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I bought the Mongoose Legend pdf for $1 and thought it was decent.  I went back and bought the Monster book too.

But as I'm looking through it, I see that yet again there is an alternate fantasy game that I probably won't play because it really lacks in some areas.

For me, there are several really common problems I see that prevent me from wanting to play non-D&D fantasy games (I'm not including clones here):

* Spells: I find the spell lists for most other fantasy games are pretty weak and limited.  For example, in Legend, I instantly notice that the Sorcery spells killed my enthusiasm for playing the game.

* Monsters: Here's another issue where most other games come off as really limited compared to D&D for me.  I always end up missing the breadth of different monsters, or the depth of monster types/special abilities/background/etc.  Regardless of edition, D&D monsters always seem to me to offer a better variety with more interesting aspects than what I see in other games.  Again, Legend's monster book underwhelmed me completely.

* Magic Items: Here's something that D&D does OK with (but could be made more interesting) that I would expect other games to really improve on, but they rarely do.  Usually they end up just as dull for me as generic D&D magic items, but with less of a variety.

Don't get me wrong.  I'm not stuck on D&D.  I find that non-D&D fantasy games usually have something better to offer with regard to character creation in general, skills, combat, races, etc.  I just don't get why these particular areas always seem to get neglected.

Anyone have anything they think D&D seems to always do better at, or that prevents their interest in non-D&D games?

Quote from: jgants;495369Anyone have anything they think D&D seems to always do better at, or that prevents their interest in non-D&D games?

Two things I think D&D tends to do better than other fantasy RPGs: defining a character's "niche" and being explicit about how powerful a character is.

The basic D&D classes (fighter, thief, cleric, magic-user) are easy to explain, archetypal, and recognizable.  One word at the topic of a character sheets makes who that character is and what they do much more understandable than a character sheet that defines that character through a handful of skills, advantages, edges, etc.

D&D level system makes gauging a character's "power" so much easier than it is many other fantasy systems.  Again, it's obvious that a 5th level character > a 3rd level character.  Compare that to a system where capability or power is tied to skill percentages, modifiers, etc. and it's clear which system is more obvious in its intent.

I definitely agree with you when it comes to spells and monsters, by the way.

Speaking of Legend, a guy from our group played a session of it last weekend. Apparently, combat is really-really complex and really-really slow - they were experienced BRP players, yet it took them almost an hour (or what felt like an hour) to go through a three-round combat sequence. Eeek.

PLAYER BASE
It's technically not a feature of the rules, but it surely makes playing a D&D game far easier than a non-D&D game.

I find this a bigger problem today than ever before. As RPGers age, too many of them are unwilling to try something new. Which is odd because I don't find this attitude among boardgamers who often verge on "new game crazy".

MALLEABLE
As Crapfinder and the OSR proved, its easy to add cool stuff to D&D without upsetting the system or the players. This malleability means there is a metric fuckton of 3rd party and free support for whatever edition you play. Having so much stuff at your fingertips certainly makes staying with D&D easier than leaving for something less supported.

I also agree on Archetype PCs, Level as Power, and the huge variety of Monsters and Spells. That said, I am always up for a game of Warhammer or Stormbringer.

Yeah I like the D&D spell lists and the way combat works (for the most part). Regarding the latter, in 0e combat is especially simple and it  is very easy to add house-rules that (e.g. for guns or critical hits) without making things terribly complex.  If a game starts out complex adding to it can fuck things up in this regard.

Quote from: Melan;495380Speaking of Legend, a guy from our group played a session of it last weekend. Apparently, combat is really-really complex and really-really slow - they were experienced BRP players, yet it took them almost an hour (or what felt like an hour) to go through a three-round combat sequence. Eeek.

There may have been a language barrier slowing things down here. Playing with native English speakers in their first combat, it took about 10 minutes to handle a straight up 2-on-2 fight, and less than 30 to deal with a complex scrum against the head bandit and his supporters with about 8 or 9 combatants.

If I had to guess, I would guess that your friends did three things which I see new people do, and which I first did when I played Legend, but that slow the game down and make it much more confusing to play.

1) They used locational damage for all combatants without an efficient way of tracking who had been hit where.

2) They did not track CAs by the use of beads, chips, ticks on a chart, but tracked them as if they were HPs, by erasing or marking them on the character sheet.

3) They didn't have, or had trouble reading, the combat maneuver cheat sheet.

