MMORPGs, CRPGS, etc. require a team of people to pull their campaigns off. You have to coordinate the efforts of dozens if not hundreds of individuals in a particular way. For what they do the results are amazing and there is no way for tabletop roleplaying industry or hobby to compete. Unless you focus on what they can't do.

Where you see limits, I see possibilities. Game design is not the challenge. The challenge is help hobbyists be better referees in the time they have for a hobby. Since the focus of what we do is players pretending to be characters in a setting. The primary focus is on helping referees come up with interesting settings, interesting characters, come up with some aids (i.e. mechanics) to help adjudicate when players do things as their characters, and finally advice and support how to keep this going throughout the session and the campaign.

Most of this is not addressed by a game. When it is, the result invariably feels constrained and limited. They are mostly metagame issues about how a campaign is setup and managed.

As for as game design goes a good RPG will
- Communicate how the setting works for example the combat and magic subsystem.
- Tersely describe elements of the setting for example a character sheet, or a UWP from Traveller.
- Teaches a novice what they need to know to run a campaign in that setting (or genre) for example the various GURPS worldbooks like GURPS Egypt.

Finally, folks have a remarkable ability called abstraction. Pick the right abstraction and whatever complex task you are trying to teach will become far more manageable. Something I learned through the experience of developing and supporting software for metal-cutting machines for four decades. Writing a good RPG is about abstracting a setting (or genre) in a way that a hobbyist finds fun and enjoyable as a hobby. Even detailed systems like GURPS with all the options are abstractions of how a setting works. Part of what makes a good RPG designer is figuring out the right level of abstraction for their work.

Quote from: Old Aegidius on June 02, 2023, 03:29:28 AM

Quote from: estar on June 02, 2023, 12:33:17 AM
I will repeat this point again. The point of running a campaign is NOT to play a particular game. It about, players pretending to be characters having adventures in a setting. What makes it work is the human referee and the procedure I outlined in other posts I made. The rules are an aid to make it easier and more fun. But the rules are NOT the point. Until you realize this then RPG design will be for you frustrating.

I agree, but I'll go further. I think it's a common sentiment that people can roleplay in any game system by simply adhering to the basic procedure you outlined. It's valid in the sense that that's the true core of the game. It's also not the whole picture - I genuinely don't think I could roleplay as well with certain rules systems (such as PbtA) over others. That isn't because of the way the rules force me to think mechanically or narratively or whatever else, but rather it's the problem that a game needs to provide ways of revealing the significance of setting elements to players without just pulling the curtain back and revealing the innerworkings of how the system "works". PbtA and many story games actually reveal quite a lot of the innerworkings of the "setting" because the setting is actually just a backdrop on an imagined stage, and all of the world functions according to rules decided for the sake of narrative. That revelation undermines the roleplaying even though it ought to strengthen it or provide a useful framework. I can't unsee the man behind the curtain because he's always looking me in the face when I read a PbtA playbook.

A positive example of rules are saving throws. They're great because a saving throw let's you know something is acting upon you, but not necessarily what, and most certainly not it's ultimate nature. If I fail the saving throw and I start feeling sick, my Strength score might be lowered. That's a hint at the significance of what I'm facing and some elements of its nature, but an impact on Strength need not be the totality of what is actually happening. This poison or disease or magic (whatever its nature) might have myriad effects and the mechanics are a prompting point to remind you to engage with what's happening to your character. So, saving throws (or their equivalents) are quite nice to facilitate roleplaying because just saying "you feel sick" doesn't really convey much information to a player to help them make useful decisions.

The better the understanding of most people around the table about the nature of how the setting works, the more the rules can be allowed to recede in lieu of the basic procedure and GM adjudication. A good example of a setting like this is the modern world - we live in it, most adults know the essence of it, so a lot of detailed rules about the setting are frivolous, we just need the contact points with the natural uncertainty and complexity of the world which we need to model in the game. In a fantasy setting, it's harder to have that shared understanding of the world without rules to help illustrate aspects of that setting without outright revealing its secret ingredients and ruining the magic (or conversely, feeling totally mysterious and arbitrary).

So rules are frameworks for establishing and maintaining a shared imaginary space (the setting). Once that core objective is accomplished, good rules will facilitate play so it's easier to manage, faster, easier to grasp, and ultimately more fun. The fun aspect and the recognition that this is a game is important because campaigns naturally hit lulls and the fun can keep momentum going to the next peak. It's part of the importance of something like verisimilitude in the rules, because once you've lost that you've already lost a cornerstone of the underlying concept of establishing an imaginary world.

I agree completely!  The rules are aids (for consistency and easy repeatability) for the GM, not a straight-jacket.  This is the genius of the Braunstein-like model. \

I think your example of saving throws is very apropos.  And, not to harp on a subject excessively (I don't want to become the Tenbones pimping SW of this subject... Love ya, dude!), but I think this is one of the consequences of the modern game fixation on unified mechanics.  The genius of early D&Ds was the fact that the rules accumulated.  They were created by need and molded to simulate what was necessary for that instance in the game.   Or, like saving throws, adapted from other mechanics where applicable.

To compare back to a post I made in the "Alternative to GNS Theory" Thread, if the "referee describes, players act, referee decides" resolution is the basis of RPGs, then the rules developed should support that process, rather than dictate, supplant, or derail it.

For example, you said:

QuoteThe better the understanding of most people around the table about the nature of how the setting works, the more the rules can be allowed to recede in lieu of the basic procedure and GM adjudication. A good example of a setting like this is the modern world - we live in it, most adults know the essence of it, so a lot of detailed rules about the setting are frivolous, we just need the contact points with the natural uncertainty and complexity of the world which we need to model in the game. In a fantasy setting, it's harder to have that shared understanding of the world without rules to help illustrate aspects of that setting without outright revealing its secret ingredients and ruining the magic (or conversely, feeling totally mysterious and arbitrary).

So, when you have a character faced with a problem, say... crossing a chasm, the game mechanics should support the internal and external consistency of the setting at a level of abstraction that preserves the player's agency.  If the setting is grounded in physics similar to ours, then the rules should help the GM decide the outcome of the player's actions that seem reasonable to both the GM and player (so they shouldn't result in the character jumping a 40' chasm sans magic, etc.).  If the setting's conceits offer different outcomes than normal for our world, there should be mechanical support so that the players and GMs can understand that difference.  These rules should operate as abstractly as is possible to both clearly define cause and effect, as well as allow the circumstances to drive the rules and their usage (and not "OK, roll to cross the chasm" like in a board game).  And the point of the rules is to allow the player to try anything, and to help the GM decide the outcome of that attempt.  Not to delineate what "moves" or actions the players can apply to the situation and how those must be resolved.

This is where the storygames tend to fall short.  By abstracting to a level that allows unified mechanics to operate for everything, storygames often reduce challenges to mechanical operations, using metagame concepts.  They often force players to think outside the character's perspective in the world in the moment to resolve their hurdles using a mechanic contrived to fit a pre-established pattern ("Roll skill plus 2d6 plus attribute, 6 or less fails") rather than mechanics that fit the in-world physics of what has occurred.  Based on the setting and shared world, why should a 6 or less fail?  How does that mechanical operation simulate crossing a chasm?  Why are those odds appropriate to the chosen action?  None of these questions are answered by unified mechanics  So, while unified mechanics can be easier to learn, I feel like they also can abstract mechanics to the point where the mechanics are based in metagame concepts, rather than grow from the needs of the chosen action in that moment.

In some ways, good RPG mechanics are like laws of physics.  They guide GMs to the outcome of actions based on the starting conditions; but they don't dictate those starting conditions as a prerequisite of operation.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on June 02, 2023, 12:23:36 PM
I agree completely!  The rules are aids (for consistency and easy repeatability) for the GM, not a straight-jacket.  This is the genius of the Braunstein-like model.

Yup, however, keep in mind the common objection to this sentiment, "What limits the referee from making up any ruling they like?". My answer is that it is the setting of the campaign that limits the referee.

I think the discussion is drifting into different gaming cultures territory. Hobby is old enough at this point that it developed different styles and cultures of play. Some value rules as tight as possible from a game design standpoint, while others see rules as loose aids to help people around the table, while others still value completely different aspects. There's no right or wrong here, only what leads each culture to have fun.

So going back to the original question "What's the biggest mistake in RPG Design", the correct answer is: "it depends, for what culture/style of play?". Vampire players will value different things over OD&D players, which will value different things over D&D 3E players, which will value different things over PbtA players, etc.

What constitutes quality for one culture won't necessarily communicate across to others (as this very thread proves).

Quote from: Itachi on June 02, 2023, 01:03:11 PM
The discussion is drifting into different play cultures territory. Hobby is big enough that it contains different styles and cultures of play. Some cultures value rules as tight as possible from a game design angle while other cultures see rules as aids to help the people around the table. There's no right or wrong here, only what leads each culture to have fun at the table, which will be different things.

So going back to the original question "What's the biggest mistake in RPG Design", the correct answer is: "it depends, for what culture/style of play?".

This is dodging the general question. There is a set of consequences to having tight rules if your focus is pretending to be characters adventuring in a setting. Another set of consequences to having tight rules is if your focus is playing a game with a set of victory conditions. And a different set of consequences if your focus is collaborative storytelling.

And to cap it all of the ones I mention (including others I haven't) are pretty flexible in what they can cover at least as a publisher's product or a shared work. So within each, you can have different play styles and cultures.

My point is that when it comes to tabletop roleplaying, rules are an option, not a requirement to make the campaign happen. Which does not me I am advocating ditching all systems and going with rulings alone. I make this point to stress because of that, tabletop roleplaying campaigns have a lot of flexibility in what they can pick for rules. Handling one aspect of a campaign with mechanics and another by rulings.

Stressing that doesn't mean tight systems are not necessarily a bad thing. They only become worse if the group is trying to run a tabletop roleplaying campaign and says "Because the rules don't cover X, you can't do X.". If they are running a boardgame/wargame campaign instead that attitude would be perfectly fine. Basically the difference between a Battletech campaign and a Mechwarrior campaign. But if the group happens to use Mechawarrior and does "Well the rules don't cover X, so you can't do X" then  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. 

Unless they try to claim what they are running is a tabletop roleplaying campaign and in this case, I will say they are not because of the above. But just because I say that doesn't mean their campaigns stop being fun or quit working.

Quote from: estar on June 02, 2023, 01:43:23 PM

Quote from: Itachi on June 02, 2023, 01:03:11 PM
The discussion is drifting into different play cultures territory. Hobby is big enough that it contains different styles and cultures of play. Some cultures value rules as tight as possible from a game design angle while other cultures see rules as aids to help the people around the table. There's no right or wrong here, only what leads each culture to have fun at the table, which will be different things.

So going back to the original question "What's the biggest mistake in RPG Design", the correct answer is: "it depends, for what culture/style of play?".

This is dodging the general question. There is a set of consequences to having tight rules if your focus is pretending to be characters adventuring in a setting. Another set of consequences to having tight rules is if your focus is playing a game with a set of victory conditions. And a different set of consequences if your focus is collaborative storytelling [...] My point is that when it comes to tabletop roleplaying, rules are..

You seem to be missing the fact that "Tabletop roleplaying" at this point IS an umbrella of distinct cultures and playstyles, and not a monolythic culture.

So, even forgetting Forge/storygames for a moment, it's undeniable that OSR runs on different assumptions than say, D&D 3E or Pathfinder. Same goes for Vampire or FATE or whatever. "Rulings over rules" is a very important principle for OSR but not so much for 3E/4E/Pathfinder. Having the social aspect covered by rules or at least good advice is almost mandatory for Vampire and WoD games as they're predicated on social conflict hapenning sooner or later, but that's not necessary for OSR where it rarely (if ever) happens. Damn, even pre-planned linear plots and illusionism finds cultures/playstyles where it's a positive or at least not end of the world, as most mystery games like CoC and Delta Green depend on pre-planned plots and clue placement. How about significant GM fiat as seen in diceless games like Amber? Etc, etc, etc.

Each one of those points may be considered qualities or defects, depending on the culture one considers.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on June 02, 2023, 12:23:36 PM
This is where the storygames tend to fall short.  By abstracting to a level that allows unified mechanics to operate for everything, storygames often reduce challenges to mechanical operations, using metagame concepts.  They often force players to think outside the character's perspective in the world in the moment to resolve their hurdles using a mechanic contrived to fit a pre-established pattern ("Roll skill plus 2d6 plus attribute, 6 or less fails") rather than mechanics that fit the in-world physics of what has occurred.  Based on the setting and shared world, why should a 6 or less fail?  How does that mechanical operation simulate crossing a chasm?  Why are those odds appropriate to the chosen action?  None of these questions are answered by unified mechanics  So, while unified mechanics can be easier to learn, I feel like they also can abstract mechanics to the point where the mechanics are based in metagame concepts, rather than grow from the needs of the chosen action in that moment.

Elaborating on that thought ...

Unified mechanics (and abstractions too, for that matter), are useful when done well and always in danger of being pushed too far.  It's true in games.  It's true in software.  It's true in anything that uses a model or even a model-like thing in its design. 

In RPGs, because of all the reasons estar has listed, you can get away with a lot of mistakes with mechanics and abstractions, both too unified or not unified enough, too abstract or not abstract enough.  The rulings and the GM having some common sense can paper over a lot of trouble. Still, there's a point at which even that giant saving throw isn't enough to bail out the thing.

Not infrequently, the trouble starts when someone confuses mechanics and abstraction.  For example, I doubt anyone would advocate to change AD&D to use a different mechanic for each weapon attack.  Only swords get to use a d20 to hit.  We'll use 2d10 for axes.  And 2d8 for daggers.  And then we'll blend some of the assumption for the weapons vs armor chart into the dice chosen.  Though doing something like that would certainly be a way to make every group of weapons feel unique--and done well, might even incorporate some other interesting distinctions into the choices. Even done well, it would still have "issues", I'm sure.  Not least of which is requiring another column on the character sheet for each weapon so the players aren't expected to remember all the distinction.  Never mind the poor GM and the more inflated monster stat blocks.

Assume for a moment that OD&D had started that way.  Then AD&D comes along and unifies the attack on a d20.  It works, because it's about one thing (attacks) and the trade off in fancy details is probably worth it for all the nice things that come with some consistency. 

Then someone notices that the saving throws also use d20s.  So they assume that saving throws should work exactly the same as the attacks.  Two different abstractions, same underlying mechanics--on the surface.  But the "mechanic" is more than the d20.  It's the d20 and the modifiers and how it all connects to the rest of the system.  Maybe saving throws and attacks can be unified under the same mechanic.  Maybe not.  But if they can, you can bet it's going to change one or both in some way, possibly losing something in the translation.  Might still be worth it in that case, but it's not this supremely obvious thing that some people seem to think it is.  It's Chesterton's Fence.  Once you've fully understood both, then you are only now prepared to explore and possibly make a case for unification.  That case should include "what will be lost" in the unification.

Quote from: Itachi on June 02, 2023, 03:09:36 PM
You seem to be missing the fact that "Tabletop roleplaying" at this point IS an umbrella of distinct cultures and playstyles, and not a monolythic culture.

When I say tabletop roleplaying is about players playing characters interacting with a setting with their action adjudicated by a human referee. I am deliberately not describing any particular setting, type of interaction, or methods of adjudication.

Play cultures and playstyles are what people choose to do with the elements of tabletop roleplaying. What I describe and the slightly more elaborate procedure I outlined earlier is common to all tabletop roleplaying campaigns regardless of play culture, focus, or playstyle.

If it is not then that group is doing something different. Fun but different. Just as in the 70s tabletop roleplaying rapidly was perceived as something different than wargaming.

Now if you think the only requirement to be a tabletop roleplaying game is the mechanics focusing on individual characters then I disagree. There is a larger category of roleplaying games where that is true. But for what Pundit is talking about, what I have been talking about is not about the broad category of games that focus on individual characters.

Quote from: Itachi on June 02, 2023, 03:09:36 PM
Even forgetting Forge/storygames for a moment, it's undeniable that OSR runs on different assumptions than say, D&D 3E or Pathfinder. Same goes for Vampire or FATE or whatever. "Rulings over rules" is a very important principle for OSR but not so much for 3E or Pathfinder.

Just because rules are not required to run a tabletop roleplaying campaign doesn't imply a OSR style "Rulings over rules" is the correct way, the best way, or any other objectively positive adjective you want to tack on.

The designers of 3E and Pathfinder elected to create a system where rulings were rarely needed. The same with SJ Games, Hero Games, and many other designers and publishing company. That OK that as valid of a creative choice to run a tabletop campaign as one where you rely mostly on Rulings coupled with a minimal system.

However, I will note that there isn't a system designed that will cover everything a character can do within a setting. Both editions of Pathfinder don't cover all that you could do as a character within Golarion. They cover a great deal and certainly, the adventure paths Paizo is known for.

It is also a creative choice to decide as a group to limit what characters can do to what the rules cover. However, if a situation comes during a campaign that isn't covered the group shouldn't hesitate to come up with a ruling. And that is where I think the hobby's general attitude toward rules needs to change.

Quote from: Itachi on June 02, 2023, 03:09:36 PM
Having the social aspect covered by rules or at least good advice is almost mandatory for Vampire and WoD games as they're predicated on social conflict hapenning sooner or later, but that's not necessary for OSR, where it rarely (if ever) happens.

If you and your group feel the need to create or obtain the equivalent of GURPS Social Engineering to make the campaign by all means do so. I stated numerous times elsewhere that groups should think of something fun to play first, and then assemble the rules to make it happen.

Those rules exist in Vampire because the setting focuses a lot on the social interaction of different vampiric factions and the factions that exist in the larger World of Darkness. In contrast, I been aware of many Vampire and WoD campaigns that were run as Monsters with super powers, and the social rules all but ignored. Both seem to work equally well for various groups.

Quote from: Itachi on June 02, 2023, 03:09:36 PM
Damn, even pre-planned linear plots and illusionism finds cultures/playstyles where it's a positive, or at least not the end of the world, as most mystery games like CoC and Delta Green depend on pre-planned plots and clue placement. How about significant GM fiat as seen in diceless games like Amber? Etc, etc, etc.

Seem like different choices in how to adjudicate and different choices on how to interact with a setting.

Quote from: Itachi on June 02, 2023, 03:09:36 PMEach one of those points may be considered qualities or defects, depending on the culture one considers.

Yes but it doesn't change the fact that the core of what these different groups do is the same and what definite this hobby as distinct from other types of gaming.

You are looking at what divides the hobby as a whole. I am looking at what unites the hobby as a whole. The best part what I am saying is already baked into all these systems. GURPS won't break if you happened to make a bunch of rulings during a campaign. OD&D won't break if you add a detailed subsystem to handle trade and commerce or (gasp) combat. Might even get your own company and niche out of the effort (looking at you Iron Crown).

Quote from: zircher on June 01, 2023, 02:42:39 PM
Let me put on the devil's advocate hat for a minute or two...

In my practical experience, some story games have replayability.  For example, while someone may not use the same PbtA playbooks twice in a row, they can be customized enough to appear different when re-used by others.  Is that any different from classes in D&D?  Some games like Monsterhearts also have a stupendous number of fan made playbooks.  Uncharted Worlds had a strong classic Traveller vibe and has what it needs for campaign play.  Traveller itself offered fairly stagnant characters after generation so that is far from something new.

