Starting a new thread to be able to answer jibbajibba without breaking my word to J that I would drop the tangent on this thread defending "broken" mechanics.

I posted:

There is no such thing as inherently "broken" mechanics. Just GMs and players who let them break their games.

(...)

What you got is way too many people posting about games on WotC boards, RPGnet and others who bitch about mechanics being "broken" when in fact they aren't at all, and what's at fault is their own way to look at game mechanics, rather that the game mechanics themselves. But that would break the spell. Cut through the smoke and shoot right through the mirror. See, it's all convenient, because if, as a game company, you manage to convince your audience that yes, game mechanics really can be broken, then you can profit from it through erratas, further developments of the game, up to "revised editions" and of course "new editions" of the games that just "fix" all these "awfully broken mechanics".

It's all bullshit. GMs and Players are in control. If a rule breaks your game, then someone at the game table fundamentally needs to reexamine what he or she is doing. Probably more than one. If a rule breaks your game, that means you let it become such a bad rule it ends up breaking the game.

Quote from: jibbajibba;393293So you really think there are no broken rules? You don't think the fact that in WoD increasing the number of dice you got to roll increased the chance of a critical failure or that the orignal 4e Skill challenge needed errata, or that in V&V a character who manages to stack their agility to 50 or so not only gets 4 attacks before everyone else but those attacks are at +25 to hit and damage, or that the distribution curve of 2d6 means that a -2 modifier has different % effects on your chance to hit based on you own skill....
Maths and probability really can be broken

Do I really think there are no broken rules? No. There can be broken rules for board games, video games, whatever.

Do I think there are no truly broken rules for role playing games? Yes.

We're talking about a game that is more than the sum of its rules. For rules to break your game, you have to allow them to do so. You sure can have totally bad, wacky rules. But for a rule to break a game as it is being played, the GM needs to let that happen, and a player has to want to use that rule to break the game, intentionally or, more rarely I'd guess, unintentionally. Assuming the participants of the game are not aware said rule is wacky, it can potentially come up into play and become a problem ONCE. If the problem is such that it could wreck the game, I would expect the participants of the game to either roll with the blow once, and then houserule/discard it later on, or they discard/houserule it on the spot, and get on with the game.

But then, I am talking about a rule that really is about to wreck a game here. You mention WoD and the increase of dice pools increasing the possibilities of getting botches and thus critical failures as an example. Sure, I'd say that it potentially can become a problem. It can be judged bad, and worth changing at some point. Did it wreck my WoD games for the 10 years I played them regularly? No. Not once.

To me, that WoD rule might be bad design, but it's not a "broken" rule.

Quote from: Benoist;393311Starting a new thread to be able to answer jibbajibba without breaking my word to J that I would drop the tangent on this thread defending "broken" mechanics.

I posted:

There is no such thing as inherently "broken" mechanics. Just GMs and players who let them break their games.

(...)

What you got is way too many people posting about games on WotC boards, RPGnet and others who bitch about mechanics being "broken" when in fact they aren't at all, and what's at fault is their own way to look at game mechanics, rather that the game mechanics themselves. But that would break the spell. Cut through the smoke and shoot right through the mirror. See, it's all convenient, because if, as a game company, you manage to convince your audience that yes, game mechanics really can be broken, then you can profit from it through erratas, further developments of the game, up to "revised editions" and of course "new editions" of the games that just "fix" all these "awfully broken mechanics".

It's all bullshit. GMs and Players are in control. If a rule breaks your game, then someone at the game table fundamentally needs to reexamine what he or she is doing. Probably more than one. If a rule breaks your game, that means you let it become such a bad rule it ends up breaking the game.


Do I really think there are no broken rules? No. There can be broken rules for board games, video games, whatever.

Do I think there are no truly broken rules for role playing games? Yes.