To solve 1, the DM should either only use locational damage for major enemies, or they should draw a bunch of stick men / stick orcs on a scrap sheet of paper and write damage in. Also, once an enemy starts bleeding to death from having a location drop to negatives and failing a resilience roll, it's not worth rolling every round for them. They're laying there helplessly.

To solve 2, get and issue poker chips equal to the number of CAs a character has to the appropriate player. When you spend a CA, toss it into the pile in the centre. Top of the round, everyone grabs their poker chips back. This is much faster than trying to scribble little notes on how many CAs you've spent.

To solver 3, read the combat maneuver cheat sheet. Print one off for every PC and one for the DM. I came up with a set of spot rules to be printed on the back of the sheet. The combat maneuver sheets prevent people needing to flip through the book constantly to assess their options. Book flipping multiples the time required for any decision by the number of players involved, and for new players, checking out and learning the combat maneuvers is probably the most time and book intensive thing they have to do.

Quote from: jgants;495369Anyone have anything they think D&D seems to always do better at, or that prevents their interest in non-D&D games?

On to the main topic, I find D&D tends to be really good at giving even beginning players a structured form of play they can start with and follow. This matters a lot. (//www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=7027)

There are specific procedures for creating a character, exploring a dungeon, getting into combat, avoiding dangerous situations, buying equipment, whatever. On the GM's side, they tell you how to actually build a dungeon, other adventures, to an entire campaign world. And even if you are not a beginner anymore, these procedures serve you well, since they provide the mental framework for playing in or running a game, and they can be varied and combined to a considerable extent.

Although B/X, AD&D and 3e all did it differently, they had ready procedures laid out for players. In comparison, other games often tend to gloos over this, or suffocate players with a plethora of choices they cannot really handle when they start playing. "You can play any character you want and do anything you want to" is not a very good way to define the action of a roleplaying game. What is "any"? There are no navigation markers, or there are so many you get decision paralysis in another way. But if you distill it into a procedure like this:

Quote

• roll your ability scores [this way]
• choose a race from these options ("drop-down menu")
• choose a class from these options
• based on your choices, calculate your secondary statistics (Hp, saving throws, combat values)
• roll for starting gold and buy some equipment

...it suddenly becomes navigable. At every decision point (and these are laid out before you gradually, either via a formal procedure, or that clever bit of gaming technology, the character sheet), you are given a manageable number of possible picks, and they are distinct enough from each other that the choice can be made in a meaningful way.

The same stands for adventuring, another part of playing the game. Simple decisions can combine into really complex "plot" structures, but at their root, they are distinct. Actually, one of the reasons wilderness travel has usually been problematic in D&D in a way dungeoneering hasn't been, is that hex-crawling became forgotten - there were still hexes in products, people just didn't have a good idea about using them properly (teenage me included). You can't just move through complex territory easily, since distilling it to something you can navigate at a game table via verbal commands, or even describing it to players, can become insanely difficult. This is why a lot of wilderness adventures through time have defaulted to "as the characters travel down the road, they see..." - a string of encounters, maybe with a few detours. This is a structured form of adventure. But you could have hexes - and real exploration! - with the same amount of effort.

So to sum up, D&D breaks down the information of the game into navigable, structured chunks. A lot of games follow it intuitively, but often without understanding it (or even wanting to understand it). That's not to say this was all conscious on D&D's part. Maybe it helped that EGG was an insurance salesman and knew forms and bookkeeping (I have read this argument somewhere and it rings true). Maybe it came from wargaming.

And of course, D&D could get it wrong - 2e, for example, fell into the trap of giving you decision paralysis, not in character generation, but on the DMing side, by failing to provide new people procedural support. Of course, a splat-heavy 3e or 4e game could very well cause problems on the players' side - with the wealth of options and the builds they form into, D&D loses the virtues of its class system and becomes a complicated mess which is de facto point buy.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;495387If I had to guess, I would guess that your friends did three things which I see new people do, and which I first did when I played Legend, but that slow the game down and make it much more confusing to play.

Close enough, he mentioned 1) and 2), as well as something like action points slowing down things.

I think it would help if people said what other fantasy RPGs they had experience with that they were comparing it to - because there are an awful lot out there.  

My most common fantasy RPGs have been Ars Magica, Amber, HarnMaster, and Fantasy Hero, plus some of GURPS, Burning Wheel, Lord of the Rings, and various homebrews.  What I found about the comparison:

1) I think it's no surprise that D&D has the largest collections of spells, monsters, and items.  I think Ars Magica, HarnMaster, and LotR have excellent smaller collections of spells - though the latter two have no balance to them at all.  For monsters and items, none of these particularly stood out.  Fantasy Hero has the advantage of designing your own spells and items, which I got a lot of mileage out of, but its prebuilt ones were uninspiring.  