Yup, it's so obvious PbtA games present lots of variability through their playbooks, world creation, custom moves, etc. It makes me conclude that people arguing the contrary probably never actually played these games.

QuoteI also see a fair amount of focused indie stuff in the solo game community.  There is a tendency for lighter weight mechanics there.  Ironsworn and Starforged are PbtA powered and very popular for campaign play.  Me, Myself, and Die is a stellar example of that (season two used Ironsworn, https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDvunq75UfH_Z92nrYPUsTO_fTHnLTNaT) Of course, there are folks that also use solo tools for traditional games like D&D or Call of Cthulhu.

True. Don't know the others, but Ironsworn is great.

QuoteHaving said all that.  I don't think the game system matters as much as is implied.  The demographics, the gamers themselves, have changed.  Even WotC has admitted that campaigns are much shorter than they used to be.  (The average being six sessions.)  So, I think the one-shot and mini-arc thing is actually a reflection of people's changes in desire, attention span, and commitment.  It could be argued that story games are a reaction to that and not a flaw at all.  Many traditional RPGs have great sprawling epic stories, but it takes years to get there and a lot story games offer a sweet and short path to get there.

Also 100% true.

(I think storygames already started their lives as one-shots and short campaigns though, so it was probably part of that gaming culture from the start)

Quote from: Zalman on June 01, 2023, 06:53:54 PM

Quote from: Vestragor on June 01, 2023, 08:30:50 AM

Quote from: Kahoona on June 01, 2023, 07:37:11 AM
There's normally more booths and sellers dedicated to Storygames then anything else at these conventions. And they tend to sell alot of product unless, they had the same product the previous year. In which case they are hard press to sell anything. On the other hand, other games tend to have fewer sales but will still sell the same products the following year.

This is normal, considering what they're selling. Would you buy twice the same campaign setting, especially after having played it already ?
Storygames are little more than ready to play single campaigns with integrated rules that allow for very little variance in play and effectively zero replay value.

The people buying the same games the next year aren't the same people, and that's the point. The poster is seeing OSR games maintain a long tail of new players, while storygames flash in the pan and are gone.

Aye, this was the point I was making. OSR and other games continue to be sold, but these Storygames have a splash then die off it feels like.

Quote from: estar on June 02, 2023, 04:06:47 PM

Quote from: Itachi on June 02, 2023, 03:09:36 PMEach one of those points may be considered qualities or defects, depending on the culture one considers.

Yes but it doesn't change the fact that the core of what these different groups do is the same and what define this hobby as distinct from other types of gaming.

Sure, in no moment I denied the existence of that core activity. But then, that core doesn't tell the whole story, does it? See this very thread: full of people ditching each other styles/cultures for details that go beyond that core. "PbtA is shit because it lacks long campaigns" or "3E/4E is shit because it's too rules-driven" or "OSR is shit because it just regurgitates old D&D", etc. which completely miss the mark when we realize the fanbases for those are doing totally fine. And they're fine because PbtA players don't care about long campaigns, OSR players don't care about every new game being a variant of OD&D, and Vampire players don't care if new editions come with wonky combat, as those elements are not indicative of quality for their cultures.

The correct question should be: What do the gamers who play those specific games, and the authors who create them, think their big mistakes are?

Quote from: estar on June 02, 2023, 10:17:53 AM

Quote from: Fheredin on June 02, 2023, 07:46:47 AM
The fact you don't see a connection doesn't mean no such connection exists; it just means you don't see it.

I coded video games back when the tech was such that it was possible for a programmer to make something decent in their hobby time. Later, I coded up a complete simulation of the Mercury Space Capsule that was accurate enough that you could use the original NASA check lists using the Orbiter Space Simulator.
https://www.ibiblio.org/mscorbit/. In my day job I deal with user interfaces for metal cutting machines as one of my primary responsibilities. Coupled with the fact my company is a small manufacturing firm, there isn't an area of software development that I don't code for at some point during the year ranging from web interfaces, database development, 3D graphics, and computer-machine I/O. Also, I had several suggestions accepted by various researchers working on the design patterns for software development.

Any particular qualification I am lacking to render an opinion on the difference between videogame and RPGs?

Yes, actually. Cognitive or Behavioral Psychology. All these games are arguably algorithmic psychotherapy devices. I am not going to say that I require a PhD or something--this is a forum for laity--but if you don't know what shock induced aggression is, or the difference between short term and long term memory....you probably have some reading to do.

A working knowledge of informal fallacies and argument composition would also help. Appeal to authority is an informal fallacy, and your argument below is an amputee victim from a John Carpenteresque movie.

Quote

Quote from: Fheredin on June 02, 2023, 07:46:47 AM
Video game design is literally derived from tabletop RPG design. The Fallout SPECIAL attribute system resulted when Obsidian lost the rights to adapt GURPS into a video game medium and hand to re-brand.

A tabletop RPG is where players interact with a setting as their characters where their actions are adjudicated by a human referee.

A computer RPG is where players interact with a setting as their characters where their actions are adjudicated by a software algorithm.

Sound pretty close right? Except for one thing. What a software algorithm can deal with versus what a human referee can deal with. That one element makes the two completely different experiences even if they use the same mechanics under the hood.

Tabletop roleplaying campaigns work because there is a human referee listening to what a player wants to attempt, adjudicating, and describing their circumstances. How does a human referee adjudicate? They have options, they can adjudicate on the basis of their life experiences, what they know about the setting, or using procedures found in a wargame. The human referee can judge that given the circumstance the outcome is certain and describe the results accordingly. Or it is uncertain and the use of dice is called for.

In contrast, a software algorithm is a series of predetermined judgment calls. The developer along with their team imagine as many circumstances as they can for the setting of the game and then code the responses. Yes they have similar options to the human referee before they decide to code. But once decided it is baked in stone until they have a chance to make an update and change their mind. As a result, CRPGS are just more sophisticated "Choose your own adventure" books. Even if you introduce the latest AI models, it is still an elaborate "Choose your own adventure" style book.

...And?...You realize that you're not done, yet, right?

If you're just arguing that video games =/= tabletop RPGs, no one will disagree with you. But that doesn't actually establish that you can't learn things from one field and apply them in the other. To make that case, you need to assemble a deductive logical syllogism, and you would need a second premise and a conclusion.

As you did not feel good enough to finish the argument, I am now compelled to write up a straw man for how I would have completed this argument.

• Major Premise: Design principles from one game genre cannot be applied to another game genre with fundamentally different internal workings
• Minor Premise: Video games and tabletop RPGs have fundamentally different internal workings.
• Conclusion: Therefore you cannot take lessons from video game design and apply it to RPG design.

Put like this, the problem is more apparent; the major premise is exceedingly pessimistic and is probably not actually warranted.

Quote

Quote from: Fheredin on June 02, 2023, 07:46:47 AMThat is also what limits a human referee game model; the human referee only has so many skills and knowledges. There are things that individual GMs can't do if you over-rely on the GM because, while the GM might know everything about the game, the GM also almost certainly doesn't know everything there is to know about game design. You need to have a fair three-way handshake between the game designer, the GM, and the players.

Other forms of roleplaying such as LARPS, MMORPGs, CRPGS, etc. require a team of people to pull their campaigns off. You have to coordinate the efforts of dozens if not hundreds of individuals in a particular way. For what they do the results are amazing and there is no way for tabletop roleplaying industry or hobby to compete. Unless you focus on what they can't do.

Where you see limits, I see possibilities. Game design is not the challenge. The challenge is help hobbyists be better referees in the time they have for a hobby. Since the focus of what we do is players pretending to be characters in a setting. The primary focus is on helping referees come up with interesting settings, interesting characters, come up with some aids (i.e. mechanics) to help adjudicate when players do things as their characters, and finally advice and support how to keep this going throughout the session and the campaign.

Most of this is not addressed by a game. When it is, the result invariably feels constrained and limited. They are mostly metagame issues about how a campaign is setup and managed.

As for as game design goes a good RPG will
- Communicate how the setting works for example the combat and magic subsystem.
- Tersely describe elements of the setting for example a character sheet, or a UWP from Traveller.
- Teaches a novice what they need to know to run a campaign in that setting (or genre) for example the various GURPS worldbooks like GURPS Egypt.

Finally, folks have a remarkable ability called abstraction. Pick the right abstraction and whatever complex task you are trying to teach will become far more manageable. Something I learned through the experience of developing and supporting software for metal-cutting machines for four decades. Writing a good RPG is about abstracting a setting (or genre) in a way that a hobbyist finds fun and enjoyable as a hobby. Even detailed systems like GURPS with all the options are abstractions of how a setting works. Part of what makes a good RPG designer is figuring out the right level of abstraction for their work.

If you actually believed what you just said, you would have no reason to play anything besides The Pool or perhaps FATE. Even Lasers and Feelings has extraneous fluff which will get in the way of your human adjudication.

I think a better metaphor for game design is a bonsai master wiring a tree.

If you aren't familiar, bonsai is a horticultural art where you carefully shape and prune a tree, usually containing it into a small size and giving a young tree mature or weathered appearances. If the tree took any shape it naturally wanted, the tree would grow to a full size and probably not have a particularly aesthetically pleasing appearance, so the bonsai master prunes leaves and limbs and occasionally wraps the trunk and limbs with wire, which pull the limbs into a specific shape.

Is the wire the bonsai? No. In fact, when a bonsai is going to be displayed the wire usually comes off. But the wires guide and shape the tree into growing in an aesthetically pleasing way rather than in the purely natural way.

This is the purpose of game mechanics. Game mechanics aren't there to limit your creativity, but to shape it and direct it into a few particular tasks, rather than trying to accomplish every task you can.

EDIT: Quote tags

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on June 02, 2023, 03:17:23 PM

Quote from: Eirikrautha on June 02, 2023, 12:23:36 PM
This is where the storygames tend to fall short.  By abstracting to a level that allows unified mechanics to operate for everything, storygames often reduce challenges to mechanical operations, using metagame concepts.  They often force players to think outside the character's perspective in the world in the moment to resolve their hurdles using a mechanic contrived to fit a pre-established pattern ("Roll skill plus 2d6 plus attribute, 6 or less fails") rather than mechanics that fit the in-world physics of what has occurred.  Based on the setting and shared world, why should a 6 or less fail?  How does that mechanical operation simulate crossing a chasm?  Why are those odds appropriate to the chosen action?  None of these questions are answered by unified mechanics  So, while unified mechanics can be easier to learn, I feel like they also can abstract mechanics to the point where the mechanics are based in metagame concepts, rather than grow from the needs of the chosen action in that moment.

Elaborating on that thought ...

Unified mechanics (and abstractions too, for that matter), are useful when done well and always in danger of being pushed too far.  It's true in games.  It's true in software.  It's true in anything that uses a model or even a model-like thing in its design. 

In RPGs, because of all the reasons estar has listed, you can get away with a lot of mistakes with mechanics and abstractions, both too unified or not unified enough, too abstract or not abstract enough.  The rulings and the GM having some common sense can paper over a lot of trouble. Still, there's a point at which even that giant saving throw isn't enough to bail out the thing.

Not infrequently, the trouble starts when someone confuses mechanics and abstraction.  For example, I doubt anyone would advocate to change AD&D to use a different mechanic for each weapon attack.  Only swords get to use a d20 to hit.  We'll use 2d10 for axes.  And 2d8 for daggers.  And then we'll blend some of the assumption for the weapons vs armor chart into the dice chosen.  Though doing something like that would certainly be a way to make every group of weapons feel unique--and done well, might even incorporate some other interesting distinctions into the choices. Even done well, it would still have "issues", I'm sure.  Not least of which is requiring another column on the character sheet for each weapon so the players aren't expected to remember all the distinction.  Never mind the poor GM and the more inflated monster stat blocks.

Assume for a moment that OD&D had started that way.  Then AD&D comes along and unifies the attack on a d20.  It works, because it's about one thing (attacks) and the trade off in fancy details is probably worth it for all the nice things that come with some consistency. 

Then someone notices that the saving throws also use d20s.  So they assume that saving throws should work exactly the same as the attacks.  Two different abstractions, same underlying mechanics--on the surface.  But the "mechanic" is more than the d20.  It's the d20 and the modifiers and how it all connects to the rest of the system.  Maybe saving throws and attacks can be unified under the same mechanic.  Maybe not.  But if they can, you can bet it's going to change one or both in some way, possibly losing something in the translation.  Might still be worth it in that case, but it's not this supremely obvious thing that some people seem to think it is.  It's Chesterton's Fence.  Once you've fully understood both, then you are only now prepared to explore and possibly make a case for unification.  That case should include "what will be lost" in the unification.

Partially. I think abstraction definitely dilutes the haptic feedback--the game feel--of RPGs, to the point that most people here think that RPGs do not have game feel at all, and one of the key reasons I like Savage Worlds almost as much as tenbones is that it provides a lot of game feel in the form of exploding dice.

I personally don't like unification; I prefer gameplay loops built out of feedback loops because this gives the players a logical sequence of game mechanics interacting with each other.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 02, 2023, 07:10:00 PM

I personally don't like unification; I prefer gameplay loops built out of feedback loops because this gives the players a logical sequence of game mechanics interacting with each other.

The point is that "I don't like unification" or "I do like unification" is an incomplete, misleading statement.  Everyone likes some unification, which will become apparent as soon as someone starts "making things different just because".  Everyone dislikes some unification, which is also easy.  Just take any unification drive to an absurd length.  Eventually, you'll hit every person's threshold. 

Now, I get it.  What you are saying is shorthand for a dislike of this crazy quest lately to drive everything towards unification in RPGs, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.  It's a reaction to people who think that more unification is somehow always an unabashed good thing, without regard to context or feel or any other aspect of the system.

It's not contradictory to think, for example, that AD&D 1E could be improved with some degree of more unification and also think that some of the people who have made the attempt have botched it.  I would suggest that most of the botches are due to chasing theory instead of practice, testing, and consideration of the art of balancing competing interests.  That's also design, but it's not in the realm of theory.

*waiting for the goalpost to move again*

Quote from: Theory of Games on June 02, 2023, 08:28:30 PM
*waiting for the goalpost to move again*

Pretty much.

At this point we're just watching a dick measuring contest which will somehow make the winner objectively right, because God forbid people have different ideas on the internet.

I am perfectly happy to declare myself Team "different strokes for different folks." What's playable for one person could be unplayable for another and visa versa. Likewise watering things down to a single unified standard is just a recipe for bland grey goo rather than having bold contrasting choices.

All I've gotten so far is that...

Major Premise: TTRPGs are games.

Minor Premise: Video games are games, and (some) of them are based on TTRPGs.

Conclusion: Therefore video game design principles can be pushed whole cloth to guide TTRPG design or be used authoritatively to dictate changes to TTRPGs, without taking into account the fundamental differences between tabletop and pre-programmed digital gameplay experiences.  :P

Quote from: Chris24601 on June 03, 2023, 07:41:28 AM

Quote from: Theory of Games on June 02, 2023, 08:28:30 PM
*waiting for the goalpost to move again*

Pretty much.

At this point we're just watching a dick measuring contest which will somehow make the winner objectively right, because God forbid people have different ideas on the internet.

I am perfectly happy to declare myself Team "different strokes for different folks." What's playable for one person could be unplayable for another and visa versa. Likewise watering things down to a single unified standard is just a recipe for bland grey goo rather than having bold contrasting choices.

Greetings!

Yep, Chris, right on target. I thought Estar's commentary was definitely more based in what TTRPG's are about. The other stuff is pretty much nonsense. Different people want oftentimes very different things from games. I'm also not sold on how seeking to hyper-fixate on technical elements of "Game Theory" is really worthwhile. When people were 12 years old playing D&D or GMing D&D, nobody gave a damn about bloviating about "Game Theory". Beyond that, seeking to bring academic logic rules of structure into a discussion about running RPG's...*Laughing* Yeah, ok.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: VisionStorm on June 03, 2023, 08:11:16 AM
All I've gotten so far is that...

Major Premise: TTRPGs are games.

Minor Premise: Video games are games, and (some) of them are based on TTRPGs.

Conclusion: Therefore video game design principles can be pushed whole cloth to guide TTRPG design or be used authoritatively to dictate changes to TTRPGs, without taking into account the fundamental differences between tabletop and pre-programmed digital gameplay experiences.  :P

How much of this is legitimate misunderstanding and how much is just being obtuse for the sake of comic extremism?  Let's start with a different explanation.

If you were playing a video game and it took you five minutes to progress from the first stage, fifteen in the second, and an hour in the third...that's called a Skinner Box, which is a behavioral conditioning cage where rewards are slowed as you progress further. Understanding that you can scale back rewards at a logarithmic rate is key for how many video games are made addicting, and people sometimes argue that all video games are Skinner Boxes to some extent or another.

Now say you're playing a different kind of game. This game gives your character levels, and when you reach new levels you get new abilities or attribute buffs, and the XP required to level up follows a rough logarithmic scale. How do we describe this kind of game? That's right; as a Skinner Box. The fact that it happens to roughly correlate with what you'd think of as a character learning curve is a happy coincidence. The behavioral psychology which makes one kind of game tick also applies in another. There was a reason I listed psychology in my response to estar.

However, there is a big difference between tabletop game design and video game design which estar didn't touch on; video game development is pretty darn expensive and the video game market as a whole is about 100 times more financially lucrative. "Theorycrafting" for video games is much higher stakes, which means the video game design discussion tends to include rabbit holes like Skinner Boxes. It tends to get omitted in tabletop game design circles because reading up on behavioral psychology is a lot of effort to take on a lark. This combination leads me to my opinion that if you want to learn to make a good roleplaying game, you at least need to know about video game design and interpolate towards the tabletop game. Relevant and irrelevant are the wrong way to approach this; RPGs by their nature may rope in practically all human endeavors into their composition. But some material is more easily applied than others, and just because I don't see an application now doesn't mean I won't some time later.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 03, 2023, 09:46:27 PM
This combination leads me to my opinion that if you want to learn to make a good roleplaying game, you at least need to know about video game design and interpolate towards the tabletop game.

And your opinion is incorrect (which is what everyone here is trying to tell you).  There's a difference between the specifics of TTRPGs compared to video games (starting with the capabilities of the referee compared to the limitations of programming, and extending to the role of the players' imaginations in each).  Cats and cows are both mammals, but studying a cow's digestive system isn't going to make you competent to treat a cat.  TTRPGs and video games are both games, but the specific context, interface, and goals of each create different requirements in each medium.  Not totally divorced, but very different in some aspects.

The fact that EVERYONE else here sees this and you don't is NOT a sign of your superior "discernment."  As the old saying goes: When one person treats you like an asshole, he is probably the asshole.  When EVERYONE treats you like an asshole... you're the asshole.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 03, 2023, 09:46:27 PM
-snip-

I suppose we should all just play knuckle bones then. Since that's the peek of game design and all games are just elaborate variations of knuckle bones.

It's not like we have whole different genres, philosophies, markets, players or goals when it comes to games. Afterall, they are all called games.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 03, 2023, 09:46:27 PM
*Commentary*

With all due respect, your interactions with others have a tendency to come across as extremely condescending. Knowing about how a skinner box works and why it's relevant to game design as a general topic is no longer an exceptional trait in the age of YouTube video essays, longform content, and all the world's collected knowledge only a click away. You'd have more success engaging in discussions such as these if you approached the topic either with more humility or at least more levity and humor rather than a sort of bitterness I'm perceiving.

