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 (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=17728).
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 (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=17728).
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 (http://www.katspace.org/games/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 (http://www.katspace.org/games/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.
OP is just wrong.
About letting a rule break your game -- sometimes you get lucky and spot the potential breakage before the fact; often you don't. It's not fun getting surprised mid-game by bad rule design. There's enough work that goes into running and playing an RPG that you shouldn't have to slap on tons of "patches" to keep it going smoothly. If you do, then what did you pay the $30(40, 50, 60, sometimes more) for anyway? I don't expect any game to be perfectly broken-rule-free, but there has to be a minimum acceptable standard.
Quote from: Benoist;393365Rule 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.
What is Rule Zero?
I have never encountered it.
Quote from: Darran;393393What is Rule Zero?
I have never encountered it.
Rule 0... The rule that states all the rules are provisional and may be tweeked as deemed apropos for your spacific group/situation:)
Quote from: skofflox;393396Rule 0... The rule that states all the rules are provisional and may be tweeked as deemed apropos for your spacific group/situation:)
Oh, sort of a
Your Game May Vary type thing?
Quote from: Benoist;393365Interesting. 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.
You're not devoted to other games the way you are to RPGs. In my experience, look into the fan culture of almost any game, and you'll pretty quickly find fan-created variants.
QuoteRule 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.
I'll agree to that, I just disagree that it's a fact of much significance.
Quote from: Darran;393398Oh, sort of a Your Game May Vary type thing?
Bingo:)
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....
Hmm, I recall reading a review of P&P once, aeons ago, and it was overall positive. Did it miss something?
Quote from: Darran;393393What is Rule Zero?
Ideally, it's just an admission that nobody is perfect, tastes vary, and the universe isn't going to implode if you tweak some rules to your preference. If you think about it, it's kind of condescending, really. I can't imagine that not being obvious, though maybe I'm wrong and people nowadays are much more easily confused than when I discovered the hobby.
In practice, it more often than not signifies that a system is horribly unbalanced in ways that show the designers probably didn't pass 9th grade maths. I'm not talking the occasional glitch in an otherwise fluid system; nobody's perfect, and I'm not unreasonable. Rather, I'm talking about pervasive issues that require a lot of work to fix. So much so that you end up wondering what exactly you're paying the game designer(s) for.
I looked up pirates and plunder, and the big pain was it was missing rules for sailing ships and ship combat. They were supposed to be in a supplement that never got made.
One interesting thing, though: It had a rule that let you determine whether or not your character cried out when injured. This was useful for stealth mission where you may need to keep quiet after being stabbed by a guard you managed to kill quietly, but not before he wounded you.
I suppose most games could manage this via some combo of endurance + will or some sort of combat skill, like health + self control, but it was a nice touch for an early game.
Quote from: Benoist;393342My 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.
Okay, but why are people required to want to fiddle with the rules? Isn't this just another form of Wayism?
Seanchai
Quote from: Cylonophile;393638I looked up pirates and plunder, and the big pain was it was missing rules for sailing ships and ship combat. They were supposed to be in a supplement that never got made.
One interesting thing, though: It had a rule that let you determine whether or not your character cried out when injured. This was useful for stealth mission where you may need to keep quiet after being stabbed by a guard you managed to kill quietly, but not before he wounded you.
I suppose most games could manage this via some combo of endurance + will or some sort of combat skill, like health + self control, but it was a nice touch for an early game.
That is neat...crying out when wounded.This could be a cool flaw! :cool:
Quote from: Seanchai;393693Okay, but why are people required to want to fiddle with the rules? Isn't this just another form of Wayism?
Seconded.
Some folk don't have the time, inclination, or ability to modify their games to achieve the results they want.
Quote from: skofflox;393700That is neat...crying out when wounded.This could be a cool flaw! :cool:
Hmm, I'm not so sure it might be a flaw as much as routine. Maybe not crying out when a bullet hits your arm might be an advantage.
Quote from: Cylonophile;393720Hmm, I'm not so sure it might be a flaw as much as routine. Maybe not crying out when a bullet hits your arm might be an advantage.
advantage: nerves of steel/take it like a "man"
flaw: no back bone/cries like a baby
:hatsoff: :teehee:
what do you mean by routine?
Let me see if I understand this. When a specific flaw is pointed out (in a well regarded game), say a shitty set of skill mechanics, the hue and cry goes out that if you can fix it, it isn't broken. But in the general sense (or in the context of a poorly regarded game), people are rushing to insist that, in fact, a rule or mechanic can be 'broken' to the point it impacts the entire scope of the game?
Quote from: StormBringer;393755Let me see if I understand this. When a specific flaw is pointed out (in a well regarded game), say a shitty set of skill mechanics, the hue and cry goes out that if you can fix it, it isn't broken. But in the general sense (or in the context of a poorly regarded game), people are rushing to insist that, in fact, a rule or mechanic can be 'broken' to the point it impacts the entire scope of the game?
I think Ben is saying that rules can't be broken because no single rule will bring down the game.
Most other people are saying that sure there can be broken rules and a group will work past them if the system is worth saving.
My point was that lots of games have mathematical abnormalities some of which, like WoD dice pools meaning the better you are the more chance of getting a critical failure, are just broken pure and simple.
Quote from: jibbajibba;393771My point was that lots of games have mathematical abnormalities some of which, like WoD dice pools meaning the better you are the more chance of getting a critical failure, are just broken pure and simple.
I don't want to get into a huge discussion about a specific mechanic here, but perhaps that is exactly what it is intended to do? The better you are at something, the greater the odds of seriously messing things up become? As the old saying goes, "To err is human, to really fuck things up, you need a computer".
In other words, it is broken in the context of
I don't think it should work like that, but it could very well be the exact outcome the designers planned.