2) I've found the systems all to be easily customizable - I've never had any issue with that.  Actually, I'm puzzled by how one would think otherwise.  The one system I felt was hard to customize was Rolemaster in that it was harder to come up with new spells or classes, and very difficult to do new weapons.  

3) Amber, Fantasy HERO, GURPS, and LotR were explicit in power level, but the others weren't.

I have played d100 games like Legend in preference to D&D for many many years. It is fine that you don't like Legend, but I am happy to engage in a productive comparison.

1: Spells: I would agree that there are a lot of fun spells in D&D type games, and indeed there are many fun spells in d100 games. What is of note is that Legend is a much shorter game than D&D 3.5 or Pathfinder, so the range is simply smaller due to page count. I would say that d100 games like Legend or RuneQuest have a wider variety of 'types' of spells, and even supernatural activities like spirit travel and combat. If you play d100 games you often will use spells from games like Stormbringer, or Call of Cthulhu, and many of the sourcebooks for the games have new spells. Magic is also tied up closely to cults and religions, and often a new book of cults will have new spell lists. However I do think that there are some lovely D&D spells that would be well reimagined in the d100 world. I think that the Basic Fantasy book that Chaosium published may have done so.

2: Monsters: Well.. I refer to my previous comment that the Legend corebook is quite small, but I think you may have also bought the Monsters book. There are definitely less monsters in the d100 "genre", but more than enough to keep you happy. It is also worth saying that in d100 game no one is really a "monster", since all creatures are potential player characters and all creatures tend to be run as fully rounded personalities, and as such each creature of note is customisable and different. I know you can do this in D&D, but since all creatures are PCs and use the same rules then it's as easy as falling off a log. This also means that the huge range of D&D monsters which traditionally was to enable an opponent of the right hit dice for the opponents is not necessary. Want a weak monster, create a freshly spawned group of feral broo with a few sharp sticks.. Want a tough monster to face off your hero.. create a shaman broo with allied spirits, skills in the 90% range, several enchanted items, a chaos feature, and a portfolio of spells.

Of course you can re-imagine any of your favourite monsters from D&D. But before you do.. check if you're duplicating.. in which case file the numbers off.

Again, there are loads of non humans in the sourcebooks, the different worlds have a panoply of creatures, and often the cults and culture that goes with them.

3: Enchanted items. Most enchanted items are made using the basic spell structures. In d100 games there isn't much of the acquisition and use of magic items to boost characters for a level and then discarding them and getting some more, so characters often build up personalised collections of kit that often supplement their spells, but really awesome items tend to be quite unique and often the aim of quests. The game family hasn't focused as much on the same types of magic items as D&D, probably due to the fact that much of the magic and kit in d100 games tends to be based on the culture and religions. But again, most D&D classic items would work almost as is.

4: Combat. Ah well. I play quite a bit of Pathfinder and it is fast and many combat rounds go by very fast. Many combat rounds. In d100 games there is a lot of variety, I've played Legend combat and it's more crunchy than some other d100 games (OpenQuest is the lightest I'd say), and it's definitely more detailed and tactical than D&D. BUT IT'S SHORT. I say that in as much as it's deadly. Combats in these systems last 4-5 rounds and then one side is dead, and often several on the other side are crippled and calling for medic. I'd say Legend is almost too crunchy for me, I like the OpenQuest approach better, but once you know them they are easy to play.

5: Modularity. d100 systems are very easily adapted by porting bits and pieces in and out of other d100 games. Indeed the grandfather volume 'Basic Roleplaying' by Chaosium is in effect a toolkit for doing just that. So, if you don't like the combat in Legend, use the much simpler version in OpenQuest, or GORE or Renaissance SRD or Basic Roleplaying. Ditto with spell systems, skills, cults, factions, demonology etc etc etc.

The d100 family of games is as rich and diverse as the D&D family, and there are many flavours and tweaks. They tend to be more socially focussed, with a tight integration of individuals into cults, politics, with magic and religion intertwined. All creatures with intelligence are player characters and many a game is entirely non human. Combat is deadly and your armour and shield are your best friend. Magical items are less common since heroes usually use common magic in a similar fashion. The system is highly modular. Combat is slower and yet over quicker (in game time) and yet has multiple different versions.