Your point about games sharing some fundamentals is fine, but missing context. There is overlap between action movies and landscape paintings in the form of things like composition, color theory, and all that, but there are still genre and medium-specific lessons which can/must be applied for success when approaching an artform. It seems to me that you're granting more credence to video games and their techniques because you view that their designs are more sophisticated (partially because it's such a profitable industry). RPGs as a medium are not less sophisticated (quite the opposite IMO), they're less formalized and less easily engineered for profit by their nature.

There are downsides to this "sophistication" and formalism seen in video games. You only need to look at the quality issues (and ethical issues) related to video game releases of the past several years to see the pitfalls of treating a human, artistic experience as a tunable slot machine. Developers figured out how to make their games addictive and the result are cash shops, loot boxes, season passes, and endless other tricks to keep up "engagement" for the sake of monetization. These developers mistake a dopamine hit with the actual human experience of "fun". Drugs will get you there faster, and it turns out dopamine is illusory - chase it for its own sake and it will leave you hollow. Games now feel like jobs because they don't understand dopamine doesn't equal fun and it doesn't lead to satisfaction. Materialism is a hell of a drug!

Just looking at the state of video games and the underlying psychology of the designers in charge, I want them to stay far away from TTRPGs before they ruin it too (OneD&D and their VTT will be the first attempt). The first step down the road of making these awful, soulless games is believing that you need some kind of trick or gimmick to keep your players coming back. People read books without needing to pull a slot machine lever every so often. My players show up to play in my games despite them only lasting a handful of hours and being separated by a few weeks at a time is that there's more going in the game than pure dopamine hits and reward schedules.

I'm not saying you specifically are doing this, but I'm seeing some of the same underpinnings as subtext which suggest to me you're too engrossed in the video game design bubble: leveling systems are not pointless or illusory or fundamentally about reward schedules. It's a cargo cult way of looking at things that illustrates someone is looking at TTRPGs from the video game perspective, where a lot of the significance of leveling systems has indeed been lost. It seems people can only see leveling systems through the lens of a video game and the assumptions around the world leveling up with you (rather than being a part of a world that exists apart from you).

For example: a level system can serve as a pacing element, or as a tutorial. That latter concept is particularly ignored, even though it's a major part of old-school D&D. You could imagine a D&D-like game where you have a stronghold from level 1 and play the game of thrones, but the first thing a player will do is destroy the setting and derail the campaign to the point where it can't be recovered. Waiting until a character reaches domain level gives the players a stake in the setting so they won't edgelord or break things for quick fun. It means that the players have demonstrated a certain level of trust and commitment, and that they also understand the setting and the game enough to be entrusted with more control over the direction the game takes. Their contributions will be thoughtful and enrich the experience for everyone at the table. Sorry for the rant but this is one of my bugbears.

Quote from: Old Aegidius on June 04, 2023, 02:19:31 AM

Quote from: Fheredin on June 03, 2023, 09:46:27 PM
*Commentary*

With all due respect, your interactions with others have a tendency to come across as extremely condescending. Knowing about how a skinner box works and why it's relevant to game design as a general topic is no longer an exceptional trait in the age of YouTube video essays, longform content, and all the world's collected knowledge only a click away. You'd have more success engaging in discussions such as these if you approached the topic either with more humility or at least more levity and humor rather than a sort of bitterness I'm perceiving.

Your point about games sharing some fundamentals is fine, but missing context. There is overlap between action movies and landscape paintings in the form of things like composition, color theory, and all that, but there are still genre and medium-specific lessons which can/must be applied for success when approaching an artform. It seems to me that you're granting more credence to video games and their techniques because you view that their designs are more sophisticated (partially because it's such a profitable industry). RPGs as a medium are not less sophisticated (quite the opposite IMO), they're less formalized and less easily engineered for profit by their nature.

There are downsides to this "sophistication" and formalism seen in video games. You only need to look at the quality issues (and ethical issues) related to video game releases of the past several years to see the pitfalls of treating a human, artistic experience as a tunable slot machine. Developers figured out how to make their games addictive and the result are cash shops, loot boxes, season passes, and endless other tricks to keep up "engagement" for the sake of monetization. These developers mistake a dopamine hit with the actual human experience of "fun". Drugs will get you there faster, and it turns out dopamine is illusory - chase it for its own sake and it will leave you hollow. Games now feel like jobs because they don't understand dopamine doesn't equal fun and it doesn't lead to satisfaction. Materialism is a hell of a drug!

Just looking at the state of video games and the underlying psychology of the designers in charge, I want them to stay far away from TTRPGs before they ruin it too (OneD&D and their VTT will be the first attempt). The first step down the road of making these awful, soulless games is believing that you need some kind of trick or gimmick to keep your players coming back. People read books without needing to pull a slot machine lever every so often. My players show up to play in my games despite them only lasting a handful of hours and being separated by a few weeks at a time is that there's more going in the game than pure dopamine hits and reward schedules.

I'm not saying you specifically are doing this, but I'm seeing some of the same underpinnings as subtext which suggest to me you're too engrossed in the video game design bubble: leveling systems are not pointless or illusory or fundamentally about reward schedules. It's a cargo cult way of looking at things that illustrates someone is looking at TTRPGs from the video game perspective, where a lot of the significance of leveling systems has indeed been lost. It seems people can only see leveling systems through the lens of a video game and the assumptions around the world leveling up with you (rather than being a part of a world that exists apart from you).

For example: a level system can serve as a pacing element, or as a tutorial. That latter concept is particularly ignored, even though it's a major part of old-school D&D. You could imagine a D&D-like game where you have a stronghold from level 1 and play the game of thrones, but the first thing a player will do is destroy the setting and derail the campaign to the point where it can't be recovered. Waiting until a character reaches domain level gives the players a stake in the setting so they won't edgelord or break things for quick fun. It means that the players have demonstrated a certain level of trust and commitment, and that they also understand the setting and the game enough to be entrusted with more control over the direction the game takes. Their contributions will be thoughtful and enrich the experience for everyone at the table. Sorry for the rant but this is one of my bugbears.

Greetings!

Powerful, sir. And excellent. I agree entirely.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Eirikrautha on June 03, 2023, 11:33:54 PM

Quote from: Fheredin on June 03, 2023, 09:46:27 PM
This combination leads me to my opinion that if you want to learn to make a good roleplaying game, you at least need to know about video game design and interpolate towards the tabletop game.

And your opinion is incorrect (which is what everyone here is trying to tell you).  There's a difference between the specifics of TTRPGs compared to video games (starting with the capabilities of the referee compared to the limitations of programming, and extending to the role of the players' imaginations in each).  Cats and cows are both mammals, but studying a cow's digestive system isn't going to make you competent to treat a cat.  TTRPGs and video games are both games, but the specific context, interface, and goals of each create different requirements in each medium.  Not totally divorced, but very different in some aspects.

The fact that EVERYONE else here sees this and you don't is NOT a sign of your superior "discernment."  As the old saying goes: When one person treats you like an asshole, he is probably the asshole.  When EVERYONE treats you like an asshole... you're the asshole.

Greetings!

Ruthless, my friend! That's quite the rapier work you've demonstrated here.

And funny as hell, too. *Laughing* Great stuff!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Don't have much to add.

1. Fheredin is being a twat ofc.
2. Fheredin is right that some game design principles are relevant to both TTRPGs and to video games.

Quote from: Old Aegidius on June 04, 2023, 02:19:31 AM

Quote from: Fheredin on June 03, 2023, 09:46:27 PM
*Commentary*

With all due respect, your interactions with others have a tendency to come across as extremely condescending. Knowing about how a skinner box works and why it's relevant to game design as a general topic is no longer an exceptional trait in the age of YouTube video essays, longform content, and all the world's collected knowledge only a click away. You'd have more success engaging in discussions such as these if you approached the topic either with more humility or at least more levity and humor rather than a sort of bitterness I'm perceiving.

Your point about games sharing some fundamentals is fine, but missing context. There is overlap between action movies and landscape paintings in the form of things like composition, color theory, and all that, but there are still genre and medium-specific lessons which can/must be applied for success when approaching an artform. It seems to me that you're granting more credence to video games and their techniques because you view that their designs are more sophisticated (partially because it's such a profitable industry). RPGs as a medium are not less sophisticated (quite the opposite IMO), they're less formalized and less easily engineered for profit by their nature.

There are downsides to this "sophistication" and formalism seen in video games. You only need to look at the quality issues (and ethical issues) related to video game releases of the past several years to see the pitfalls of treating a human, artistic experience as a tunable slot machine. Developers figured out how to make their games addictive and the result are cash shops, loot boxes, season passes, and endless other tricks to keep up "engagement" for the sake of monetization. These developers mistake a dopamine hit with the actual human experience of "fun". Drugs will get you there faster, and it turns out dopamine is illusory - chase it for its own sake and it will leave you hollow. Games now feel like jobs because they don't understand dopamine doesn't equal fun and it doesn't lead to satisfaction. Materialism is a hell of a drug!

Just looking at the state of video games and the underlying psychology of the designers in charge, I want them to stay far away from TTRPGs before they ruin it too (OneD&D and their VTT will be the first attempt). The first step down the road of making these awful, soulless games is believing that you need some kind of trick or gimmick to keep your players coming back. People read books without needing to pull a slot machine lever every so often. My players show up to play in my games despite them only lasting a handful of hours and being separated by a few weeks at a time is that there's more going in the game than pure dopamine hits and reward schedules.

I'm not saying you specifically are doing this, but I'm seeing some of the same underpinnings as subtext which suggest to me you're too engrossed in the video game design bubble: leveling systems are not pointless or illusory or fundamentally about reward schedules. It's a cargo cult way of looking at things that illustrates someone is looking at TTRPGs from the video game perspective, where a lot of the significance of leveling systems has indeed been lost. It seems people can only see leveling systems through the lens of a video game and the assumptions around the world leveling up with you (rather than being a part of a world that exists apart from you).

For example: a level system can serve as a pacing element, or as a tutorial. That latter concept is particularly ignored, even though it's a major part of old-school D&D. You could imagine a D&D-like game where you have a stronghold from level 1 and play the game of thrones, but the first thing a player will do is destroy the setting and derail the campaign to the point where it can't be recovered. Waiting until a character reaches domain level gives the players a stake in the setting so they won't edgelord or break things for quick fun. It means that the players have demonstrated a certain level of trust and commitment, and that they also understand the setting and the game enough to be entrusted with more control over the direction the game takes. Their contributions will be thoughtful and enrich the experience for everyone at the table. Sorry for the rant but this is one of my bugbears.

I've been holding back for some time. I never gave my full assessment of estar's post because it's unflattering.

I specifically chose the Skinner Box as the illustration specifically because you were most likely to understand it without needing to consult YT video essays. On the last page I mentioned gameplay loops and feedback loops, which aren't more complex than a Skinner Box, but are a touch more obscure...and it clearly went over a few people's heads. So this was an intentional decision of mine to stick to a well known example. I also never once said that RPGs were simpler than video games, only that the theorycrafting for video games tends to be more systematic and multi-disciplinary, so I really don't know what you're responding to. But it's an interesting tangent.

QuoteJust looking at the state of video games and the underlying psychology of the designers in charge, I want them to stay far away from TTRPGs before they ruin it too (OneD&D and their VTT will be the first attempt). The first step down the road of making these awful, soulless games is believing that you need some kind of trick or gimmick to keep your players coming back. People read books without needing to pull a slot machine lever every so often. My players show up to play in my games despite them only lasting a handful of hours and being separated by a few weeks at a time is that there's more going in the game than pure dopamine hits and reward schedules.

Query: How much game design theory goes into the annual FIFA or Madden release? I'm not going to say that Call of Duty uses no abstract principles (there's a fair bit of manipulative marketing), but a fair amount of time these games get referenced to be disparaged. "When you take damage, the screen gets splattered with strawberry jam." Study of game design theory is like driving a car; you can go where you want, but you are responsible for where you go with it. And if you don't have a car, you're stuck sticking to public transportation (established systems) or walking.

I do think that we really need to have a conversation about TTRPGs being undermonetized, though. Edition cycling is quite often purely because the game isn't selling well and studios need a minimum turnover to justify their ongoing existence. New editions rarely deliver gameplay improvements worth noting to players, but are a coping mechanism for an industry with too little monetization. One of the key ways to address this is to understand how video games enable hypermonetization and discuss more responsible implementations for the RPG space. I think that RPGs are by their nature impossible to hyper-monetize. You can keep players from accessing a video game's source code and still let them play, but if you prevent players from reading the rules to an RPG, they can't play. RPGs are open source software by design because the compiler is the human brain.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on June 03, 2023, 11:33:54 PM

Quote from: Fheredin on June 03, 2023, 09:46:27 PM
This combination leads me to my opinion that if you want to learn to make a good roleplaying game, you at least need to know about video game design and interpolate towards the tabletop game.

And your opinion is incorrect (which is what everyone here is trying to tell you).  There's a difference between the specifics of TTRPGs compared to video games (starting with the capabilities of the referee compared to the limitations of programming, and extending to the role of the players' imaginations in each).  Cats and cows are both mammals, but studying a cow's digestive system isn't going to make you competent to treat a cat.  TTRPGs and video games are both games, but the specific context, interface, and goals of each create different requirements in each medium.  Not totally divorced, but very different in some aspects.

The fact that EVERYONE else here sees this and you don't is NOT a sign of your superior "discernment."  As the old saying goes: When one person treats you like an asshole, he is probably the asshole.  When EVERYONE treats you like an asshole... you're the asshole.

Oh, look, another bandwagon fallacy. Why am I not surprised.

I find this forum's infatuation with the bandwagon fallacy to be absolutely bizarre. The exact same argument you are making right now could be applied to RPG Pundit's own work; why would I play Lion and Dragon when 5E is far more popular and that clearly makes it better, right? And why would I watch RPG Pundit's videos when Critical Role is far more popular, and clearly that makes it better, right? You want me to be concerned about "being an asshole?" Pundit's catch-line is literally, "the final boss in internet shitlords." Practically everything about this community falls apart if you appeal to the bandwagon.

Now, clearly you're going to come up with other explanations about why I should play a less popular OSR game compared to D&D. My point is not that those reasons do not exist. Quite the contrary: because those reasons exist, the bandwagon is--and always was--irrelevant.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 04, 2023, 09:26:38 AM
You want me to be concerned about "being an asshole?" Pundit's catch-line is literally, "the final boss in internet shitlords."

That Pundit is frequently an asshole, does not mean that it's good to be an asshole. This is not a Pundit fansite.
Pundit's great virtue is that when he is (as often) an asshole, we can call him an asshole, and not be banned.
Morrus of ENW for instance might arguably even be less of an asshole than Pundit, but if I called Morrus an asshole on ENW for some lame SJW wankery, Umbran would surely ban me. That's the difference between this place and everywhere else. You don't seem to understand this place and what attracts people here, any better than you understand RPGs and why people value them.

It's undeniable that TTRPG more gamist playstyles share a lot of areas and principles with boardgames and videogames. Core gameplay loops (explore dungeon > rest and gear up at town > loop), player rewards and feedback (leveling up, treasure, etc).

But I still posit that won't always be true, due to TTPPGs having a number of distinct playstyles where those principles will have very minor impact, if any. Just look at World of Darkness, where most Games don't even have a clearly identifiable core play loop - half the Vampire 2E groups I know play it in almost LARP-mode, while the other half play it like D&D by night, and the book is very ambiguous about whats supposedly the correct way.

Quote from: Itachi on June 04, 2023, 11:18:12 AM
It's undeniable that TTRPG more gamist playstyles share a lot of areas and principles with boardgames and videogames. Core gameplay loops (explore dungeon > rest and gear up at town > loop), player rewards and feedback (leveling up, treasure, etc).

But I still posit that won't always be true, due to TTPPGs having a number of distinct playstyles where those principles will have very minor impact, if any. Just look at World of Darkness, where most Games don't even have a clearly identifiable core play loop - half the Vampire 2E groups I know play it in almost LARP-mode, while the other half play it like D&D by night, and the book is very ambiguous about whats supposedly the correct way.

Not exactly. RPGs always have core gameplay loops and quite often core feedback loops, and I wouldn't say they have a minor influence on the game, at all. What is true is that the GM and players are not limited to them. They are free to deviate from these core components as much as they wish, and to some extent, deviation is a good thing because it contrasts the mainstay of the game. But most games lose personality the more you deviate, so it's in everyone's interest to keep deviations out of the core loop under control.

Many games have mechanics structured to push players back into the core gameplay after a certain amount of time. Lady Blackbird only lets you refresh after a roleplay scene, and Paranoia has the Six Pack rule to restart the schadenfreude humor of the game upon a PC dying.

Quote from: SHARK on June 03, 2023, 08:32:50 AM
Yep, Chris, right on target. I thought Estar's commentary was definitely more based in what TTRPG's are about.

I try to focus on what I think what would be useful.

Quote from: SHARK on June 03, 2023, 08:32:50 AM
I'm also not sold on how seeking to hyper-fixate on technical elements of "Game Theory" is really worthwhile. When people were 12 years old playing D&D or GMing D&D, nobody gave a damn about bloviating about "Game Theory". Beyond that, seeking to bring academic logic rules of structure into a discussion about running RPG's...*Laughing* Yeah, ok.

The main reason I talk about my "theory" (such as it is) is to make folks aware that their favorite system is probably more flexible than they think. The reason I came the conclusion I have because I have ran the same setting with enough different groups but with different system to notice that all RPGs have more in common than common wisdom says. That this is due their focus on describing what players can do as their characters. As more RPGs about humans having adventure they tend to try to describe similar things.

The most practical aspect of this was when I adopt or try a new system I compared to the list of things I know players try to do in my campaigns.  Learning the system RAW and then learning how it handles my list generally means that it will work out for running my setting in a campaign. And it works as well as it have because of the focus on handling what individual characters do.

Also I learned what really is part of a system and what just the common way of playing that system but not really in the rules. Like levels. Some will treat levels as some special mark. I treat level as a life experience. So every character in my campaign has a class and a level. Even if the author of that particular edition try to set up it as level as something special. D&D 4e was a edition that leaned really hard into this. In the handful of D&D 4e session and the one campaign I ran, I ignored using minions.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 04, 2023, 09:26:38 AM

Quote from: Eirikrautha on June 03, 2023, 11:33:54 PM

Quote from: Fheredin on June 03, 2023, 09:46:27 PM
This combination leads me to my opinion that if you want to learn to make a good roleplaying game, you at least need to know about video game design and interpolate towards the tabletop game.

And your opinion is incorrect (which is what everyone here is trying to tell you).  There's a difference between the specifics of TTRPGs compared to video games (starting with the capabilities of the referee compared to the limitations of programming, and extending to the role of the players' imaginations in each).  Cats and cows are both mammals, but studying a cow's digestive system isn't going to make you competent to treat a cat.  TTRPGs and video games are both games, but the specific context, interface, and goals of each create different requirements in each medium.  Not totally divorced, but very different in some aspects.

The fact that EVERYONE else here sees this and you don't is NOT a sign of your superior "discernment."  As the old saying goes: When one person treats you like an asshole, he is probably the asshole.  When EVERYONE treats you like an asshole... you're the asshole.

Oh, look, another bandwagon fallacy. Why am I not surprised.

