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.

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.