I am very happy to elucidate and I welcome my fellow d100 grognards to chip in!

Tom

____________________________________


Further reading: First 3 closely linked to Legend:

http://d101games.co.uk/books/openquest/ Fully OGL d100
http://www.clockworkandchivalry.co.uk/renaissance/ Black powder d100
http://ageofshadow.freehostia.com/ Very Tolkien like d100

The core grandfather:

http://catalog.chaosium.com/product_info.php?cPath=37&products_id=3712

And the epitome of socially based adventuring in myth and men:

http://www.thedesignmechanism.com/why-choose-runequest.php

Quote from: Melan;495391Close enough, he mentioned 1) and 2), as well as something like action points slowing down things.

Probably combat actions. Tracking them with poker chips or other chits, or even just strokes on a scrap sheet speeds things up a lot.

The two slowest parts of combat in MRQ2 are deciding which combat maneuver you want to use, and tracking the effects of a successful attack. Speeding them up is easy, but it's best to sit down beforehand and plan it out a bit.

While D&D does have more spells, the spells are much more specialised. RQ tends to have broader spells (especially sorcery) which duplicate the effects of multiple spells. For example, Animate (Earth & Stone) could replicate anything from a Summon Earth Elemental spell to Transmute Rock to Mud to Passwall to Wall of Stone to Stone Shape to certain uses of Fabricate or Mending.

D&D does do monsters real well, I will admit. My Emern PCs fought some cyber-leechmen last night and I didn't even have to spend a moment overcoming anyone's disbelief about there being such things as cybernetic leechmen living in an underground volcano on a pirate island.

Monsters is the big one for me, in terms of sheer variety and ease of use and customization.

I also really like pre-3e combat.  I can run 3-4 large combats in a session without them dominating our time.  Love that.

Simple combat.
D&D pre-WotC has an abstract and elegant combat system - cinematic, lethal, fast as hell. As long as you keep the crappy options that bog the whole thing down turned off, and can get past the occasionally abysmal information presentation.

Wealth of material.
Tens of thousands of monsters, spells, and magical items.

I love the Encyclopedia Magica, and the Priest's and Wizard's Spell Compendia. I really, really wish that someone could convince WotC that a full-on Monster compilation from the same era would sell really well.

D&D seems to be the portal game for a lot of people.

It's the gateway drug of RPGs.

I was thinking about an aspect of this today as I was preparing some stuff for my Saturday game with the kids.
My go-to system is BRP but I was thinking about the appeal that having a defined class has for a player... not so much the rigid niche-protection thing but the way it give the character a place in the game-world... an extra layer of identity beyond name/number... a purpose.
I was looking at my old Arduin books and falling again for all those exotic sounding character classes, 'Star Powered Mages' and 'Runeweavers'... also the wild spell lists with evocative names and colorful descriptions... and realizing I want more of that in my BRP games... but also that that sort of 'feel' has always lingered around D&D.

I guess what I mean is that I don't find any sort of mechanical specialness to D&D, but... maybe just because so many people play it and so much has been written for it... because it's the familiar baseline to expand out from... D&D seems to inspire so many cool ideas that thrive despite it's goofy (IMO) core system.
So, even though I don't play any form of it, I continue to draw inspiration out of the stuff that's written for it (including the clones).

Quote from: Melan;495390On to the main topic, I find D&D tends to be really good at giving even beginning players a structured form of play they can start with and follow. This matters a lot. (//www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=7027)

There are specific procedures for creating a character, exploring a dungeon, getting into combat, avoiding dangerous situations, buying equipment, whatever. On the GM's side, they tell you how to actually build a dungeon, other adventures, to an entire campaign world. And even if you are not a beginner anymore, these procedures serve you well, since they provide the mental framework for playing in or running a game, and they can be varied and combined to a considerable extent.

Although B/X, AD&D and 3e all did it differently, they had ready procedures laid out for players. In comparison, other games often tend to gloos over this, or suffocate players with a plethora of choices they cannot really handle when they start playing. "You can play any character you want and do anything you want to" is not a very good way to define the action of a roleplaying game. What is "any"? There are no navigation markers, or there are so many you get decision paralysis in another way. But if you distill it into a procedure like this:
...it suddenly becomes navigable. At every decision point (and these are laid out before you gradually, either via a formal procedure, or that clever bit of gaming technology, the character sheet), you are given a manageable number of possible picks, and they are distinct enough from each other that the choice can be made in a meaningful way.