I find this forum's infatuation with the bandwagon fallacy to be absolutely bizarre. The exact same argument you are making right now could be applied to RPG Pundit's own work; why would I play Lion and Dragon when 5E is far more popular and that clearly makes it better, right? And why would I watch RPG Pundit's videos when Critical Role is far more popular, and clearly that makes it better, right? You want me to be concerned about "being an asshole?" Pundit's catch-line is literally, "the final boss in internet shitlords." Practically everything about this community falls apart if you appeal to the bandwagon.

Now, clearly you're going to come up with other explanations about why I should play a less popular OSR game compared to D&D. My point is not that those reasons do not exist. Quite the contrary: because those reasons exist, the bandwagon is--and always was--irrelevant.

Bandwagon fallacy?  Because I point out that everyone else disagrees with you (so you might want to figure out why)?  That's not what that means.  You are clearly are using terms that you don't fully understand.  Apparently you've decided to educate everyone here on the Dunning-Kruger Effect, too, with yourself as the example...

Quote from: Fheredin on June 04, 2023, 03:21:42 PMNot exactly. RPGs always have core gameplay loops and quite often core feedback loops, and I wouldn't say they have a minor influence on the game, at all. What is true is that the GM and players are not limited to them. They are free to deviate from these core components as much as they wish, and to some extent, deviation is a good thing because it contrasts the mainstay of the game. But most games lose personality the more you deviate, so it's in everyone's interest to keep deviations out of the core loop under control.

Many games have mechanics structured to push players back into the core gameplay after a certain amount of time. Lady Blackbird only lets you refresh after a roleplay scene, and Paranoia has the Six Pack rule to restart the schadenfreude humor of the game upon a PC dying.

While I agree that every game has a core play loop, not all games present that as solid procedures to be followed. Some present it as a toolkit to be used or ignored as the players see fit, while others make it a point that "if you don't follow this play loop to a T, you may as well be playing another game entirely". Which goes back to my point about playing styles and cultures. No matter how tight a given design is, it's only worth as much as that specific culture values it.

P.S: nice examples with Paranoia and Lady Blackbird.

Quote from: estar on June 04, 2023, 04:51:24 PM

Quote from: SHARK on June 03, 2023, 08:32:50 AM
Yep, Chris, right on target. I thought Estar's commentary was definitely more based in what TTRPG's are about.

I try to focus on what I think what would be useful.

Quote from: SHARK on June 03, 2023, 08:32:50 AM
I'm also not sold on how seeking to hyper-fixate on technical elements of "Game Theory" is really worthwhile. When people were 12 years old playing D&D or GMing D&D, nobody gave a damn about bloviating about "Game Theory". Beyond that, seeking to bring academic logic rules of structure into a discussion about running RPG's...*Laughing* Yeah, ok.

The main reason I talk about my "theory" (such as it is) is to make folks aware that their favorite system is probably more flexible than they think. The reason I came the conclusion I have because I have ran the same setting with enough different groups but with different system to notice that all RPGs have more in common than common wisdom says. That this is due their focus on describing what players can do as their characters. As more RPGs about humans having adventure they tend to try to describe similar things.

The most practical aspect of this was when I adopt or try a new system I compared to the list of things I know players try to do in my campaigns.  Learning the system RAW and then learning how it handles my list generally means that it will work out for running my setting in a campaign. And it works as well as it have because of the focus on handling what individual characters do.

Also I learned what really is part of a system and what just the common way of playing that system but not really in the rules. Like levels. Some will treat levels as some special mark. I treat level as a life experience. So every character in my campaign has a class and a level. Even if the author of that particular edition try to set up it as level as something special. D&D 4e was a edition that leaned really hard into this. In the handful of D&D 4e session and the one campaign I ran, I ignored using minions.

Greetings!

Good stuff, Estar! I agree. In my own world of Thandor, I have run campaigns in my world over the decades, using a variety of systems--AD&D, Rolemaster, 3E, 5E, and such, and while some of the dials of magic power change--it becomes apparent that the actual system used is irrelevant. What is far more important is ME running the world, and the PLAYERS doing stuff in the world that they know and love. The mechanics of the world have changed periodically with the different systems, but everything that the PLAYERS know, love, and trust to be real and true in the world--has remained unchanged.

The whole system thing and focus on theory and mechanics can occasionally be useful and has some commonalities with TTRPG's, but video game theory crafting just isn't that relevant for TTRPG's. TTRPG's are much more about the GM, the Players, stories, social interactions and roleplaying events than anything to do with "Theory Crafting" or philosophical debate and argument structure.

Your Wilderlands world has always sounded awesome, Rob! You always have a solid grasp on what is important for TTRPG's.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Itachi on June 05, 2023, 01:48:48 PM

Quote from: Fheredin on June 04, 2023, 03:21:42 PMNot exactly. RPGs always have core gameplay loops and quite often core feedback loops, and I wouldn't say they have a minor influence on the game, at all. What is true is that the GM and players are not limited to them. They are free to deviate from these core components as much as they wish, and to some extent, deviation is a good thing because it contrasts the mainstay of the game. But most games lose personality the more you deviate, so it's in everyone's interest to keep deviations out of the core loop under control.

Many games have mechanics structured to push players back into the core gameplay after a certain amount of time. Lady Blackbird only lets you refresh after a roleplay scene, and Paranoia has the Six Pack rule to restart the schadenfreude humor of the game upon a PC dying.

While I agree that every game has a core play loop, not all games present that as solid procedures to be followed. Some present it as a toolkit to be used or ignored as the players see fit, while others make it a point that "if you don't follow this play loop to a T, you may as well be playing another game entirely". Which goes back to my point about playing styles and cultures. No matter how tight a given design is, it's only worth as much as that specific culture values it.

P.S: nice examples with Paranoia and Lady Blackbird.

I thought the peanut gallery would react well to some examples. Well, react, anyways.

I do see your point with cultures of play, but I think that's not quite the full story, either. A game designed to have a tight gameplay loop can be forcibly opened up by the GM and it usually doesn't cause problems which you can't manage, but a game with a loose gameplay loop usually can't be tightened. Tightening a gameplay loop usually requires game design skill, so you would expect GMs with a homebrewing background to be able to do it better than GMs with a RAW mentality, because when the GM designs a gameplay loop to tighten the game, arguably you aren't playing the same game; you're playing the GM's homebrew. Loose gameplay loops make a mechanical ratchet which only works to loosen play and not tighten.

Although even this isn't a perfect assessment because gameplay loops fit into different parts of the game.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on June 05, 2023, 11:15:33 AM
Bandwagon fallacy?  Because I point out that everyone else disagrees with you (so you might want to figure out why)?  That's not what that means.  You are clearly are using terms that you don't fully understand.  Apparently you've decided to educate everyone here on the Dunning-Kruger Effect, too, with yourself as the example...

Quote from: Fheredin on June 05, 2023, 04:18:38 PM
I thought the peanut gallery would react well to some examples. Well, react, anyways.

(https://i.imgur.com/GwJI6D1.gif)

This is completely irrelevant, but here's this strange and obscure Wikipedia article on a prey behavior called stotting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stotting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stotting)

QuoteThe question of why prey animals stot has been investigated by evolutionary biologists including John Maynard Smith, C. D. Fitzgibbon, and Tim Caro; all of them conclude that the most likely explanation given the available evidence is that it is an honest signal to predators that the stotting animal would be difficult to catch. Such a signal is called "honest" as it is not deceptive in any way, and would benefit both predator and prey; the predator as it avoids a costly and unproductive chase, and the prey as it does not get chased.

Stotting also makes for an effective form of mockery, but that's purely academic.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 05, 2023, 05:38:10 PM
This is completely irrelevant, but here's this strange and obscure Wikipedia article on a prey behavior called stotting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stotting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stotting)

QuoteThe question of why prey animals stot has been investigated by evolutionary biologists including John Maynard Smith, C. D. Fitzgibbon, and Tim Caro; all of them conclude that the most likely explanation given the available evidence is that it is an honest signal to predators that the stotting animal would be difficult to catch. Such a signal is called "honest" as it is not deceptive in any way, and would benefit both predator and prey; the predator as it avoids a costly and unproductive chase, and the prey as it does not get chased.

Stotting also makes for an effective form of mockery, but that's purely academic.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on June 05, 2023, 11:15:33 AM
Bandwagon fallacy?  Because I point out that everyone else disagrees with you (so you might want to figure out why)?  That's not what that means.  You are clearly are using terms that you don't fully understand.  Apparently you've decided to educate everyone here on the Dunning-Kruger Effect, too, with yourself as the example...

(https://media.tenor.com/JMOwzkVHV1kAAAAC/laugh-elissa.gif)

Quote from: Brad on June 05, 2023, 05:09:39 PM

Quote from: Eirikrautha on June 05, 2023, 11:15:33 AM
Bandwagon fallacy?  Because I point out that everyone else disagrees with you (so you might want to figure out why)?  That's not what that means.  You are clearly are using terms that you don't fully understand.  Apparently you've decided to educate everyone here on the Dunning-Kruger Effect, too, with yourself as the example...

Quote from: Fheredin on June 05, 2023, 04:18:38 PM
I thought the peanut gallery would react well to some examples. Well, react, anyways.

(https://i.imgur.com/GwJI6D1.gif)

There's a woman that one would want to make happy, not just to avoid hassle, but because her smile lights up the room.

I have to agree that a lot of games, particularly long-running IPs, have long since discarded playability in favor of "fans" jerking it to lore bloat in online discussions. Which I despise. These are games, not religions. But "fans" act like these books are holy texts that it's badwrongfun not to obey as dogma. It's led me to pretty much writeoff most of the hobby and, ironically (and I hate it), focus my efforts toward prose fiction and video games.

I'm currently trying to write ttrpg material. I'm always thinking about how to make material that is actually relevant to players and not just a hack fantasy writer jerking it to irrelevant factoids (i.e. lore). I find myself constantly changing my mind and never being truly satisfied, and quite frankly I think that's a good thing. I'll never be perfect and I have to accept that. Game designers aren't prophets and shouldn't be treated like prophets.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on June 05, 2023, 07:09:03 PM
I'm currently trying to write ttrpg material. I'm always thinking about how to make material that is actually relevant to players and not just a hack fantasy writer jerking it to irrelevant factoids (i.e. lore). I find myself constantly changing my mind and never being truly satisfied, and quite frankly I think that's a good thing. I'll never be perfect and I have to accept that. Game designers aren't prophets and shouldn't be treated like prophets.

For the most part,  at the level I operate at, folks prize authenticity.

For example, suppose you are interested in writing a modest player's handbook.  Then write up what you actually used in your campaign as that player's handbook. Reserve a small amount of the word count to explain why you did what you did. So while in terms of mechanics, it may not be that distinct, it also reflects you and the decisions you made. Folks like that and they like supporting fellow gamers when they go the extra mile to polish up their notes into something usable.

And best of all you don't have to debate the theory because it is based on material you used that was part of a successful campaign you ran.  The main challenge is understanding and explaining your assumptions tersely so the reader knows where you are coming from. I have gotten very little static about tacking on a skill system to OD&D because I clearly explain why it is there.

It is not there to "fix" OD&D. It is there because players while trashing my setting what to do things other than spellcasting and combat to realize their plans. That they want to be better at these things. So hence a skill system for OD&D.
https://www.batintheattic.com/downloads/MW%20Majestic%20Fantasy%20Basic%20RPG%20Rev%2010.pdf

Hope that helps.

QuoteNot exactly. RPGs always have core gameplay loops and quite often core feedback loops, and I wouldn't say they have a minor influence on the game, at all. What is true is that the GM and players are not limited to them. They are free to deviate from these core components as much as they wish, and to some extent, deviation is a good thing because it contrasts the mainstay of the game. But most games lose personality the more you deviate, so it's in everyone's interest to keep deviations out of the core loop under control.

So what is core gameplay loop for Vampire? Because after reading some of it - Cain only knows what it is. Aside of need of feeding - which is more complication and not really focus of presented world, I do not see one in design.

QuoteThe whole system thing and focus on theory and mechanics can occasionally be useful and has some commonalities with TTRPG's, but video game theory crafting just isn't that relevant for TTRPG's. TTRPG's are much more about the GM, the Players, stories, social interactions and roleplaying events than anything to do with "Theory Crafting" or philosophical debate and argument structure.

And all those elements with be analysed by philosopher and culture scientists. And that's good.
Frankly is way easier to discuss RPG with those weirdos theories, than with utterly subjective personal table dynamics.

Quote from: Wrarh of GodSo what is core gameplay loop for Vampire? Because after reading some of it - Cain only knows what it is.

I think this is one point where the Forge crowd was spot on. Vampire is superb in aesthetics and mood... but it's all over the place in actual play.

Quote from: Wrath of God on June 18, 2023, 07:38:17 PM

QuoteNot exactly. RPGs always have core gameplay loops and quite often core feedback loops, and I wouldn't say they have a minor influence on the game, at all. What is true is that the GM and players are not limited to them. They are free to deviate from these core components as much as they wish, and to some extent, deviation is a good thing because it contrasts the mainstay of the game. But most games lose personality the more you deviate, so it's in everyone's interest to keep deviations out of the core loop under control.

So what is core gameplay loop for Vampire? Because after reading some of it - Cain only knows what it is. Aside of need of feeding - which is more complication and not really focus of presented world, I do not see one in design.

Quote from: Itachi on June 18, 2023, 09:48:19 PM
I think this is one point where the Forge crowd was spot on. Vampire is superb in aesthetics and mood... but it's all over the place in actual play.

I view VtM as Call of C'thulu done with Vampires and Blood and the player's conscience rather than Elder Gods and incomprehensible ideas and a permanent loss of sanity. Does this make the core gameplay loop more apparent?

VtM's Hunger dice or Blood Pool mechanics (depending on the edition) are feedback loops where certain rolls trigger you to lose control of your character, so the core gameplay loop of VtM is a constant renegotiation of self, with you randomly losing control of your character and attempting to regain control afterwards. As this progresses and happens more, the game naturally haggles your esteem for your own player character away until you view them as a monster.

I can see why this would throw you for a loop, though, because this gameplay loop is basically internal to the PC, and obscured by a ton of worldbuilding and extraneous mechanics and a generally loose approach to gameplay. It's a classic Curveball Code, where meaning is hidden behind a lot of red herrings. It is intentionally designed to be difficult to parse the gameplay loop out.


EDIT: OK, so "always having" a gameplay loop is probably a bit strong; many games assume the GM and players will write in their own gameplay loop, which creates a gray area where there is a gameplay loop, but it isn't in the book and it isn't shared between groups. Gameplay loops are key to how games produce game and genre feel, so if you play without one at all you probably won't enjoy the game too much. /EDIT

Quote

QuoteThe whole system thing and focus on theory and mechanics can occasionally be useful and has some commonalities with TTRPG's, but video game theory crafting just isn't that relevant for TTRPG's. TTRPG's are much more about the GM, the Players, stories, social interactions and roleplaying events than anything to do with "Theory Crafting" or philosophical debate and argument structure.

And all those elements with be analysed by philosopher and culture scientists. And that's good.
Frankly is way easier to discuss RPG with those weirdos theories, than with utterly subjective personal table dynamics.

I can't tell if this is being sarcastic or not.

I think "theory" is a really bad word what's going on and it's one of the legacies of the Forge I wish we could outgrow. "Paradigm" is a better word for two reasons; first, it's more accurate to the process because a paradigm is just a pattern people have noticed. Second (and more importantly) the goal of a theory is to remain proven, but the goal of a paradigm is to trigger Paradigm Shift by finding something outside of the pattern. The entire purpose of making these bloody things is so we can poke holes in them.

Regardless, I think theorycrafting is a good practice in RPGs, but not because of discussion. It's because it's much easier to teach game design and quest design if you start with a little abstract theory. The abstraction of the theory gives you a way to understand how and why you should implement exceptions.

Fheredin, 

About Vampire, it seems more a case of you finding/interpreting a play loop in the game's text than something intended (and clearly communicated) by the authors. EDIT: I actually agree the new 5th edition makes this core loop more clear. My criticism is on the old editions.

Well, we'll probably wind up talking past each other, then; I have very little familiarity with the old versions of the game. And if anything, that kinda reinforces my point because it shows a trend of a game with almost no visible gameplay loop being iterated into one, so improving the game required adding a gameplay loop.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 19, 2023, 01:47:57 PM
Well, we'll probably wind up talking past each other, then; I have very little familiarity with the old versions of the game. And if anything, that kinda reinforces my point because it shows a trend of a game with almost no visible gameplay loop being iterated into one, so improving the game required adding a gameplay loop.

The funny thing though is that Vampire 5e split the fanbase as badly as 4E did to D&D. The primary complaint is that the introduced "game play loop" for 5e was just one of many ways it was played ("Vampions" being one of the most notable alternatives) and V5 basically made all those other styles utterly untenable (while crapping on the previously established lore). It's altered mechanics also made it virtually impossible to function in mortal society like some sort vampiric mastermind... consigning players to essentially the hunted outcast school of play.

As such a large portion of V5's fanbase is just like D&D 5e's base... players who've never played the prior editions to have any experience with them.

I, for one, have zero interest in V5, particularly not until they actually add rules for Dhampirs. They were the only part of VtM I was ever all that interested in... in large part because in exchange for losing most of their vampiric oomph (excepting their capacity to take a supernatural beating like few things short of methuselahs*) was also losing the degeneration loop... such as it was... and instead having either the "surviving as the hunted" or the "maintain your cover lest you become hunted" gameplay loops.

*which can become even more exceptional with a couple of merits available to living beings... spark of life, fist of god and toxic blood made for an excellent vampire hunter.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on June 05, 2023, 11:15:33 AM

Quote from: Fheredin on June 04, 2023, 09:26:38 AM

Quote from: Eirikrautha on June 03, 2023, 11:33:54 PM

Quote from: Fheredin on June 03, 2023, 09:46:27 PM
This combination leads me to my opinion that if you want to learn to make a good roleplaying game, you at least need to know about video game design and interpolate towards the tabletop game.

And your opinion is incorrect (which is what everyone here is trying to tell you).  There's a difference between the specifics of TTRPGs compared to video games (starting with the capabilities of the referee compared to the limitations of programming, and extending to the role of the players' imaginations in each).  Cats and cows are both mammals, but studying a cow's digestive system isn't going to make you competent to treat a cat.  TTRPGs and video games are both games, but the specific context, interface, and goals of each create different requirements in each medium.  Not totally divorced, but very different in some aspects.

The fact that EVERYONE else here sees this and you don't is NOT a sign of your superior "discernment."  As the old saying goes: When one person treats you like an asshole, he is probably the asshole.  When EVERYONE treats you like an asshole... you're the asshole.

Oh, look, another bandwagon fallacy. Why am I not surprised.

I find this forum's infatuation with the bandwagon fallacy to be absolutely bizarre. The exact same argument you are making right now could be applied to RPG Pundit's own work; why would I play Lion and Dragon when 5E is far more popular and that clearly makes it better, right? And why would I watch RPG Pundit's videos when Critical Role is far more popular, and clearly that makes it better, right? You want me to be concerned about "being an asshole?" Pundit's catch-line is literally, "the final boss in internet shitlords." Practically everything about this community falls apart if you appeal to the bandwagon.