Quote from: StormBringer;393815In other words, it is broken in the context of I don't think it should work like that, but it could very well be the exact outcome the designers planned.
No, it really wasn't their intention. They admitted as much years and years ago. This was oldschool World of Darkness stuff. Like pre-Revised even. They were still a very new company, and their games hadn't reached the peak of their mid-to-late-90's popularity yet. In later iterations of the Storyteller(ing) system, they learned their lesson and have successfully avoided this problem ever since.
I just wish they'd come out with a version of Exalted(or, better yet, Scion; I love me some modern supernatural stuff) that was as good system-wise as the nWoD. nWoD is so good(not perfect, mind you, but pretty darn good). Their other games are so . . . disappointing. It's like they're not even being made by the same company.
Quote from: GeekEclectic;393852No, it really wasn't their intention.
Again, the specific botch mechanics aren't the point.
Quote from: StormBringer;393876Again, the specific botch mechanics aren't the point.
I was just letting you know that the original WoD botch mechanics weren't intended to punish higher stats the way they did. I do, however, agree with your conclusion.
If a mechanic does exactly what it was designed to do in the way it was designed to do so, then it's hardly fair to criticize it for not doing what it's supposed to do. In such a case, it becomes a matter of preference, which is something else altogether. The rule does exactly what it's supposed to do; you just don't like it.
Quote from: GeekEclectic;393880I was just letting you know that the original WoD botch mechanics weren't intended to punish higher stats the way they did. I do, however, agree with your conclusion. If a mechanic does exactly what it was designed to do in the way it was designed to do so, then it's hardly fair to criticize it for not doing what it's supposed to do. In such a case, it becomes a matter of preference, which is something else altogether. The rule does exactly what it's supposed to do; you just don't like it.
I see what you are saying, then.
Although, for a minor diversion, the botch rate appears at first glance to be something of a wash, which isn't really better,
per se. For example, we have a seven dice pool, and a botch on the task occurs when the botches outnumber the successes. This could happen as often as 10% of the time, regardless of the size of the dice pool; zero successes and a single 1 is an overall botch. On the other hand, an average difficulty of 6 means you will have to roll three successes and four 1's to have an overall botch. Rolling the four 1's is .1 x .1 x .1 x .1 = .0001; or .01%. Granted, that is successively rolling the same die, but in this case the odds keep dropping for rolling enough 1s to botch overall.
Rolling seven discrete dice has different odds, naturally, that deal with permutations and all, but I don't see the math being all that off-kilter. I would be more than happy to revise my views if someone less-lazy than myself can demonstrate the math. My brain is running a bit on overload lately, so I am not recalling the formulas to calculate permutations.
(Or do I have those backwards again?)
Quote from: StormBringer;393904On the other hand, an average difficulty of 6 means you will have to roll three successes and four 1's to have an overall botch. Rolling the four 1's is .1 x .1 x .1 x .1 = .0001; or .01%. Granted, that is successively rolling the same die, but in this case the odds keep dropping for rolling enough 1s to botch overall.
Yeah, that would be 4 1's on 4 dice(or the same die rolled 4 times). Getting 4 1's on 7 dice is much more likely. That's not to say it's incredibly likely, but it's a significant increase from .01%. You also have to take into account that rolls of 2-5 are neither successes nor success removers(1's used to remove success, not just cause a botch in the event you got no successes in the first place). I thought back in the day you needed to roll 8 or higher for it to count as a success and the difficulty was modified by how many successes you needed. It's been forever, though, so don't quote me on that.
It's been forever since I actually went over the oldest iteration of the oWoD rules, and it's been a long time since I had a statistics class, too, so anything beyond basic probabilities . . . blah. I just know that 1's subtracting successes caused more failures and botches than it was intended to.
There are also some weird things about dice when they start adding up. If using 10-sided dice, rolling 11 dice will give a 100% guarantee that
some, number will roll at least doubles. But no matter how many dice you roll you
never have a 100% chance of a
specific number rolling doubles. Weird but true.
Quote from: StormBringer;393755Let me see if I understand this. When a specific flaw is pointed out (in a well regarded game), say a shitty set of skill mechanics, the hue and cry goes out that if you can fix it, it isn't broken. But in the general sense (or in the context of a poorly regarded game), people are rushing to insist that, in fact, a rule or mechanic can be 'broken' to the point it impacts the entire scope of the game?
Yes.
I don't know if there's "Broken" or not, but there sure is "Sucks".
RPGPundit
Quote from: RPGPundit;394053I don't know if there's "Broken" or not, but there sure is "Sucks".
RPGPundit
That I can agree with.
Quote from: Benoist;393951Yes.
By definition, isn't something that needs to be fixed in order to work properly . . . broken? My issue with "broken" mechanics has more to do with how much of a pain they are to fix, or how pervasive the "brokenness" is within a whole system. I'm willing to fix occasional minor things, but I'm not willing to do the work to fix a lot of minor things or something more major(usually a more central rule that has far-reaching implications w/in the system as a whole). The way I see it, the cost of the book(s) covers having someone else do that kinda stuff for me to a great extent.
Quote from: RPGPundit;394053I don't know if there's "Broken" or not, but there sure is "Sucks".
RPGPundit
:rotfl: I concur
My understanding of the term broken rule is that it means a rule that does not work as intended. The rule is broken because if you use it as written you get weird results which aren't what the rule was meant to produce.
Nothing in that means the game is broken. It may be easily houseruled, it may not come up much, it may not be that bad an outcome, it's still a broken rule.
The problem with the OP is it equates broken mechanics with broken games. A game can have broken mechanics within it and yet still be a good game overall. Or it may have so many that playing the game is just more trouble than it's worth.
That something's broken doesn't mean it can't be fixed. It may though mean that it's not worth the effort of fixing.