The same stands for adventuring, another part of playing the game. Simple decisions can combine into really complex "plot" structures, but at their root, they are distinct. Actually, one of the reasons wilderness travel has usually been problematic in D&D in a way dungeoneering hasn't been, is that hex-crawling became forgotten - there were still hexes in products, people just didn't have a good idea about using them properly (teenage me included). You can't just move through complex territory easily, since distilling it to something you can navigate at a game table via verbal commands, or even describing it to players, can become insanely difficult. This is why a lot of wilderness adventures through time have defaulted to "as the characters travel down the road, they see..." - a string of encounters, maybe with a few detours. This is a structured form of adventure. But you could have hexes - and real exploration! - with the same amount of effort.

So to sum up, D&D breaks down the information of the game into navigable, structured chunks. A lot of games follow it intuitively, but often without understanding it (or even wanting to understand it). That's not to say this was all conscious on D&D's part. Maybe it helped that EGG was an insurance salesman and knew forms and bookkeeping (I have read this argument somewhere and it rings true). Maybe it came from wargaming.

And of course, D&D could get it wrong - 2e, for example, fell into the trap of giving you decision paralysis, not in character generation, but on the DMing side, by failing to provide new people procedural support. Of course, a splat-heavy 3e or 4e game could very well cause problems on the players' side - with the wealth of options and the builds they form into, D&D loses the virtues of its class system and becomes a complicated mess which is de facto point buy.

I'm Commander Shepard and this is my favorite post on theRPGsite.

No, seriously, I agree wholeheartedly with what you've said here and in your linked post.

Also, it reminds me a lot about what Frank Lantz (game designer and teacher at New York Uni.) said at the '06 Game Developer's Conference in regards to video-games (yes, the GDC is about video-games, but Lantz concentrates on game design as a broad discipline rather than a technical skill tied to a specific medium, and I feel like bits of the following are easily extrapolated to apply to other sorts of "simulations" other than virtual ones):

Quote from: Frank LantzWhy does the phrase 'the player will be able to go anywhere and do anything' sound like nails on a chalkboard to me? It's based on a very naive and unsophisticated understanding of how simulation, how representation works. You have a thing, a part of the world, and you have a simulation of that. There's a gap in between, the gap is made up by all the differences, the way that this is not this.. the immersive fallacy is this idea that computer simulation allows us to close this gap and makes these things identical. But this gap is an essential part of how this representation works, this gap is where the magic happens. Let's say a bear is attacking a friend of yours and is about to kill him. The word 'bear' will warn your friend. The word 'bear' would not be better if it had teeth and could kill you! The same thing is true of the bear mask that the tribal priest puts on, or the bears on the wall of the cave, and of the game 'Bear'. Statues wouldn't be better if they could move. Model airplanes would not be better if they were the same size as airplanes! By the same token, if you think about it, the incredible sense of freedom created by GTA is created by carefully limiting the actions of the player.

    (…)

    Even if you could by some magic create this impossible perfect simulation world, where would you be? You'd need to stick a game in there. You'd need to make chess out of the simulation rocks in your world. It's like going back to square one. I don't wanna play chess again. I wanna play a game that has the dense simulation and chess combined. This requires a light touch. This requires respect for the gap. The gap is part of your toolset.

I think that's part of the reason why a game like CoC rang so true with our group even though the system, IMO, isn't a big part of its charm (other than "getting out of the way"): the game provides clear textual instructions on what the game is about.  It combines a competent but relatively simple simulation-based system with the 'game' layered on top of it.

The OP sounds like he wants to play D&D using Legend, whereas he should be playing to the strengths of Legend.

I agree that D&D gives a default playmode which is easily picked up.
I disagree that D&D's way of doing monsters, spells and magic items is better than the Runequest/BRP family of games. In Runequest, you start from imagining a Dark Age/Iron/Bronze Age world, then add magic and mystery. The fantastic elements grow organically. In D&D, you flip through the MM and add some stuff which looks cool. It works but it's like painting in primary colors compared to a Turner.

RQ is atavistic, playing D&D is always playing D&D. I also think that many are unable to think beyond a D&D lens because they played it first and longest. It's a shame.

Quote from: jhkim;4953961) I think it's no surprise that D&D has the largest collections of spells, monsters, and items.

Wrong. Rifts & the Palladium 'megaverse' system has more.