Now, clearly you're going to come up with other explanations about why I should play a less popular OSR game compared to D&D. My point is not that those reasons do not exist. Quite the contrary: because those reasons exist, the bandwagon is--and always was--irrelevant.

Bandwagon fallacy?  Because I point out that everyone else disagrees with you (so you might want to figure out why)?  That's not what that means.  You are clearly are using terms that you don't fully understand.  Apparently you've decided to educate everyone here on the Dunning-Kruger Effect, too, with yourself as the example...

I've got to second you on this.


The nature of a logical fallacy is that the underlying argument is invalid (which is technical term, not a claim that anyone's point of view is invalid), and it typically involves irrelevant information.

The bandwagon fallacy involves introducing popularity as an irrelevant piece of information to conclude something that has no connection to popularity.

However, it is important to note, if people go out and buy a product, the act of that purchase is, what we sometimes call in economics, "demonstrated preference." That is, it's an observable empirical fact that implies something about value preference at the point of exchange. If a lot of people do that, then it speaks to value preference on a larger scale.

To the uninitiated, it may seem like this is raising an appeal to popularity. But if it is specifically being raised to conclude something about rank-ordering demonstrated value preference or a group, then "popularity" is not irrelevant information, and it is not an invalid argument. It's not a bandwagon fallacy. It's not any kind of fallacy. it's spot on relevant.


Another mis-attributed fallacy I often see (not here necessarily but in general) is the ad hominem fallacy. Ad hominem doesn't mean personal attack. As a logical fallacy, again, it deals with injecting irrelevant information in presenting invalid arguments. If what we're talking about is good RPG design, accusing an adversary in debate of being a wife beater is an ad hominem. But questioning their honesty or integrity, or even just their qualifications, while that may be considered a personal attack on their character, is actually germane to an argument if that person is presenting facts without citations.

And it's worth pointing out, since this HAS come up, that facts WITH citations does not mean an appeal to authority is taking place. It just means the honesty or integrity or qualifications of the person providing citations is no longer germane with regards to the content of those citations (although a pattern of providing false or misleading citations is still fair game for calling out). It doesn't expose the citer to committing a new fallacy. It guards them from certain types of counterargument.

Quote from: Chris24601 on June 19, 2023, 02:17:09 PM

Quote from: Fheredin on June 19, 2023, 01:47:57 PM
Well, we'll probably wind up talking past each other, then; I have very little familiarity with the old versions of the game. And if anything, that kinda reinforces my point because it shows a trend of a game with almost no visible gameplay loop being iterated into one, so improving the game required adding a gameplay loop.

The funny thing though is that Vampire 5e split the fanbase as badly as 4E did to D&D. The primary complaint is that the introduced "game play loop" for 5e was just one of many ways it was played ("Vampions" being one of the most notable alternatives) and V5 basically made all those other styles utterly untenable (while crapping on the previously established lore). It's altered mechanics also made it virtually impossible to function in mortal society like some sort vampiric mastermind... consigning players to essentially the hunted outcast school of play.

As such a large portion of V5's fanbase is just like D&D 5e's base... players who've never played the prior editions to have any experience with them.

I, for one, have zero interest in V5, particularly not until they actually add rules for Dhampirs. They were the only part of VtM I was ever all that interested in... in large part because in exchange for losing most of their vampiric oomph (excepting their capacity to take a supernatural beating like few things short of methuselahs*) was also losing the degeneration loop... such as it was... and instead having either the "surviving as the hunted" or the "maintain your cover lest you become hunted" gameplay loops.

*which can become even more exceptional with a couple of merits available to living beings... spark of life, fist of god and toxic blood made for an excellent vampire hunter.

Some are worse than others, but it's rare that a new edition doesn't trigger some kind of an edition-war. Again, it's largely because publishers push new editions for business reasons more often than they actually improve the game.

I can kinda understand the rationale behind some of the funny design choices. The designer wanted a narrative-first play, but provided a ton of crunchy rules, which you could say causes ludonarrative dissonance, but I think it's more accurate to say it gives the game a Jekyll and Hyde duality, which kinda fits the setting. I seriously doubt that was intended; if that duality is a good thing, it's the product of luck.

Quote from: Lunamancer on June 19, 2023, 03:56:10 PM

Quote from: Eirikrautha on June 05, 2023, 11:15:33 AM

Quote from: Fheredin on June 04, 2023, 09:26:38 AM

Quote from: Eirikrautha on June 03, 2023, 11:33:54 PM

Quote from: Fheredin on June 03, 2023, 09:46:27 PM
This combination leads me to my opinion that if you want to learn to make a good roleplaying game, you at least need to know about video game design and interpolate towards the tabletop game.

And your opinion is incorrect (which is what everyone here is trying to tell you).  There's a difference between the specifics of TTRPGs compared to video games (starting with the capabilities of the referee compared to the limitations of programming, and extending to the role of the players' imaginations in each).  Cats and cows are both mammals, but studying a cow's digestive system isn't going to make you competent to treat a cat.  TTRPGs and video games are both games, but the specific context, interface, and goals of each create different requirements in each medium.  Not totally divorced, but very different in some aspects.

The fact that EVERYONE else here sees this and you don't is NOT a sign of your superior "discernment."  As the old saying goes: When one person treats you like an asshole, he is probably the asshole.  When EVERYONE treats you like an asshole... you're the asshole.

Oh, look, another bandwagon fallacy. Why am I not surprised.

I find this forum's infatuation with the bandwagon fallacy to be absolutely bizarre. The exact same argument you are making right now could be applied to RPG Pundit's own work; why would I play Lion and Dragon when 5E is far more popular and that clearly makes it better, right? And why would I watch RPG Pundit's videos when Critical Role is far more popular, and clearly that makes it better, right? You want me to be concerned about "being an asshole?" Pundit's catch-line is literally, "the final boss in internet shitlords." Practically everything about this community falls apart if you appeal to the bandwagon.

Now, clearly you're going to come up with other explanations about why I should play a less popular OSR game compared to D&D. My point is not that those reasons do not exist. Quite the contrary: because those reasons exist, the bandwagon is--and always was--irrelevant.

Bandwagon fallacy?  Because I point out that everyone else disagrees with you (so you might want to figure out why)?  That's not what that means.  You are clearly are using terms that you don't fully understand.  Apparently you've decided to educate everyone here on the Dunning-Kruger Effect, too, with yourself as the example...

I've got to second you on this.


The nature of a logical fallacy is that the underlying argument is invalid (which is technical term, not a claim that anyone's point of view is invalid), and it typically involves irrelevant information.

The bandwagon fallacy involves introducing popularity as an irrelevant piece of information to conclude something that has no connection to popularity.

However, it is important to note, if people go out and buy a product, the act of that purchase is, what we sometimes call in economics, "demonstrated preference." That is, it's an observable empirical fact that implies something about value preference at the point of exchange. If a lot of people do that, then it speaks to value preference on a larger scale.

To the uninitiated, it may seem like this is raising an appeal to popularity. But if it is specifically being raised to conclude something about rank-ordering demonstrated value preference or a group, then "popularity" is not irrelevant information, and it is not an invalid argument. It's not a bandwagon fallacy. It's not any kind of fallacy. it's spot on relevant.


Another mis-attributed fallacy I often see (not here necessarily but in general) is the ad hominem fallacy. Ad hominem doesn't mean personal attack. As a logical fallacy, again, it deals with injecting irrelevant information in presenting invalid arguments. If what we're talking about is good RPG design, accusing an adversary in debate of being a wife beater is an ad hominem. But questioning their honesty or integrity, or even just their qualifications, while that may be considered a personal attack on their character, is actually germane to an argument if that person is presenting facts without citations.

And it's worth pointing out, since this HAS come up, that facts WITH citations does not mean an appeal to authority is taking place. It just means the honesty or integrity or qualifications of the person providing citations is no longer germane with regards to the content of those citations (although a pattern of providing false or misleading citations is still fair game for calling out). It doesn't expose the citer to committing a new fallacy. It guards them from certain types of counterargument.

Seconding who for what? That I was mis-applying the fallacies?

About the appeal to authority; estar made an exemplary claim to experience (a variation of authority)...and then proceeded to follow that up with an opinion which made some strange logical gaffes for someone with that background and did not constructively utilize that experience at all. An appeal to authority can strengthen a positive case which already stands on other evidence, but it does not support a negative case well because negative cases are very hard to make.

As to bandwagoning: Good. But surely the popularity is not itself the important part; now you need to go one step further and explain why something is more popular. Before you do that the bandwagon is irrelevant. In fact, after you do that, the bandwagon again becomes irrelevant. So, minus the observation of preference--which is a path to explaining something deeper--the bandwagon is just plain irrelevant.

I would argue that preference differences are attributable to WotC spending seven figures annually on marketing and most other TTRPG studios maybe spend a hundredth of that. So take differences in popularity with a grain of salt.

And for ad hominems...if Pundit wants to do something he can, but I view them as inconsequential and immaterial.

Quote from: jeff37923 on May 23, 2023, 06:33:54 PM

Quote from: Grognard GM on May 23, 2023, 07:59:09 AM

Quote from: jeff37923 on May 23, 2023, 07:54:53 AM
The ones who like marble fudge, obviously.

Then why are you always complaining about the people at Nu-WotC? They love fudge.

I complain because WotC has lost the ability to mix it with the vanilla.

If wotc tried to breathe oxygen I am sure they'd figure out some way to fail that too.

Quote from: Itachi on June 18, 2023, 09:48:19 PM
I think this is one point where the Forge crowd was spot on. Vampire is superb in aesthetics and mood... but it's all over the place in actual play.

I don't see what so confused about it. It describes a world where vampire (and other monsters) are real and has a culture of their own. If it is interesting to a group, then they can make vampires and roleplay accordingly.  Like any group of sentient beings, there are lot of things that could be happening.

The two most popular things to focus on in my experience are the group trying to advance themselves through the vampiric social hierarchy or playing kewl monsters with superheroes kicking the shit out of things.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 19, 2023, 06:05:11 PM
About the appeal to authority; estar made an exemplary claim to experience (a variation of authority)...and then proceeded to follow that up with an opinion which made some strange logical gaffes for someone with that background and did not constructively utilize that experience at all.

Because you have failed to understand my approach to RPGS despite my attempts to explain it in different way.

In a nutshell, my group and I don't play a game, we participate in a roleplaying campaign. The focus of which is pretending to be characters within a setting that I create like the Majestic Wilderlands. I use a game like D&D, GURPS, Harnmaster, etc. as an aide to make running the campaign easier. Having a system helps for the reason I outlined earlier in this thread.

There is no core gameplay loop in my campaigns, instead I describe a setting. The players describe their characters using that information. I then describe the initial circumstances in which they find themselves. Throughout the campaign, we loop through the players describing or roleplaying what they do as their characters and myself describing the circumstances they keep finding themselves in or roleplaying the NPCs they interact with.

My focus is on presenting a world alive enough that the players feel like their characters are living their lives and having interesting adventures. I have developed techniques over the years that allow me to handle anything that their character could do within the setting.

If they decide at the last minute to jump their starship to Efate instead of Regina, journey to Rhosgobel instead of Laketown, or decide to stop at the Naughty Nannies in City-State instead of proceeding to the Seahawk Tavern, I have them covered. Or the one time in one of my MW campaigns, the entire session was focused on the party helping a drunk peasant and his family that resulted from a random encounter I rolled for one player while he was in the village to buy supplies.

A group could focus on using D&D, VtM, GURPS, etc as a game and focus one whatever core gameplay loops they have in the mechanics, like dungeon exploration, for D&D. In my opinion, they would be missing the point and benefit of running an RPG campaign. However there are a lot of factors that go into how a group does things and if they find doing that fun, then more power to them.

You from your numerous posts so far clearly want the system mechanics to spell out the choices you have while roleplaying a character. You would have trouble in my campaign because when I use a system, I ignore what I consider bullshit about gameplay loops. When I make my own system like my Majestic Fantasy RPG, focus on describing how the different elements fit within a setting that the reader could create. The mechanics I use are the ones that focus on answering the question "When a character does X, what could happen?"

In my campaign, you will have to what you know of the setting I described, and your character's description background, to describe what it is you will be doing, and what NPCs (or PCs) to interact with. You will know how strong your character is, how smart they are, and what skills and abilities they have. What you do with that will be entirely up to you while playing in my campaign.

The only metagame consideration is that we will be playing as part of a group of other players. As a result, I only can pay so much attention to a single player during a session.

Until you get the above, you will continue to fail to understand what I am talking about. Including the comment I just made about the point of VtM 1e is to roleplay vampires who live within the WoD setting.

Quote from: estar on June 20, 2023, 10:41:45 AM

Quote from: Fheredin on June 19, 2023, 06:05:11 PM
About the appeal to authority; estar made an exemplary claim to experience (a variation of authority)...and then proceeded to follow that up with an opinion which made some strange logical gaffes for someone with that background and did not constructively utilize that experience at all.

Because you have failed to understand my approach to RPGS despite my attempts to explain it in different way.

In a nutshell, my group and I don't play a game, we participate in a roleplaying campaign. The focus of which is pretending to be characters within a setting that I create like the Majestic Wilderlands. I use a game like D&D, GURPS, Harnmaster, etc. as an aide to make running the campaign easier. Having a system helps for the reason I outlined earlier in this thread.

There is no core gameplay loop in my campaigns, instead I describe a setting. The players describe their characters using that information. I then describe the initial circumstances in which they find themselves. Throughout the campaign, we loop through the players describing or roleplaying what they do as their characters and myself describing the circumstances they keep finding themselves in or roleplaying the NPCs they interact with.

My focus is on presenting a world alive enough that the players feel like their characters are living their lives and having interesting adventures. I have developed techniques over the years that allow me to handle anything that their character could do within the setting.

If they decide at the last minute to jump their starship to Efate instead of Regina, journey to Rhosgobel instead of Laketown, or decide to stop at the Naughty Nannies in City-State instead of proceeding to the Seahawk Tavern, I have them covered. Or the one time in one of my MW campaigns, the entire session was focused on the party helping a drunk peasant and his family that resulted from a random encounter I rolled for one player while he was in the village to buy supplies.

A group could focus on using D&D, VtM, GURPS, etc as a game and focus one whatever core gameplay loops they have in the mechanics, like dungeon exploration, for D&D. In my opinion, they would be missing the point and benefit of running an RPG campaign. However there are a lot of factors that go into how a group does things and if they find doing that fun, then more power to them.

You from your numerous posts so far clearly want the system mechanics to spell out the choices you have while roleplaying a character. You would have trouble in my campaign because when I use a system, I ignore what I consider bullshit about gameplay loops. When I make my own system like my Majestic Fantasy RPG, focus on describing how the different elements fit within a setting that the reader could create. The mechanics I use are the ones that focus on answering the question "When a character does X, what could happen?"

In my campaign, you will have to what you know of the setting I described, and your character's description background, to describe what it is you will be doing, and what NPCs (or PCs) to interact with. You will know how strong your character is, how smart they are, and what skills and abilities they have. What you do with that will be entirely up to you while playing in my campaign.

The only metagame consideration is that we will be playing as part of a group of other players. As a result, I only can pay so much attention to a single player during a session.

Until you get the above, you will continue to fail to understand what I am talking about. Including the comment I just made about the point of VtM 1e is to roleplay vampires who live within the WoD setting.

No, I understand your perspective perfectly clearly; I just think that your approach is a "your table and tables like it" thing, and you are probably phrasing it more strongly than necessary. It's not wrong, but it also isn't a universal good. Also, I kinda doubt your games have no gameplay loops in them; with any significant amount of gaming experience, you probably unconsciously copy gameplay loops, even if you don't stick to one particular loop long enough that it becomes obvious. Gameplay loops might not be absolutely universal, but they are a common and potentially subtle enough structure that a complete absence would probably feel off to most players. However, I can't prove that statement without access to something like campaign notes. And even then I doubt you'd agree with my assessment. I get a strong implication that you want your games to not have gameplay loops. I guess because you're afraid that if you see them in your game, they are static entities will compel you to do something you might feel doesn't feel organic to the campaign.

I view gameplay loops as integral to creating game and genre feel. If you know about them, you can make intelligent decisions about deviating from them or altering them to change the genre feel of the campaign as it progresses. You say you don't have gameplay loops; what I hear is that you rely on your GMing experience to tell you what to do next, and you are confusing things like having multiple gameplay loops, hot-swapping them, or modifying a gameplay loop as the players play through one with not having them at all.

All those are really cool advanced GMing tricks, by the way. And the reason I think people should discuss gameplay loops isn't that you can't learn these tricks through experience alone, but that the best way for an experienced GM to teach them to a beginner is to start with a dash of general principles and abstract theory.

Of course, feedback loops are are a different matter. Feedback loops are by definition taking one game subsystem's output and using as an input for another. I can see you unconsciously sneaking a gameplay loop into your game for a session or two, but interlinking subsystems isn't the kind of thing you do accidentally.

QuoteYou from your numerous posts so far clearly want the system mechanics to spell out the choices you have while roleplaying a character. You would have trouble in my campaign because when I use a system, I ignore what I consider bullshit about gameplay loops. When I make my own system like my Majestic Fantasy RPG, focus on describing how the different elements fit within a setting that the reader could create. The mechanics I use are the ones that focus on answering the question "When a character does X, what could happen?"

I find this a very weird, caricature-based criticism. About a year ago I posted a prototype core mechanic here which can cook an egg a dozen different ways. (https://www.therpgsite.com/design-development-and-gameplay/custom-core-mechanic-feedback/ (https://www.therpgsite.com/design-development-and-gameplay/custom-core-mechanic-feedback/))

Game rules are like a skeleton. Sure, when you want to eat meat, you probably are going to cut it off the bone (or gnaw it off...don't judge me) but good luck walking without a pelvis.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 20, 2023, 07:26:37 PM
No, I understand your perspective perfectly clearly; I just think that your approach is a "your table and tables like it" thing, and you are probably phrasing it more strongly than necessary. It's not wrong, but it also isn't a universal good.

There is no such thing as a universal good when it comes to RPG campaigns. Campaigns that focus on playing individual characters have adventures. People who think like you do are mistaken. The reality about what is focused on. If you want the campaign to be about collaborating on creating a narrative then there are some techniques that will help and other that are irrelevant. The same if you want the campaign to be a deep exploration of character development. Or a campaign that is more a beer and pretzel lark centered around dungeon exploration or tramp merchants getting into trouble along the star lanes.

My focus happens to be on players making their way as their characters and trashing my setting.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 20, 2023, 07:26:37 PM
Also, I kinda doubt your games have no gameplay loops in them; with any significant amount of gaming experience, you probably unconsciously copy gameplay loops, even if you don't stick to one particular loop long enough that it becomes obvious. 

So I am brain damaged to the point where I can't reflect on my campaigns and give an accurate account of what happened and why? Nice of you to warn me. Also hint, you should do a search on this forum of my posts, the blogs, and the youtube videos I participated in.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 20, 2023, 07:26:37 PMGameplay loops might not be absolutely universal, but they are a common and potentially subtle enough structure that a complete absence would probably feel off to most players.

Hasn't been my experience for four decades.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 20, 2023, 07:26:37 PM
However, I can't prove that statement without access to something like campaign notes.