We're talking about a game that is more than the sum of its rules. For rules to break your game, you have to allow them to do so. You sure can have totally bad, wacky rules. But for a rule to break a game as it is being played, the GM needs to let that happen, and a player has to want to use that rule to break the game, intentionally or, more rarely I'd guess, unintentionally. Assuming the participants of the game are not aware said rule is wacky, it can potentially come up into play and become a problem ONCE. If the problem is such that it could wreck the game, I would expect the participants of the game to either roll with the blow once, and then houserule/discard it later on, or they discard/houserule it on the spot, and get on with the game.

But then, I am talking about a rule that really is about to wreck a game here. You mention WoD and the increase of dice pools increasing the possibilities of getting botches and thus critical failures as an example. Sure, I'd say that it potentially can become a problem. It can be judged bad, and worth changing at some point. Did it wreck my WoD games for the 10 years I played them regularly? No. Not once.

To me, that WoD rule might be bad design, but it's not a "broken" rule.

I think its semantics. You see I think a rule you try a few times realise is crap and then drop becuase it doesn't work is a broken rule. The game isn't broken the rule is so you don't use it and you move on.
It comes down to your definition of a broken rule again and I am pretty sure only you would define broken rule in that way.

Now there are also broken games. The worst game I ever bought , Pirates and Plunder springs to mind. This is where there are so many broken mechanics and rule sthat don't fit genre and big gaps etc that he game just needs to be binned.

Quote from: Benoist;393311Do I think there are no truly broken rules for role playing games? Yes.

We're talking about a game that is more than the sum of its rules. For rules to break your game, you have to allow them to do so. You sure can have totally bad, wacky rules. But for a rule to break a game as it is being played, the GM needs to let that happen, and a player has to want to use that rule to break the game, intentionally or, more rarely I'd guess, unintentionally.

So the reason that there can be no such thing as a broken rule in RPGs is because RPG players are free to ignore them. Do I have your argument right?

How is that different from every other game, ever? It almost sounds like you want to argue that no one should judge any RPG harshly for any problematic rules it might contain, since the rules can always simply be ignored.

Quote from: two_fishes;393341So the reason that there can be no such thing as a broken rule in RPGs is because RPG players are free to ignore them. Do I have your argument right?

How is that different from every other game, ever? It almost sounds like you want to argue that no one should judge any RPG harshly for any problematic rules it might contain, since the rules can always simply be ignored.

What I'm saying is that if the rule breaks your game, that's because you let it happen.

Role playing games have a GM and players. They're different from other games in that the people around the table (the GM most of the time) explicitely get to decide if, how and when the rules are implemented in the actual game session. This makes it impossible for a rule to break a game unless its participants consent to it in the first place.

My argument really boils down to users of role playing games manning up and taking ownership of their games instead of bitching about rules on some publisher's website as if they were pieces of code in an intricate program you'd have to run as-is otherwise OMG THE GAME BREKS. SKY FALLING NAO.

Quote from: Benoist;393342What I'm saying is that if the rule breaks your game, that's because you let it happen.

Role playing games have a GM and players. They're different from other games in that the people around the table (the GM most of the time) explicitely get to decide if, how and when the rules are implemented in the actual game session. This makes it impossible for a rule to break a game unless its participants consent to it in the first place.

My argument really boils down to users of role playing games manning up and taking ownership of their games instead of bitching about rules on some publisher's website as if they were pieces of code in an intricate program you'd have to run as-is otherwise OMG THE GAME BREKS. SKY FALLING NAO.

So to be clear there are no BROKEN GAMES.... although individual rules make be broken.
You obviously never played Pirates and Plunder....

I really do have to disagree with benny here, hoping it doesn't restart our old feud, but there are some really broken rules out there.
 
 Paladium and d20 both have bad armor rules, AFAIC. I absolutely hate any rules that make armor decrease your chances of being hit instead of reducing damage. Something that makes you harder to hit is like camouflage, invisibility, etc.  That's different than armor.

Likewise the rules for armor in palladium...I don't want to go there...

Quote from: jibbajibba;393343So to be clear there are no BROKEN GAMES.... although individual rules make be broken.
You obviously never played Pirates and Plunder....

I haven't actually! What makes is so bad?