Quote from: Killfuck Soulshitter;495486I agree that D&D gives a default playmode which is easily picked up.
I disagree that D&D's way of doing monsters, spells and magic items is better than the Runequest/BRP family of games. In Runequest, you start from imagining a Dark Age/Iron/Bronze Age world, then add magic and mystery. The fantastic elements grow organically. In D&D, you flip through the MM and add some stuff which looks cool. It works but it's like painting in primary colors compared to a Turner.

Isn't this more of an issue with setting design than mechanics or game design?  I know Peudo here has done some really cool things with Swords & Wizardry.

QuoteRQ is atavistic, playing D&D is always playing D&D. I also think that many are unable to think beyond a D&D lens because they played it first and longest. It's a shame.

The particulars of D&D may be relatively clunky compared to something like BRP, but what's more important in game design are the fundamentals, the big idea that holds everything together, which D&D has down-pat.  I haven't played RQ, so I can't comment on it as a whole, but I have played several versions of D&D, and conceptually they all hold together pretty well.

Inb4 I'm responding to a troll.

Depends on what version of D&D you're talking about, anything 3.5 and later? Nah, lots of games do many things better than the current version of D&D...

Quote from: Peregrin;495490Isn't this more of an issue with setting design than mechanics or game design?  I know Peudo here has done some really cool things with Swords & Wizardry.

Thanks mate!

My secret is that I design my D&D settings like they were Runequest settings, and my Runequest settings like they were D&D ones (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=8875). ;)

A lot of games have trouble with the "where do I go and what do I do when I get there" problem, which D&D never really has - even if its default is kill-things-and-take-their-stuff.

I think that a very, very large part of what D&D does better than everything else is the clear focus and the incremental reward scheme.  Classes and levels, basically.

Looking at GURPS, Rolemaster, Palladium, and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay I can only think of one thing.

D&D's wargame roots make it handle big fights faster.  And any edition past second has messed up the system's sole virtue past redemption.

Anyhow, Legend / d100 / Runequest is a different beast entirely.  The whole point of the system is having more flexible monsters and spells so you don't need so many of  them.  That's why the monsters are created as characters and the spells are pretty generic and effects specific.

Also, Melan's pretty much right. D&D is one of the few RPGs that still teaches people how to pick up the game without any experience and start playing. Most others assume you come to them with a fairly large base of knowledge and rigid tastes about playstyles. In particular the AD&D 1e DMG is spectacular, as it lays out the assumptions of the game for your explicit consideration, then teaches you how to build all the tools you might want to run a game in line with its playstyle (maps, random encounter tables, lists of treasure, random traps to roll).

Call of Cthulhu is the only other game I can think of that really does this, though the kinds of games it teaches you to run are very different.

Quote from: Melan;495380Speaking of Legend, a guy from our group played a session of it last weekend. Apparently, combat is really-really complex and really-really slow - they were experienced BRP players, yet it took them almost an hour (or what felt like an hour) to go through a three-round combat sequence. Eeek.

I initially was very wary of the MRQII (Legend) combat system, but I ended up loving it.  It helped enormously that my GM was very familiar with the system (indeed, about as familiar as one can be, given that he co-authored it!).

I'm not sure I'd want to GM MRQII/Legend combat.  OpenQuest and CoC are closer to my preferred level of 'crunch' for GM'ing.  But maybe I'll be more keen as I gain (more) experience with the system.  Hell, I once ran Rolemaster!

Quote from: Melan;495390On to the main topic, I find D&D tends to be really good at giving even beginning players a structured form of play they can start with and follow...

...[Great Points]...

Quote from: tzunder;495397I have played d100 games like Legend in preference to D&D for many many years. It is fine that you don't like Legend, but I am happy to engage in a productive comparison...

...[Great Points]...

I agree with what both Melan and Tzunder have said in this thread.

Speaking generally, I think that D&D-style games and d100 games have different strengths and weaknesses.  No single style of game has to do everything well.  My expectations for a d100 fantasy game are somewhat different than they are for a D&D-style game (grittier, more dangerous combat, less powerful magic, rarer monsters, etc).

Quote from: Killfuck Soulshitter;495486The OP sounds like he wants to play D&D using Legend, whereas he should be playing to the strengths of Legend.

I agree that D&D gives a default playmode which is easily picked up.
I disagree that D&D's way of doing monsters, spells and magic items is better than the Runequest/BRP family of games. In Runequest, you start from imagining a Dark Age/Iron/Bronze Age world, then add magic and mystery. The fantastic elements grow organically. In D&D, you flip through the MM and add some stuff which looks cool. It works but it's like painting in primary colors compared to a Turner.