Oh like these notes
https://batintheattic.blogspot.com/

Or these
https://gamingballistic.com/category/actual-play/majestic-wilderlands/

Or how about these videos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4rj5YsBqc8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfyGnlKadO4&t=2s

Quote from: Fheredin on June 20, 2023, 07:26:37 PM
And even then I doubt you'd agree with my assessment. I get a strong implication that you want your games to not have gameplay loops. I guess because you're afraid that if you see them in your game, they are static entities will compel you to do something you might feel doesn't feel organic to the campaign.

So this is an expert opinion then?

As for what I do, my technique is straightforward, I imagine the circumstances as if I wasn't standing there witnessing what just happen. Think of the possibilities and make a judgment call as to how to describe what happens next. Sometime I will just the result of a procedure or dice roll to help me in this.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 20, 2023, 07:26:37 PM
I view gameplay loops as integral to creating game and genre feel. If you know about them, you can make intelligent decisions about deviating from them or altering them to change the genre feel of the campaign as it progresses. You say you don't have gameplay loops; what I hear is that you rely on your GMing experience to tell you what to do next, and you are confusing things like having multiple gameplay loops, hot-swapping them, or modifying a gameplay loop as the players play through one with not having them at all.

I seem to be able to muddle through just quite fine when it comes to a setting with a specific feel like Middle Earth.
https://bedrockgames.podbean.com/e/rpg-lab-adventures-in-middle-earth/

One thing about my techniques is that you have to know how characters act in a given setting or genre. None of the details matter unless it impacts how a character is roleplayed. Part of what allows me to run certain settings and certain genres well is understanding how characters inhabiting that setting behave under various circumstances. When player interacts with those characters it feel authentic to how Middle Earth works. How life was lived in medieval times if I am running Ars Magica or Harn. How things work in the world of superheroes or life in the far future as imagined in the golden age of science fiction.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 20, 2023, 07:26:37 PM
All those are really cool advanced GMing tricks, by the way. And the reason I think people should discuss gameplay loops isn't that you can't learn these tricks through experience alone, but that the best way for an experienced GM to teach them to a beginner is to start with a dash of general principles and abstract theory.

While mechanics can serve as a shorthand for how a setting works. I have found the best way to get novices up to speed referees is too start them off with a constrained setting like a village, a small wilderness, and dungeon. A starship shuttling cargo around a small cluster of worlds. Constrained so that the choices are not overwhelming and the situation for the players is straightforward to deal with. Then branch out from there.

From the get-go, like with my Majestic Fantasy RPG, I would encourage them to think of the possibilities. Consider how NPCs would go about their lives as the player's adventure. Stress that while a game is being used to help run the campaign, it is not point of playing a RPG campaign. Rather the point is to focus on the characters living their lives within the setting while having adventures. That you don't have to deal with every detail to make this happen in an interesting and fun way. Within the time one has for a hobby.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 20, 2023, 07:26:37 PM
Of course, feedback loops are are a different matter. Feedback loops are by definition taking one game subsystem's output and using as an input for another. I can see you unconsciously sneaking a gameplay loop into your game for a session or two, but interlinking subsystems isn't the kind of thing you do accidentally.

Mechanics in my campaign are there to do one of two things. To describe an element of my setting tersely like a spell or a monster or an object. Second to determine the consequences of what happens when a character does something like strike an opponent with a sword. Craft an item, or fast talk a guard out of an arrest.

And I already linked to this which goes into detail on how I do this specifically when it comes to classic D&D.
https://www.batintheattic.com/downloads/When%20to%20make%20a%20Ruling.pdf

Quote from: Fheredin on June 20, 2023, 07:26:37 PM

QuoteYou from your numerous posts so far clearly want the system mechanics to spell out the choices you have while roleplaying a character. You would have trouble in my campaign because when I use a system, I ignore what I consider bullshit about gameplay loops. When I make my own system like my Majestic Fantasy RPG, focus on describing how the different elements fit within a setting that the reader could create. The mechanics I use are the ones that focus on answering the question "When a character does X, what could happen?"

I find this a very weird, caricature-based criticism. About a year ago I posted a prototype core mechanic here which can cook an egg a dozen different ways. (https://www.therpgsite.com/design-development-and-gameplay/custom-core-mechanic-feedback/ (https://www.therpgsite.com/design-development-and-gameplay/custom-core-mechanic-feedback/))

Game rules are like a skeleton. Sure, when you want to eat meat, you probably are going to cut it off the bone (or gnaw it off...don't judge me) but good luck walking without a pelvis.

A character say they want to cook an egg. If they have a cooking skill/talent/ability even at beginner level then if they have the time, the resources like a cooking fire, utensils, and eggs then they cook the egg. It is only when resources are limited, there is a consequence to failure, or time is limited that things become uncertain, thus a roll is needed.

When the odds are uncertain then a probability of success needs to be determined.

Your core mechanic does nothing to help this process. It is just a particular way of rating relevant abilities and skills and assigning particular odds. At the end of it all is a determination that when success is uncertain, the character has X% of succeeding and that certain abilities may boost this chance of success.

Sorry to deflate your work but this is the wrong kind of thing that RPG authors focus on all the damn time. When it came to the Basic Rules for the Majestic Fantasy RPG, I outlined common situations that have come up in my campaign. Explained when the odds are uncertain. Then explained how to determine the odds for each situation.

And throughout I paint the picture of the context of why these situations occur and why. Mostly by infusing my rulebook with a sense of a specific time and place.  Along with explaining how to adapt this to other campaigns using a different fantasy setting.

The above posts only prove my point about distinct gaming cultures within the hobby.

And the reason why any "universal" principles and practices are prone to fail.

Quote from: Itachi on June 21, 2023, 12:28:36 PM
The above posts only prove my point about distinct gaming cultures within the hobby.

And the reason why any "universal" principles and practices are prone to fail.

I agree. I realize this will sound like an oxymoron considering your statement. But the "best practice" is to state what you are trying to accomplish in a RPG campaign, why are you are trying to do this, how did it work out, and what didn't work. Then let the reader sort out whether it is applicable to them. Acknowledge that it is something you specifically did and leave it at that.

Hardcoding one identifiable game loop (or any set of them) as a system mechanic is sort of like supergluing your underwear on in the morning before work everyday.

For running a game, loops can provide new GMs a reference or guide starting out, as long as a basic sense of a contiguous set of actions towards a plausible conclusion is maintained; at least as far as what's relevant for regular play, it's because of this basic principle (i.e. rising action to a climax) that you can identify any loops at all, which is why it's astute to understand their presence but far from genius to ensure that you never let them deviate from a predefined order of sequence. Recursion through other proscribed micro-loops doesn't detract from this issue, since they will all also be individually hardcoded. It's this celebration of "game loops as mechanic" which vindicates the understanding of an effective game system as a harmonious collection of rules and guidelines elements, and not merely by enhancing piecemeal elements of the meta-social inevitabilities of roleplay in practice and calling that a game not-system.

Hypothetically, if a system has both a dungeon crawl loop and a tavern carousing loop written into the system, how likely is it that GMs will intuit that a dungeon crawl loop can be made from the tavern carousing loop through approximation? How likely is that going to happen at the rate of RAW and RAI being balanced against the Rule of Cool as appreciated by most players, let alone the dwindling GMs? For that design philosophy, will you need a separate loop for adventures in dungeons, adventures in taverns, downtime in either, and both adventures and downtime loops for whenever the characters could be found in: ships, stations, stables, schools, active monasteries, monastery ruins, town markets, town squares, town ports, wilderness roads, wilderness lookouts, fortresses, barracks, churches, cathedrals, chapels, altars, shrines...

The internalized character loops could incorporate elements of that character's background personality, but in a manner defying the player's ability to break that loop in the interests of that character understanding an unfamiliar or exotic point of view. This could require loops for all 16 psychological personality types as they might be understood for just the human race within a specific fantastical setting, well before digging into mythological archetypes for even more macro and micro-loop combinations for these humans considered by themselves, and before every other playable race is described thereafter.

In the case of VtM you could write an honour loop for every clan by priority of interaction, like character external interactions with the clan of membership, internal interactions reflecting on the external reactions with the clan of membership, then external and internal character reactions interacting with another clan for which membership is not held, then interactions considered between your vampire, any nearby clans, clans in correspondence, and non-vampires present or absent all interacting with each other and themselves simultaneously, and this for all clans published within the core system and then all optional clans published in subsequent supplements in addition to the loops most favourable to individual character backgrounds. Don't forget the loops needed for interacting and reflecting on interactions with the domains of prominent individuals of all these factions.

Results: the need to field tons of customer service questions about clan interactivity loops compared to internal interactivity loops etc. etc. etc. in addition to questions about how bonuses stack, or don't, across multiple core magic systems, which altogether and with misc. is more work than anyone wants to do in a day. But then you could have the illusion of variety, since all this looping around means you never have to come up with a direct rationale for your character with personal creativity as a player, with a sort of "one-off loop" tailor made for the adventuring task at hand. Some people may have the self-restraint to publish only the loops that are needed for a given adventure scenario, and that's great at keeping down the third party loops bloat, providing you only ever write a handful of scenarios at once for the sake of the fabled "short-term and one-off campaigns" and ban third party adventure writing.

Quote from: estar on June 20, 2023, 09:37:48 PM

Quote from: Fheredin on June 20, 2023, 07:26:37 PM
No, I understand your perspective perfectly clearly; I just think that your approach is a "your table and tables like it" thing, and you are probably phrasing it more strongly than necessary. It's not wrong, but it also isn't a universal good.

There is no such thing as a universal good when it comes to RPG campaigns. Campaigns that focus on playing individual characters have adventures. People who think like you do are mistaken. The reality about what is focused on. If you want the campaign to be about collaborating on creating a narrative then there are some techniques that will help and other that are irrelevant. The same if you want the campaign to be a deep exploration of character development. Or a campaign that is more a beer and pretzel lark centered around dungeon exploration or tramp merchants getting into trouble along the star lanes.

My focus happens to be on players making their way as their characters and trashing my setting.

So, I'm wrong, but if you rephrase what I said to be the exact same ideas, but you're the one saying them, it suddenly becomes right?

...Sure.

QuoteOh like these notes
https://batintheattic.blogspot.com/

Or these
https://gamingballistic.com/category/actual-play/majestic-wilderlands/

Or how about these videos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4rj5YsBqc8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfyGnlKadO4&t=2s

Fifth edition. You're giving me grief over talking gameplay loops and you're using fifth edition--a game intentionally loaded with them--as a base?

Let me be perfectly clear; my problem is not that 5E is a bad game. I think it's overrated for it's market position and it IS a bad game to introduce new players to roleplaying games with. My problem is that criticisms like this:

QuoteYou from your numerous posts so far clearly want the system mechanics to spell out the choices you have while roleplaying a character. You would have trouble in my campaign because when I use a system, I ignore what I consider bullshit about gameplay loops.

ring hollow when the vanilla base system of the game you are using gives players feats and spellcasters often have spellbooks in the 5-10 page range which do exactly that. Your words say that you don't like gameplay loops, to the point you have an almost irrational negative reaction to them. But your actual choice of system says this is all grandstanding and you don't particularly care. Not only does D&D specifically enumerate player options, but it has gameplay loops built in and assumes that you play through them. Whether it's tightly or loosely is the GM's interpretation.

Personally, I don't mind when games give me lists of options provided the GM and I have an understanding that I may try to provide options outside that list. The game starts with the book; it isn't the end. This is also why I don't mind gameplay loops; freedom to deviate is part of the GM's Discretion within the RPG social contract.

But at its heart, I think the problem here is that you don't appreciate game mechanics. Players and player characters are not the same, of course, but there is a connection. The player character is an extension of the player's ego into the game world, so if you pinch the player, the player character winces. There's an emotional resonance which passes through the game's fourth wall. When it's player character to player, we call the resonance roleplay. When it's player to player character, we call it game mechanics.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 22, 2023, 10:23:44 PM
ring hollow when the vanilla base system of the game you are using gives players feats and spellcasters often have spellbooks in the 5-10 page range which do exactly that.

Could you explain what feats and spells have to do with 'gameplay loops'? 

Quote from: S'mon on June 23, 2023, 01:52:51 AM
Could you explain what feats and spells have to do with 'gameplay loops'?

I'm unsure what it has to do with gameplay loops either. I think there's some disconnect here in terminology, because I don't consider 5e a game packed with loops. You could describe these as gameplay loops:

• GM presents situation -> players ask questions or declare actions -> GM answers or narrates the reaction of the world
• Go to dungeon -> delve -> grab the loot -> get back to town safely -> fritter it away -> rinse and repeat, leveling as you go
• roll initiative -> each player takes a turn in combat performing their actions -> GM ends combat
• Every 20 minutes in the dungeon, roll 1d6. On a 6, a random encounter happens. every 60 minutes, 10 minutes must be spent resting. most actions (moving, searching) require 10 minutes each.

5e only really has items 1-3, and the dungeon-delve style of #2 is fairly heavily de-emphasized at this point in favor of epic heroic quests. So that leaves loops #1 and #3, but we see these loops in nearly all RPGs (there are exceptions, of course). 5e is a game with a fairly anemic structure overall. Notably, only the combat procedure and the exploration procedure for dungeon turns provide actual firm structure to play. Everything else is very loose and subject to change on a whim.

To get on my soapbox briefly - structure and gameplay loops are good for an RPG. TSR editions of D&D had more structure around things like Exploration and that's why exploration in OSR-style games tends to be so fun in contrast to WotC editions. The dungeon turn is what makes the "strict time records" advice from Gygax make sense. The dungeon turn paired with random encounters provides time pressure, which creates resource pressure, which introduce constraints, which makes player decisions much more interesting and impactful.

You'll notice that all WotC editions have basically adopted a requirement in good adventure design that you need to introduce a time pressure on the quest itself. That's because WotC editions eliminated the dungeon turn and so time and thus resources are now fairly meaningless. Exploration has no structure other than what the GM makes up, so it feels unsatisfying. Consider the early Braunstein games with I believe Arneson and some other folks (forgot their names). The Braunstein was essentially an interesting situation mediated almost entirely by the Judge and roleplaying. The initial games quickly went off the rails and fell apart (described contemporarily by the referee as a "failure" of an experiment). The reason was because the essence of the game was roleplaying and social interactions, and there was no actual structure to how players were supposed to interact with each other or with the referee. People teleported from place to place, people overheard conversations they perhaps should not have, and they brokered deals in a way that sort of dilated time. I'm actually curious to know how the referee of the Braunstein eventually managed the chaos (or IF they even did vs. just embracing it).

Too much structure in the form of gameplay loops and mechanics and you have a board game. On the opposite extreme you still have an RPG, but it's more like a Braunstein/Free Kriegspiel thing which essentially requires a referee to make sense of anything. I'd wager, though, that the pro GMs that are accustomed to those styles of play probably have procedures and mechanisms they use to manage the chaos, even if it's just kept in their head rather than codified and written down on paper. Message passing? Passage of time? Managing the locations and travel of characters at different times in the fictional world? Those all seem like things that require some form of procedure (and makes it even clearer why/how something like 1:1 time is useful).

Full transparency: I've never played in a 1:1 time game or a Braunstein game, but I've done a fair bit of reading and listening to people who do/have played in these formats. I do play with strict time structures and formal exploration procedures and they work very very well compared to freeform GM-adjudicated exploration in my experience.

"Gaming Loops" *sigh* The core problem is when they started calling video games "RPGs".

The video game hasn't been invented that's a roleplaying game. What is "Roleplaying"? Gygax knew:

QuoteWhatever path you select for your PC to follow, you must then begin thinking like that persona. Whether the game is patterned after a real or an imaginary activity, you need to make your mind-set such that you can role-play your character realistically within the game milieu. If you are to be an interstellar explorer, don't think in terms of becoming rich through trade and commerce. Piety becomes a cleric, caution and alertness a spy or a thief. You should be bold and aggressive as a knight, while as a worker of magic, you will tend toward reclusiveness and mystery. The rules and spirit of the game tell you what you can and cannot do in general and somewhat concrete terms, but it is very much up to the individual to take on the role of the PC and play it well ... Make sure that your actions, decisions, and behavior as a player are faithful to the role of the PC you are representing. When you have a trait or a tendency your PC does not possess, do your best to keep that aspect of your personal makeup from surfacing during play

You cannot roleplay a character with video games. Thus, they are NOT RPGs. Period.

Next: this Forge trash. Ron Edwards is/was the leader of the dumpsterfire known as The Forge. He gave them their theories and Ron was a piece of shit who hated people who played D&D. How do I know this? Because dear old Ron told me how he felt about us:

Quote"The most damaged participants are too horrible even to look upon, much less to describe. This has nothing to do with geekery. When I say "brain damage," I mean it literally. Their minds have been harmed."

Now for the discussion of brain damage. I'll begin with a closer analogy. Consider that there's a reason I and most other people call an adult having sex with a, say, twelve-year-old, to be abusive. Never mind if it's, technically speaking, consensual. It's still abuse. Why? Because the younger person's mind is currently developing - these experiences are going to be formative in ways that experiences ten years later will not be. I'm not sure if you are familiar with the characteristic behaviors of someone with this history, but I am very familiar with them - and they are not constructive or happiness-oriented behaviors at all. The person's mind has been damaged while it was forming, and it takes a hell of a lot of re-orientation even for functional repairs (which is not the same as undoing the damage)

When people bring up The Forge or Edwards, I just hear/see "NAZI! NAZI! NAZI! NAZI! NAZI! NAZI!"

Edwards and The Forge have done nothing to uplift the TTRPG hobby, to include the highly-praised works of Vincent and Meguey Baker. The Bakers took the mechanical containers of "Race" and "Class" from D&D, renamed them "Playbooks" and turned "What do you do next" into a codified system of "Moves". Nothing spectacular. Just D&D, rehashed, like so many OSR games. The Forge knows дерьмо about Game Theory and I can prove it over and over and over and over and over and over again.

Quote from: Theory of Games on June 23, 2023, 06:05:13 AM
"Gaming Loops" *sigh* The core problem is when they started calling video games "RPGs".

The video game hasn't been invented that's a roleplaying game. What is "Roleplaying"? Gygax knew:

QuoteWhatever path you select for your PC to follow, you must then begin thinking like that persona. Whether the game is patterned after a real or an imaginary activity, you need to make your mind-set such that you can role-play your character realistically within the game milieu. If you are to be an interstellar explorer, don't think in terms of becoming rich through trade and commerce. Piety becomes a cleric, caution and alertness a spy or a thief. You should be bold and aggressive as a knight, while as a worker of magic, you will tend toward reclusiveness and mystery. The rules and spirit of the game tell you what you can and cannot do in general and somewhat concrete terms, but it is very much up to the individual to take on the role of the PC and play it well ... Make sure that your actions, decisions, and behavior as a player are faithful to the role of the PC you are representing. When you have a trait or a tendency your PC does not possess, do your best to keep that aspect of your personal makeup from surfacing during play

And here's how we know Gary did not know WTF he was talking about. Cuz as was already established in another thread, you simply cannot mention the word "realism" (or its derivatives, "real", "realistic", etc.) in the context of RPGs, cuz...

Quote from: Theory of Games on June 17, 2023, 03:27:17 PMThere is NO REALISM in rpgs...

...it IS elves and magic and dragons and superheroes and psionics and extraterrestrials and laser-guns and everything else that isn't REAL. And no matter how hard you try, you can't call a "fantasy game" a "reality game" because you know that's craziness. Fantasy games can never accurately simulate reality. Ever.