Quote from: Cylonophile;393344I really do have to disagree with benny here, hoping it doesn't restart our old feud

We don't have any feud, and you can disagree with me all you want, dude. Just don't be a dick about it, and I'll do likewise.

Quote from: Benoist;393342What I'm saying is that if the rule breaks your game, that's because you let it happen.

Role playing games have a GM and players. They're different from other games in that the people around the table (the GM most of the time) explicitely get to decide if, how and when the rules are implemented in the actual game session. This makes it impossible for a rule to break a game unless its participants consent to it in the first place.

This is really an issue of gaming culture than anything that is inherent to RPGs. Every player of every game in the world has that same freedom to change the rules of the games they play to their liking, and they often do. This doesn't, in any way, put the games above criticism. If a game mechanic is consistently problematic, and as a result is consistently ignored or changed, then that is a problem with the game. I won't deny that people do engage in excessive angst and hyperbole, and that does deserve to be called out, but no one should hesitate to criticise the game for mechanics that get in the way of enjoyable play, nor should anyone feel bad about justified criticism. It's almost as if you want to hedge against criticism of RPGs by shifting the blame for poor mechanics onto the player-critics.

Well sure, 2F. Let's be clear here, because I'm apparently not: I am not advocating against any criticism of game mechanics at all, ever. If problems pop up and you think the rules are at fault, by all means, call a spade a spade and a shitty rule, a shitty rule. But to me, that doesn't make the rule inherently broken, as in "this rule wrecks games".

There's also a difference between RPGs and other games in the sense that their users are directly, explicitly empowered by the rules themselves to modify them however they see fit. Last time I played Settlers of Catan I have not noticed any mention of a referee empowered to modify the rules of the game however he sees fit (aka rules 0) in its booklet.

Quote from: Benoist;393345I haven't actually! What makes is so bad?

came out in '83 (?) and I have no words.... Oh i will say tyhat a pirate game that had no rules for ships, ship combat, living on ships or anything in it at all about ships is onto a looser, but man the fact that the system was built into an itegrated railroad adventure of the very worse kind ....

Think about how many RPGs have been published.. how many saw a second edition? how many sold less than 100 copies .... there are plenty of broken games.

(I totally get Cy's point on armour making you harder to hit as well)

Quote from: Benoist;393350There's also a difference between RPGs and other games in the sense that their users are directly, explicitly empowered by the rules themselves to modify them however they see fit. Last time I played Settlers of Catan I have not noticed any mention of a referee empowered to modify the rules of the game however he sees fit (aka rules 0) in its booklet.

And yet, people make variant rules for their favorite games all the time, including Settlers of Catan. I don't think I've ever played a game of Monopoly where we didn't drop a $500 in the middle as a reward for landing on Free Parking. Rule Zero isn't actually anything special.

Quote from: two_fishes;393353And yet, people make variant rules for their favorite games all the time, including Settlers of Catan. I don't think I've ever played a game of Monopoly where we didn't drop a $500 in the middle as a reward for landing on Free Parking. Rule Zero isn't actually anything special.

Interesting. I don't fuck around with the rules of board, card games, Scrabble etc personally, unless it's an exception, an experiment, i.e. an exception rather than a rule.

Rule Zero appears in role playing games black-and-white on the page, as a rule itself. Well, most role playing games anyway. Show me a board game that shows Rule Zero as part of the game's design. I'm sure you might find one somewhere, but this isn't a usual occurence, we'll agree to that.

As 3e, 3.5e and 4e moved closer and closer to MMOG's in focus and implementation, it's inevitable that people look at rules the same way, something that can be fixed with the next patch (or nerfed if it's too imba).

Quote from: CRKrueger;393369As 3e, 3.5e and 4e moved closer and closer to MMOG's in focus and implementation, it's inevitable that people look at rules the same way, something that can be fixed with the next patch (or nerfed if it's too imba).

When I'll start looking at RPGs that way, I'll just quit playing them.
There will be no point to me to play an RPG instead of the latest Bioshock title.