RQ is atavistic, playing D&D is always playing D&D. I also think that many are unable to think beyond a D&D lens because they played it first and longest. It's a shame.

I find it strangely gratifying that a poster with the moniker "Killfuck Soulshitter" (a name that I vaguely recall from RPGnet) is defending RQ over D&D. :cool:

Welcome to the RPGsite, by the way.

Quote from: Blazing Donkey;495488Wrong. Rifts & the Palladium 'megaverse' system has more.

BWAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHA...

That is the funniest thing I have read all day. Thanks.

The one thing it has empirically done better than anything else is brought noobs into RPGs.

Here's why: there is never a moment in preparing to play D&D - and even once you start playing it may not come right away - when someone says "What do you want to do, you can do aaaaanythiiiiing you waaaaaaaaaaant".

We sit down to play, I say "We're fantasy adventurers, pick a species from this list"

"Elf sounds cool, I'll be an elf"

"What kind of adventurer do you want to be, pick from this list"

"A druid sounds good"

"Okay, roll some dice, put the highest in these scores because you're a druid, then do whatever for the rest"

"Okay"

"Here's some starting equipment and cash"

"Okay"

"Here's a list of stuff you can do on your turn when there's a fight like cast a spell or cut a dude with your scimitar or turn into a bird or whatever"

"Okay"

"You're at the entrance to the dungeon, left the tunnel is dry and dusty, to the right it's warm and drippy, which way do you go?"

"left"

And we're playing D&D!

Ironically the edition that is worst at this is the one I've got the most experience with: 3.*, and the only reason it's worst is because of skill points. It's still not that bad.

Once you have some inertia, then you get someone to say "hey, what if I do THIS", and then they're off.  But if you start with "you can do or be aaaaanything that you waaaaant", a noob will never create a character.

And the earlier the iteration, the smaller the selection set.

1. Roll 3d6 in order, assign to stats.
2. Fighter, Cleric, Thief, Magic-User, Elf, Halfling, or Dwarf?
3. Buy some equipment.
4. Fighters handle combat, thieves handle traps. Magic users can cast 1 spell, pick from the list which one you want. Same with the elf. Dwarves are short fighters, halflings are short thieves.
5. Play.

Quote from: Peregrin;495476I'm Commander Shepard and this is my favorite post on theRPGsite.

No, seriously, I agree wholeheartedly with what you've said here and in your linked post.

Also, it reminds me a lot about what Frank Lantz (game designer and teacher at New York Uni.) said at the '06 Game Developer's Conference in regards to video-games (yes, the GDC is about video-games, but Lantz concentrates on game design as a broad discipline rather than a technical skill tied to a specific medium, and I feel like bits of the following are easily extrapolated to apply to other sorts of "simulations" other than virtual ones):

Thanks. I didn't know about Lantz's words, but they are pretty insightful. His points on representation are very relevant. Interestingly, it is very easy to combine relatively simple choices into complex and rather free decision-making environments, and it goes for both tabletop and computer games. In computer gaming, the "immersive sim" concept (Thief, System Shock 2, Deus Ex and the Elder Scrolls games, the upcoming Dishonored) aimed to provide opportunities for increasingly sophisticated environmental interaction; at their core, however, individual choices are simple to make - "do I go through this highh-risk area and risk a difficult confrontation, or do I find an alternate, out of the way route?", "do I increase my hacking skill to make infiltration easier, or do I put that into using rifles and become effective in combat?", and so on.

Quote from: Killfuck Soulshitter;495486The OP sounds like he wants to play D&D using Legend, whereas he should be playing to the strengths of Legend.

I agree that D&D gives a default playmode which is easily picked up.
I disagree that D&D's way of doing monsters, spells and magic items is better than the Runequest/BRP family of games. In Runequest, you start from imagining a Dark Age/Iron/Bronze Age world, then add magic and mystery. The fantastic elements grow organically. In D&D, you flip through the MM and add some stuff which looks cool. It works but it's like painting in primary colors compared to a Turner.

RQ is atavistic, playing D&D is always playing D&D. I also think that many are unable to think beyond a D&D lens because they played it first and longest. It's a shame.

I don't want to play D&D per se, but I do want my fantasy games to offer a wide variety of spells, monsters, and magic items.

Actually, I think my bigger issue was addressed better by others in the thread - D&D puts together a cohesive package in a way that a lot of other games fail to.