...No matter how hard you try you can never simulate reality in a RPG. Talking about "realism" is just crazy talk.  8)

Quote from: Fheredin on June 22, 2023, 10:23:44 PM
Fifth edition. You're giving me grief over talking gameplay loops and you're using fifth edition--a game intentionally loaded with them--as a base?

You didn't bother to watch the videos or read my blog.

Quotehttps://batintheattic.blogspot.com/

Or you would realize that  I play a lot more games than 5e and that 5th edition isn't the game I used the most often. Moreso only one of the example I supplied was about D&D 5e.

QuoteOr how about these videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4rj5YsBqc8

That this was ran with my Majestic Fantasy RPG.

Quotehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfyGnlKadO4&t=2s

That this was run using Shadowdark

Quote from: Fheredin on June 22, 2023, 10:23:44 PM
ring hollow when the vanilla base system of the game you are using gives players feats and spellcasters often have spellbooks in the 5-10 page range which do exactly that.

I don't use feats when I use 5e rules for my campaigns. As for the number of possible spells, I fail to see how that is relevant.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 22, 2023, 10:23:44 PMBut your actual choice of system says this is all grandstanding and you don't particularly care.

Not only does D&D specifically enumerate player options, but it has gameplay loops built-in and assumes that you play through them. Whether it's tightly or loosely is the GM's interpretation.

From How to Play in the 5e PHB

Quote1. The DM describes the environment
(snip)
2. The players describe what they want to do
(snip)
3. The DM narrates the results of the adventurers' actions.
(snip)

From the 5e DMG from the Master of the Rule in the introduction.

QuoteThe rules don't account for every possible situation that might arise during a typical D&D session. For example, a player might want his or her character to hurl a brazier full of hot coals into a monster's face. How you determine the outcome of this action is up to you.

Any analysis of D&D 5e must take these into account. Including the fact that these two sections come first prior to any section about specific mechanics. And that both sections clearly intended to convey important concepts that are to be applied first. If they are ignored then it is on the reader, not the game authors.

Next, you should be able to supply examples of when where gameplay loops appear in Deceits of the Russet Lord, The Shadowdark adventure, or in Douglas Cole's account of his experience in my Majestic Wilderlands.

Or explain why Douglas Cole's early posts were mostly about what he calls politics in a 5e campaign.
https://gamingballistic.com/2015/02/03/majestic-wilderlands-d-first-game/

https://gamingballistic.com/2015/02/03/relationship-mapping-and-complicated/

https://gamingballistic.com/2015/02/10/majestic-wilderlands-2/

Likewise, you should be able to supply specific examples from your own experiences.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 22, 2023, 10:23:44 PM
Personally, I don't mind when games give me lists of options provided the GM and I have an understanding that I may try to provide options outside that list. The game starts with the book; it isn't the end. This is also why I don't mind gameplay loops; freedom to deviate is part of the GM's Discretion within the RPG social contract.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 22, 2023, 10:23:44 PM
But at its heart, I think the problem here is that you don't appreciate game mechanics.

Right it is not like I haven't written core rulebooks and rules supplements that were at least gold sellers on DriveThruRPG and considered for industry awards. Oh snap I think did.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 22, 2023, 10:23:44 PM
Players and player characters are not the same, of course, but there is a connection. The player character is an extension of the player's ego into the game world, so if you pinch the player, the player character winces. There's an emotional resonance that passes through the game's fourth wall. When it's player character to player, we call the resonance roleplay. When it's player to player character, we call it game mechanics.

It is simpler in my campaign, "What would you like to do as your character in the setting?"

Quote from: VisionStorm on June 23, 2023, 07:40:50 AM

Quote from: Theory of Games on June 23, 2023, 06:05:13 AM
"Gaming Loops" *sigh* The core problem is when they started calling video games "RPGs".

The video game hasn't been invented that's a roleplaying game. What is "Roleplaying"? Gygax knew:

QuoteWhatever path you select for your PC to follow, you must then begin thinking like that persona. Whether the game is patterned after a real or an imaginary activity, you need to make your mind-set such that you can role-play your character realistically within the game milieu. If you are to be an interstellar explorer, don't think in terms of becoming rich through trade and commerce. Piety becomes a cleric, caution and alertness a spy or a thief. You should be bold and aggressive as a knight, while as a worker of magic, you will tend toward reclusiveness and mystery. The rules and spirit of the game tell you what you can and cannot do in general and somewhat concrete terms, but it is very much up to the individual to take on the role of the PC and play it well ... Make sure that your actions, decisions, and behavior as a player are faithful to the role of the PC you are representing. When you have a trait or a tendency your PC does not possess, do your best to keep that aspect of your personal makeup from surfacing during play

And here's how we know Gary did not know WTF he was talking about. Cuz as was already established in another thread, you simply cannot mention the word "realism" (or its derivatives, "real", "realistic", etc.) in the context of RPGs, cuz...

Quote from: Theory of Games on June 17, 2023, 03:27:17 PMThere is NO REALISM in rpgs...

...it IS elves and magic and dragons and superheroes and psionics and extraterrestrials and laser-guns and everything else that isn't REAL. And no matter how hard you try, you can't call a "fantasy game" a "reality game" because you know that's craziness. Fantasy games can never accurately simulate reality. Ever.

...No matter how hard you try you can never simulate reality in a RPG. Talking about "realism" is just crazy talk.  8)

I fixed that quote for ya making sure you noted "within the gaming milieu". That means "pretending to be a fighter in a fantasy world". Taking quotes out of context is such cornball  ;)

Quote from: Theory of Games on June 23, 2023, 01:37:21 PM
I fixed that quote for ya making sure you noted "within the gaming milieu". That means "pretending to be a fighter in a fantasy world". Taking quotes out of context is such cornball  ;)

>"within the gaming milieu"

You mean like 100% everyone who ever brings up the concept of "realism" while discussing games?

Quote from: VisionStorm on June 23, 2023, 02:31:23 PM

Quote from: Theory of Games on June 23, 2023, 01:37:21 PM
I fixed that quote for ya making sure you noted "within the gaming milieu". That means "pretending to be a fighter in a fantasy world". Taking quotes out of context is such cornball  ;)

>"within the gaming milieu"

You mean like 100% everyone who ever brings up the concept of "realism" while discussing games?

Just keep repeating yourself with a more and more self-satisfied tone, I'm sure that will convince the people that disagree with you, that you're very clever.

Your "lol how can a game have realism?" schtick is incredibly narrow and pedantic. Plenty of games have simulated realism, or genre realism.

Quote from: Grognard GM on June 23, 2023, 02:47:06 PM

Quote from: VisionStorm on June 23, 2023, 02:31:23 PM

Quote from: Theory of Games on June 23, 2023, 01:37:21 PM
I fixed that quote for ya making sure you noted "within the gaming milieu". That means "pretending to be a fighter in a fantasy world". Taking quotes out of context is such cornball  ;)

>"within the gaming milieu"

You mean like 100% everyone who ever brings up the concept of "realism" while discussing games?

Just keep repeating yourself with a more and more self-satisfied tone, I'm sure that will convince the people that disagree with you, that you're very clever.

Your "lol how can a game have realism?" schtick is incredibly narrow and pedantic. Plenty of games have simulated realism, or genre realism.

Yeah, pretty much all of that's what I kept trying to tell Theory of Games in that other thread where this side topic originally came up. But he kept insisting that you couldn't bring up "realism" in elfgames, yet brings up a Gygax quote mentioning it now.

Quote from: VisionStorm on June 23, 2023, 03:18:44 PM

Quote from: Grognard GM on June 23, 2023, 02:47:06 PM

Quote from: VisionStorm on June 23, 2023, 02:31:23 PM

Quote from: Theory of Games on June 23, 2023, 01:37:21 PM
I fixed that quote for ya making sure you noted "within the gaming milieu". That means "pretending to be a fighter in a fantasy world". Taking quotes out of context is such cornball  ;)

>"within the gaming milieu"

You mean like 100% everyone who ever brings up the concept of "realism" while discussing games?

Just keep repeating yourself with a more and more self-satisfied tone, I'm sure that will convince the people that disagree with you, that you're very clever.

Your "lol how can a game have realism?" schtick is incredibly narrow and pedantic. Plenty of games have simulated realism, or genre realism.

Yeah, pretty much all of that's what I kept trying to tell Theory of Games in that other thread where this side topic originally came up. But he kept insisting that you couldn't bring up "realism" in elfgames, yet brings up a Gygax quote mentioning it now.

I meant REALISM as in "I want a game that feels like real martial arts!" That don't exist. But, elves is real in their lil fantasy world. VisionStorm, stop being so fkn wrong all the time!

Quote from: S'mon on June 23, 2023, 01:52:51 AM

Quote from: Fheredin on June 22, 2023, 10:23:44 PM
ring hollow when the vanilla base system of the game you are using gives players feats and spellcasters often have spellbooks in the 5-10 page range which do exactly that.

Could you explain what feats and spells have to do with 'gameplay loops'?

Ironically, estar added one on top of what I was thinking.

D&D boils down to "kill something to get a reward." Older versions would use gold and magic items as the reward, not quite as old versions would use XP as the reward or the simple thrill of overcoming an obstacle, and the forever fallback option has always been to reward the players by advancing the story. These are variations of the same gameplay loop, and GMs will often mix up the rewards to better match the situation or vary the pacing, giving the campaign an organic feel. It's also technically optional, in that the GM doesn't always have to provide combat encounters. But the entire concept of the system is to guarantee that characters have a minimum competency for combat because the core gameplay loop of D&D involves combat.

I should add that I don't actually view this as a problem--I'm vocally critical of D&D, but this is not one of those points. Practically every game genre from video games to CCGs to board games uses some variation of the "combat: reward" gameplay loop as a meat and potatoes basic gameplay paradigm.

Quote from: Theory of Games on June 23, 2023, 06:05:13 AM
You cannot roleplay a character with video games. Thus, they are NOT RPGs. Period.

Without addressing the rest, this point just leapt out of the page at me because it is oh so mindblowingly wrong.  There are a lot of examples but the best one I know of is After the Flash, a roblox game.  It's really just a stage for people to get on and roleplay with each other.  There's a world and props, but little in the way of game mechanics.  Everything is resolved through conversation.

If you were to assert that say, Final Fantasy, isn't an rpg I'd be in agreement.  But that doesn't mean it can't be done.

Quote from: estar on June 23, 2023, 10:12:53 AM
From How to Play in the 5e PHB

Quote1. The DM describes the environment
(snip)
2. The players describe what they want to do
(snip)
3. The DM narrates the results of the adventurers' actions.
(snip)

...You do realize that's a gameplay loop, right? Gameplay loops are defined as actions you repeat over the course of the game.

Granted, I was going to ignore this one; RPGs are kinda weird because they tend to have two gameplay loops going on; one at the layer of the players at the table and the other at the level of the characters in the game world. The gameplay loops happening to the characters tend to be more interesting, or at least make better discussion.

My point here isn't that you only play 5e. It's that 5e is the poster-child of not running a game this way and these structures are really hard to avoid. Using 5E is not trying to avoid gameplay loops. If that's really your goal...the only system I can really think of which stands a chance is FATE, and I'm no fan of that, either. Also, you have repeatedly assumed that gameplay loops must be taken as something written in stone like an Eleventh Commandment or something. I don't see how that follows. Your own citations show that game designers rarely view these structures as rules per se; they're just things that happen. And I rarely play RAW, anyways, so even if they were rules, I would just use the rules as a source of inspiration.

Gameplay loops are just a way of observing the structures of the game from a metagame level so that you can intentionally alter them. I understand that metagame design isn't everyone's cup of tea because it tends to pierce the fourth wall, but just because you don't like it doesn't mean you automatically grow the Snowflake power to wish it into nonexistence.

Quote from: VisionStorm on June 23, 2023, 07:40:50 AM

Quote from: Theory of Games on June 17, 2023, 03:27:17 PMThere is NO REALISM in rpgs...

...it IS elves and magic and dragons and superheroes and psionics and extraterrestrials and laser-guns and everything else that isn't REAL. And no matter how hard you try, you can't call a "fantasy game" a "reality game" because you know that's craziness. Fantasy games can never accurately simulate reality. Ever.

...No matter how hard you try you can never simulate reality in a RPG. Talking about "realism" is just crazy talk.  8)

The realism loop, perpetually in motion. "Simulation" is just their pet weasel.

I mean to say:
Immersion requires plausibility, and neither extreme between daily infinite arrows checks nor critically fletched individual arrows are going to fly.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 23, 2023, 07:10:08 PM

Quote from: S'mon on June 23, 2023, 01:52:51 AM

Quote from: Fheredin on June 22, 2023, 10:23:44 PM
ring hollow when the vanilla base system of the game you are using gives players feats and spellcasters often have spellbooks in the 5-10 page range which do exactly that.

Could you explain what feats and spells have to do with 'gameplay loops'?

Ironically, estar added one on top of what I was thinking.

D&D boils down to "kill something to get a reward." Older versions would use gold and magic items as the reward, not quite as old versions would use XP as the reward or the simple thrill of overcoming an obstacle, and the forever fallback option has always been to reward the players by advancing the story. These are variations of the same gameplay loop, and GMs will often mix up the rewards to better match the situation or vary the pacing, giving the campaign an organic feel. It's also technically optional, in that the GM doesn't always have to provide combat encounters. But the entire concept of the system is to guarantee that characters have a minimum competency for combat because the core gameplay loop of D&D involves combat.

I should add that I don't actually view this as a problem--I'm vocally critical of D&D, but this is not one of those points. Practically every game genre from video games to CCGs to board games uses some variation of the "combat: reward" gameplay loop as a meat and potatoes basic gameplay paradigm.

You do not appear to have said anything there about feats & spells and how they specifically relate to gameplay loops.

I asked in good faith, but really this feels a lot like conversing with an AI.

Edit: Maybe you were trying (and failing) to say that feats & spells are used in the D&D combat system, and the combat system is, or supports, a gameplay loop of 'kill things-get stuff-kill more things-get more stuff'. Which seems true but trivial.

Quote from: S'mon on June 24, 2023, 07:04:01 AM

Quote from: Fheredin on June 23, 2023, 07:10:08 PM

Quote from: S'mon on June 23, 2023, 01:52:51 AM

Quote from: Fheredin on June 22, 2023, 10:23:44 PM
ring hollow when the vanilla base system of the game you are using gives players feats and spellcasters often have spellbooks in the 5-10 page range which do exactly that.

Could you explain what feats and spells have to do with 'gameplay loops'?

Ironically, estar added one on top of what I was thinking.

D&D boils down to "kill something to get a reward." Older versions would use gold and magic items as the reward, not quite as old versions would use XP as the reward or the simple thrill of overcoming an obstacle, and the forever fallback option has always been to reward the players by advancing the story. These are variations of the same gameplay loop, and GMs will often mix up the rewards to better match the situation or vary the pacing, giving the campaign an organic feel. It's also technically optional, in that the GM doesn't always have to provide combat encounters. But the entire concept of the system is to guarantee that characters have a minimum competency for combat because the core gameplay loop of D&D involves combat.

I should add that I don't actually view this as a problem--I'm vocally critical of D&D, but this is not one of those points. Practically every game genre from video games to CCGs to board games uses some variation of the "combat: reward" gameplay loop as a meat and potatoes basic gameplay paradigm.

You do not appear to have said anything there about feats & spells and how they specifically relate to gameplay loops.

I asked in good faith, but really this feels a lot like conversing with an AI.

Edit: Maybe you were trying (and failing) to say that feats & spells are used in the D&D combat system, and the combat system is, or supports, a gameplay loop of 'kill things-get stuff-kill more things-get more stuff'. Which seems true but trivial.

That's certainly one of the factors involved. I've not had enough time to put complete posts together lately, so I do admit fault in not bringing feats and spells back in. Feats and spells are about 80% combat moves or optimizations. There are some which are roleplay and some which are general purpose, but realistically they're about adding space to your character growth.

What you're actually looking at is a Skinner Box as I described several pages ago, where the activity players perform is to advance the campaign (usually with combat, but roleplay is usually also an option, albeit one requiring GM override) and the reward is character growth. Most feats and spells play double duty by reinforcing both the combat loop and the character progression Skinner Box, but all of them are at least part of the character advancement Skinner Box. They are always part of one gameplay loop and usually part of a second. In both cases, the system explicitly parses out your options, which is really what was at point here.

Part of the problem we're having on this thread is the tendency to oversimplify. When someone sees their first gameplay loop in a game, they go, "ahh, that's the gameplay loop of this game," and with RPGs especially that's almost never accurate. There are player-side gameplay loops, character-side gameplay loops, and mechanics which trade material back and forth between the two layers of game reality. If you tie a monkey's fist knot, some people will describe it as a rope and others as a ball, and they're kinda both right. What's wrong is saying the other person is wrong; it makes the whole affair an exercise in "is a hot dog a sandwich" hairsplitting rather than trying to understand what's going on at a deeper level.

So you're talking about the play-reward-play loop, where acquiring of new spells, feats, powers etc helps drive play. Obvious rewards for continued play that also affect game play. Making these too central while ignoring  other play rewards was one of 4e's mistakes.

"gameplay loops" are not entirely uncontroversial even in the world of video games, with two of the more common criticisms being:

--Any repeated activity or series of activities in a game can be defined as a "loop", which makes (as several people here have pointed out) makes the concept too broad to have much in the way of use.
--That a focus on loop-based game design has been a major contributor in games increasingly becoming boring, repetitive grind-fests over the last decade.

That second criticism ties in with the concept of the "Skinner Box". In general usage, a Skinner Box is any system which uses extrinsic rewards to behaviorally condition a subject into repeatedly engaging in a particular action. In videogames, that action is usually just continuing to play, often with a side objective that the player will spend money on microtransactions, dlc, or other "continuous revenue" mechanics. These days the term is almost exclusively used as a pejorative against games that are perceived as sleazily manipulating players into losing track of how much money they spend on a game, so it's kind of strange to see it being used here as if it was an agreed best practice in game design.

Going back to the original issue, it's transparently the case that there are lots of ways the the disciplines of videogame and tabletop game design cross over with each-other. It's still the case that a lot of videogames are essentially just checking statistics and rolling dice, if you look under the hood. Moreover, there are plenty of disciplines the two share, such as loot placement, how to convey setting exposition, and environment, monster, encounter or quest design.  But that comes with the caveat that you have to recognize the relative strengths of the two mediums. Videogames have an increased audiovisual component, can operate more in real time, and can work off much more complicated calculations than TTRPGs, but they also lack the flexibility and open-endedness of the human imagination.

Bottom line. There are lots of lessons which tabletop designers can learn from videogames, and vice versa, but you have to be careful about learning the wrong lessons. That's the mistake that 4th edition made, and OneD&D looks like it's going to make again.

Quote from: ForgottenF on June 24, 2023, 12:22:59 PMBottom line. There are lots of lessons which tabletop designers can learn from videogames, and vice versa, but you have to be careful about learning the wrong lessons. That's the mistake that 4th edition made, and OneD&D looks like it's going to make again.

4th edition made no mistake design-wise. It just focused on a specific playstyle (gamist) in detriment to others, thus alienating a big part of the fanbase. If judged on it's own goals it's a pretty good design, actually.

