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.