If there's a lesson to be learned here, is that D&D as a brand and product should cater to all playstyles in some measure and avoid overspecializing. Which is exactly what 5E does with laser cut precision, to the point of being called the blandest edition ever by some fans. (I like it myself, but find the complaint reasonable)

Quote from: Fheredin on June 23, 2023, 08:58:32 PM
...You do realize that's a gameplay loop, right? Gameplay loops are defined as actions you repeat over the course of the game.

Gameplay loops in video game design are more specific and far less flexible. What D&D 5e describes, what I describes in Post #206, is a simplified description of the interplay between the referee and the players. It is not always step A, step B, and step C followed over and over again. It is not a procedure with branching decision trees.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 23, 2023, 08:58:32 PM
Granted, I was going to ignore this one; RPGs are kinda weird because they tend to have two gameplay loops going on; one at the layer of the players at the table and the other at the level of the characters in the game world.

It's not weird it is what makes RPGs distinct. What set Dave Arneson's Blackmoor campaign or Dave Jenkin's Wild West campaign apart from the other wargame campaigns at the times.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 23, 2023, 08:58:32 PMThe gameplay loops happening to the characters tend to be more interesting, or at least make better discussion.

For you perhaps. What I see is a focus on the game aspect that is better suited for Tomb, Dungeon!, or Gloomhaven than a RPG.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 23, 2023, 08:58:32 PM
My point here isn't that you only play 5e. It's that 5e is the poster-child of not running a game this way and these structures are really hard to avoid. Using 5E is not trying to avoid gameplay loops. If that's really your goal...the only system I can really think of which stands a chance is FATE, and I'm no fan of that, either.

Well if you actually watched and read the links I supplied then you would understand why what you focus on is irrelevant to how I run RPG campaigns.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 23, 2023, 08:58:32 PM
Also, you have repeatedly assumed that gameplay loops must be taken as something written in stone like an Eleventh Commandment or something. I don't see how that follows. Your own citations show that game designers rarely view these structures as rules per se; they're just things that happen. And I rarely play RAW, anyways, so even if they were rules, I would just use the rules as a source of inspiration.

In videogames you can't escape them as they written into the software. With RPGs if they are not treated as written in stone, as things that happens, sources of inspiration, then my analysis is more useful as it focuses on what common to all RPGs, that campaigns have a setting, a referee, and focus on players interacting with the setting as their character.

That mechanics are weighed in light of how useful they are in adjudicating the actions of characters in that setting. That the nature of the setting means that different type of mechanics will be more useful than others. For example a four color world of superheroes versus a low fantasy medieval setting.

The few posts you made about mechanics been invariably about coming with a way of rolling dice and looking for what it could be applied too.
https://www.therpgsite.com/design-development-and-gameplay/custom-core-mechanic-feedback/msg1205050/?topicseen#msg1205050

My approach is to make a list of what characters commonly do in the setting and the come up with mechanics to help me adjudicate those actions.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 23, 2023, 08:58:32 PM
Gameplay loops are just a way of observing the structures of the game from a metagame level so that you can intentionally alter them. I understand that metagame design isn't everyone's cup of tea because it tends to pierce the fourth wall, but just because you don't like it doesn't mean you automatically grow the Snowflake power to wish it into nonexistence.

You apparently don't understand my design process. Which you would if you have read and watched the links I sent. I have read your posts on this forum and you approach things by designing the game first. That not what I do, I start with the setting first and find the mechanics fit how the setting works.

Which is how the first miniature wargame and roleplaying campaigns were developed. The players didn't have published works to rely on and if they wanted to fight out the battle of Waterloo or Gettysburg then they had to make the rules themselves. And the starting point was looking at old military data to figure out the charts and procedures they would need to accurately recreate those battles.

They applied the same design philosophy when their interests expanded to the fantastic like fantasy miniature battle and fantasy roleplaying. But instead of military references they looked at Lord of the Rings and Hammer horror films and the rules reflected their best guess analysis of how to make a fun session or campaign out of it.

Most of the early rule sets were percentage based translated to a d6 or Xd6 roll until polyhedral dice became common.

By mid 70s wargames publishing became a hit, and the attitude was the rules are the rules you play by or you are cheating took hold. It impacted RPGs and the original way of designing campaigns fell by the wayside in favor of RAW (mostly).

Because of how software development rigid rulesets and gameplay loops was always the norm. SomethingI realized circa 1980 when I first programmed on my brother TRS-80 model I. Fun but something different than the RPG campaigns I ran. And what I did to make my computer games fun was not relevant to what I did to make my RPG campaigns.

Wargaming is a tournament attitude of gaming, so that explains the RAW deal in the RPG debate.

Quote from: Multichoice Decision on June 24, 2023, 12:13:54 AM
I mean to say:
Immersion requires plausibility, and neither extreme between daily infinite arrows checks nor critically fletched individual arrows are going to fly.

So I'm once again going on the record: after recent research into the term "immersion" as it applies to TTRPGs, there is no such a thing. You can get immersed reading a book or watching a movie, but playing TTRPGs includes rolling dice and table-talk, which makes any attempt at immersion literally impossible. Henceforth, let the notion of "TTRPG immersion" be considered utter poppycock and worthy of nothing but derision.

(https://media0.giphy.com/media/gygFb00ig3HRLb3wGu/giphy.gif)

Quote from: Theory of Games on June 25, 2023, 11:48:47 AM

Quote from: Multichoice Decision on June 24, 2023, 12:13:54 AM
I mean to say:
Immersion requires plausibility, and neither extreme between daily infinite arrows checks nor critically fletched individual arrows are going to fly.

So I'm once again going on the record: after recent research into the term "immersion" as it applies to TTRPGs, there is no such a thing. You can get immersed reading a book or watching a movie, but playing TTRPGs includes rolling dice and table-talk, which makes any attempt at immersion literally impossible. Henceforth, let the notion of "TTRPG immersion" be considered utter poppycock and worthy of nothing but derision.

(https://media0.giphy.com/media/gygFb00ig3HRLb3wGu/giphy.gif)

Well except that lots of folks have actually experienced it, myself included, which means there's something wrong with whatever research you're citing.

Quote from: Mishihari on June 25, 2023, 02:01:12 PM

Quote from: Theory of Games on June 25, 2023, 11:48:47 AM

Quote from: Multichoice Decision on June 24, 2023, 12:13:54 AM
I mean to say:
Immersion requires plausibility, and neither extreme between daily infinite arrows checks nor critically fletched individual arrows are going to fly.

So I'm once again going on the record: after recent research into the term "immersion" as it applies to TTRPGs, there is no such a thing. You can get immersed reading a book or watching a movie, but playing TTRPGs includes rolling dice and table-talk, which makes any attempt at immersion literally impossible. Henceforth, let the notion of "TTRPG immersion" be considered utter poppycock and worthy of nothing but derision.

(https://media0.giphy.com/media/gygFb00ig3HRLb3wGu/giphy.gif)

Well except that lots of folks have actually experienced it, myself included, which means there's something wrong with whatever research you're citing.

I don't think doing actual research or keeping his story straight is Theory of Games' strong suit. Guy can't even make up his mind whether "realism" in RPGs is desirable or a stupid pipe dream.

Quote from: Theory of Games on June 25, 2023, 11:48:47 AM

Quote from: Multichoice Decision on June 24, 2023, 12:13:54 AM
I mean to say:
Immersion requires plausibility, and neither extreme between daily infinite arrows checks nor critically fletched individual arrows are going to fly.

So I'm once again going on the record: after recent research into the term "immersion" as it applies to TTRPGs, there is no such a thing. You can get immersed reading a book or watching a movie, but playing TTRPGs includes rolling dice and table-talk, which makes any attempt at immersion literally impossible. Henceforth, let the notion of "TTRPG immersion" be considered utter poppycock and worthy of nothing but derision.

(https://media0.giphy.com/media/gygFb00ig3HRLb3wGu/giphy.gif)

*turns page, immersion lost*

Quote from: S'mon on June 24, 2023, 10:23:43 AM
So you're talking about the play-reward-play loop, where acquiring of new spells, feats, powers etc helps drive play. Obvious rewards for continued play that also affect game play. Making these too central while ignoring  other play rewards was one of 4e's mistakes.

I'm more trying to point out that gameplay loops are all over the place in these games. Feats and spells probably intertwine with a third gameplay loop specific to the classes which access them, so it's practically useless to think about "this interfaces THAT gameplay loop." There are a bunch going on.

4E is an interesting tangent; if we stay on it for a bit I'll spin off a new thread, but I don't think the focus on gamism and gameplay rewards is what sank it. The real reasons look like this:

• 4E was conceived as a way for WotC to buck the OGL, which immediately soured a fair amount of influencer opinion and kicked off Pathfinder. 4E was destined to never see enough development to compare well to 3.5. This is probably the heart of the reason 4E failed.
• 4E was sufficiently different and the D&D fanbase had become sufficiently immature that it was destined to upset the fanbase if it were released as a mainline D&D product. It should really have been marketed as something like D&D Tactics 1E, which would have in turn given the designers the freedom to actually make a good game.
• 4E is painfully slow with very long initiative cycles (owing to D&D's generally sluggish action economy, with turns involving many actions and often several rolls) and released right at the beginning of the reign of the Smartphone at the Game Table. In retrospect, releasing 4E in 2008 proved to be the very worst time imaginable to try to market a slow game.

I think we would have radically different opinions if 3.X and 4E had swapped places in time and relations with the OGL. If 4E had launched roughly in the early 2000s with the OGL beside it, the market could have supported a slow and ponderous game and people would have loved homebrewing At Will/ Encounter/ Daily powers. You would have had an even bigger smash hit than 3.5; OGL brewers would quickly learn how to make the game go faster by dropping actions, thus making more room for roleplay-time. Both of 4Es big faults would evaporate.

Alas, that's not the universe we live in. 4E sucks because Steve Jobs introduced smartphones, which punished slow games, and at the same time, WotC didn't put 4E on an OGL, so fans couldn't really debug the game to make it go faster.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 25, 2023, 04:47:16 PM

• 4E was conceived as a way for WotC to buck the OGL, which immediately soured a fair amount of influencer opinion and kicked off Pathfinder. 4E was destined to never see enough development to compare well to 3.5. This is probably the heart of the reason 4E failed.
• 4E was sufficiently different and the D&D fanbase had become sufficiently immature that it was destined to upset the fanbase if it were released as a mainline D&D product. It should really have been marketed as something like D&D Tactics 1E, which would have in turn given the designers the freedom to actually make a good game.
• 4E is painfully slow with very long initiative cycles (owing to D&D's generally sluggish action economy, with turns involving many actions and often several rolls) and released right at the beginning of the reign of the Smartphone at the Game Table. In retrospect, releasing 4E in 2008 proved to be the very worst time imaginable to try to market a slow game.

• Yes, ditching the OGL was a big blunder (maybe THE blunder). But there's no such thing as "influencer" in 2008 the way we think of it today. On the places where people would gather to discuss the game like enworld or rpgnet the reception was mixed initially. The consensus formed rapidly but it was organic, IMO. Nobody told me not to like 4e - I had made that determination by the time I went online to see what others thought and found the edition wars raging.
• I don't see how critique of 4e was due to some lack of maturity in the audience. People grumbled about 3e and 3.5 but they generally understood the through-line and why it was "D&D". 4e was baffling to those same people.
• The tactical miniature battle line existed and yet it failed to ever catch on, so I have reason to doubt your speculation. D&D isn't traditionally a tactics game like 4e is.
• The game is very slow, but not because of the action economy. It's slow because the bloated HP pools and its fundamental goals. The tactical nature of the game demands lengthy combats with complex interactions and lots of thought put into each move. Tactics and speed don't tend to mix. If a combat is resolved in a round or two, most wouldn't describe it as tactical. For the 4e design team, a 1 or 2 round combat would no doubt look like a bug rather than a feature.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 25, 2023, 04:47:16 PM
I think we would have radically different opinions if 3.X and 4E had swapped places in time and relations with the OGL. If 4E had launched roughly in the early 2000s with the OGL beside it, the market could have supported a slow and ponderous game and people would have loved homebrewing At Will/ Encounter/ Daily powers. You would have had an even bigger smash hit than 3.5; OGL brewers would quickly learn how to make the game go faster by dropping actions, thus making more room for roleplay-time. Both of 4Es big faults would evaporate.

I've written at length elsewhere in this thread or another about the reasons 4e failed so I won't belabor the point too much but there are other major faults in 4e that cannot be resolved without rewriting it to be a different game even at the conceptual level. 4e is, at its root, a tactical battle game. To resolve its issues, it needs to be rethought.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 25, 2023, 04:47:16 PM
Alas, that's not the universe we live in. 4E sucks because Steve Jobs introduced smartphones, which punished slow games.

Where in this coming from? Do you have some firsthand experience to share, or statistics? The iPhone did not influence culture or technology at RPG gaming tables for a while. The iPad wasn't out until 4e was de facto dead. This isn't a form factor thing.

Are you asserting a cultural change dropping people's attention spans? Why would an older demographic reject 4e if they had their normal attention span, unaffected by the iPhone? Why would a younger demographic accept it by comparison? Why blame the iPhone for shorter attention spans instead of something like video games or pop music or something? Why were college students and kids also rejecting 4e in many cases if they couldn't afford or have access to the iPhone?

The people who tended to hate 4e continued to play Pathfinder happily for years beyond the death of 4e. PF is not a fast game. Why didn't PF suffer the same business failure if it was rooted in speed of play? The speed of 3.5 and PF were major critiques of those editions. 4e doubled down on the issue. I've said it before and I'll say it again: 4e was a victim of the memes most prominent among online messageboards at the time regarding what was "wrong" with 3.5. The designers essentially doubled down on things people hated that were actually killing 3.5 campaigns while intentionally cutting or curtailing the stuff people loved. "Balance" or LFQW are illusory issues that 4e was designed to solve from the ground up. Pathfinder is imbalanced, slow, built on LFQW, and packed to the gills with splat content and it was beloved.

The only reason I care about 4e at this point is that I can sense this yearning need by designers to resurrect the 4e design ethos, repackage it, and present it to the RPG scene again. The idea is that 4e was a brilliant design dealt a bad hand by the business and marketing teams. No - it's really not that good of a game. ICON or Lancer seem to be modern continuations of the 4e design ethos. I enjoyed ICON well enough, but it's a tactical battle game first and an RPG a distant second.

4e had like 2 or 3 good or at least salvageable ideas, but they still needed to be totally reworked from the ground up to make them fit into what most people expect in an RPG. Healing surges are a bad rule with a decent underlying principle - that healing should be limited by something other than the charges in your wand of Cure Light Wounds. Minions should have been an early hint to the designers that their game was taking too long to finish combats and was too fiddly, but people DO like the idea of one-hit kills. The solutions didn't need to come in these particular forms. If you think there's more to 4e than these handful of mechanics, or the design as a whole needs to be revisited, then you should actually make that case. Most people don't they just say it's a misunderstood gem. It seems to me like another meme. It's better to explain what was so great about 4e and what other game(s) put these ideas into practice properly if it's such a gem.

Quote from: Mishihari on June 25, 2023, 02:01:12 PM

Quote from: Theory of Games on June 25, 2023, 11:48:47 AM

Quote from: Multichoice Decision on June 24, 2023, 12:13:54 AM
I mean to say:
Immersion requires plausibility, and neither extreme between daily infinite arrows checks nor critically fletched individual arrows are going to fly.

So I'm once again going on the record: after recent research into the term "immersion" as it applies to TTRPGs, there is no such a thing. You can get immersed reading a book or watching a movie, but playing TTRPGs includes rolling dice and table-talk, which makes any attempt at immersion literally impossible. Henceforth, let the notion of "TTRPG immersion" be considered utter poppycock and worthy of nothing but derision.

(https://media0.giphy.com/media/gygFb00ig3HRLb3wGu/giphy.gif)

Well except that lots of folks have actually experienced it, myself included, which means there's something wrong with whatever research you're citing.

But that is dependent on each person subjective preferences and not related to any game concrete quality. That's Theory of Games point, and it makes sense. Some people become immersed in books, others can't get immersed even if actually going through the situation with their flesh.

Which is to say: bringing immersion as a factor or condition in conversations about TTRPGs is pointless.

In fairness, there might really be a problem with "character immersion" as understood in the sense of trying to emulate a different personality than your own. The lived experience issue can apply in a game where you could roleplay as an alien or changeling or shapeshifting dragon in a fantasy world.

At best, you can only ever work with a caricaturecharacter built upon fictional stereotypes, or at worst you really believe yourself to be exactly like the image of that idealized personality in your own head. It's not without opportunities to think about going through circumstances or situations in in general that you don't normally go through as a real person, but that can only ever happen in the player's head, not the "characters" head which is just a mirage for the player anyway. This is why someone trying to roleplay someone better than themselves IRL is also violating "lived experience" but from a different angle, they're upset with their actual lived experience.

If caricaturescharacter (which need stereotypes to avoid lived experience) are not allowed to be utilized for roleplaying, then all you could do with the game at all is open doors, kill monsters, and gather loot, and all player decisions are focused strictly on min-maxing the character elements and features from the consequences of those decisions. There'd be no point adding flavour or fluff or lore with any amount of depth and detail: The dungeon is just there, the fighter will go in for the gold that dungeon just happens to have within, and the monsters will attack anything that isn't of it's own kind or whomever tries to take the gold, all of it "just because" with no rationale, a purist playstyle which is the "gamist" descriptor, or at least the Dungeon! boardgame. Edit: Or you play a character as a copy of yourself, which is known as being boring.

Whether or not the players murder hobo the non-monsters once back in town doesn't make that much of a difference under those circumstances, though doing so would be the result of players who want to keep playing as fictional adventurers but are still bored with the lack of more complex story elements, and don't know how to ask for something different. Others stopped playing, thinking that was all that there was to the game, and it would never be different because of the only stickler referee available in their area who never put in that kind of work.

---

EDIT:
After some more pondering, I'd introduce five different terms for different states of roleplay, terms as flavorfully chosen as possible:

Exonous:** When the character is merely a costume for the sake of the setting's fiction; it doesn't have to be faithful to real world peoples, since there are peoples in the game that aren't real. There's no player obsession for it.

Automaton: When the character has no relation to the setting, or inner relevance; less a fighter gaining gold and more machine accumulating colorful rocks because other beings are accumulating colorful rocks.

Doppelganger: A direct copy of the player's own self with no other embellishments; it will be an honest representation, but as a step above the automaton it will also lack any drive to be memorable or unique.

Phantasm: A caricature of the player's own self which lends itself to bastardization or aberration; a wishful idealization by which no effort will ever be made to achieve. Not a mere costume as with the caricature, but the conceit of a truer existing body.

Revenant: The inverse of the phantasm, this is a counter-exaggeration or caricature of the player's own self, deliberately created as a means to vent frustrations against the setting merely for the thrill of theatrical disdain.

I'd also say that a valid caricaturecharacter employs proper use of "stereotypes", since any character is already composed of several, considered here non-exhaustively: each attribute by score, background (name, sex, origin, profession and skill set, kingdom), personality type, religious worship, alignment, class, subclass, goals and achievements, and so on.

[Had to change some words, I'm going with "character" for the label of acceptable standard because it's good enough.]
**[Decided to put in a little more effort than Mark Rosewater is doing, it's a little bit of a fancier word for "outer-mind" but it'll do better for now.]