As a player, I want a game where I can quickly and easily create a character by making a few meaningful choices from a decent variety of meaningful options.  D&D does OK with that; the early editions are too rigid and the later ones tend to offer a lot of choices but few if any meaningful ones.

As a GM, I want to be able to have a lot of readily-usable peices I can put together to form adventures.  There is enough to do with coming up with interesting situations, NPCs, plots, and keeping up with what the PCs are doing - I don't want to have to come up with rules, too.  That's why I buy books.

Meta-Comment:
Note how the OP highlights the building blocks of D&D. And note how, rightfully, it is said by someone else that Palladium is the only other venue that has surpassed (if at least in volume) TSR in providing AD&D-style building blocks.

Quote from: Settembrini;495577Meta-Comment:
Note how the OP highlights the building blocks of D&D. And note how, rightfully, it is said by someone else that Palladium is the only other venue that has surpassed (if at least in volume) TSR in providing AD&D-style building blocks.

(Looks over to the shelves of GURPS 3rd edition books)
(Raises one eyebrow)

Quote from: estar;495578(Looks over to the shelves of GURPS 3rd edition books)
(Raises one eyebrow)

Or Glorantha / RQ for that matter.

In the field of D&D only D&D provides D&D style building blocks in any quantity.

Quote from: David Johansen;495646In the field of D&D only D&D provides D&D style building blocks in any quantity.

Also, D&D does D&D best!*


*With the possible exceptions of Pathfinder or the retro-clone of your choice.

I agree with basically everything said in this thread (strong archetypes, easy to grasp and play, good balance between realism and abstraction...)

I can add that D&D is, story-wise, an "alphabet" of sort. You can take the basic blocks (classes, races, monsters, magic) to build almost any kind of world/fantasy setting imaginable: high magic; low magic; worlds where the only magic users are cleric;, lot of magic items, magic is lost and exists only in magic items; the world has been overrun by Lovecraftian aberrations and now everyone is enslaved, "magic" is actually psionic powers and nothing else; and so on.

Many games/novels strive for the "new", often forgetting the importance of the "how". Sometimes I think of western movies: you can literally count on your fingers their basic elements: cowboys, Indians, Mexicans, colons, the saloon, the sheriff, horses, the diligence and some stunning landscapes. Still, great western movies were made (and are still made - see "Deadwood") over and over - because these basic elements were/are used to tell good stories. The same, IMHO, is true for D&D.

Quote from: Blazing Donkey;495488Wrong. Rifts & the Palladium 'megaverse' system has more.

Have you actually done the math on this, or are you just making things up?

Personally, I think if you were to take the AD&D 2e Wizard's/Priest's spell compendiums and count the spells, you'd probably have already exceeded the total in all Palladium games.

Likewise if you took every 2e Monstrous Compendium.

If you've actually run the numbers and can show that I'm incorrect here, I'd be pleasantly surprised.

The main difference between Rifts and D&D is that Rifts sucks.  D&D's mechanics have always been a mess, but Rifts is a shit sandwich.

Quote from: bombshelter13;495760Have you actually done the math on this, or are you just making things up?

Personally, I think if you were to take the AD&D 2e Wizard's/Priest's spell compendiums and count the spells, you'd probably have already exceeded the total in all Palladium games.

Likewise if you took every 2e Monstrous Compendium.

If you've actually run the numbers and can show that I'm incorrect here, I'd be pleasantly surprised.

I think the hard thing would be determining if eight versions of Mind Flayers and Beholders count as single blocks or eight blocks.  Never mind whether stuff in Dragon and Rifter count.  Fan projects?  Retroclones?  What are we enumerating?  How are we enumerating it?  Why would we want to?

1. Make money.
2.

Oh boy, quite some wishful thinking from the RQ-swine...Palladiumbooks has produced indices to bulding blocks that have a higher word count than all that are original from...let's say most games except D&D.

*yawn*

Oh wow, it's the usual irrelevant, rambling bullshit from Settembrini.

I mean, you would have to be totally ignorant of how supplements like Pavis & Big Rubble, Griffin Mountain / Island and Trollpak teach people how to play RQ and how to build worlds for RPGs. Or its use as an introductory game in the British gaming context. RQ kicks off the ecological-system model of dungeons last I checked, which has become one of the two dominant models of dungeon design.

Quote from: Settembrini;495857Oh boy, quite some wishful thinking from the RQ-swine...Palladiumbooks has produced indices to bulding blocks that have a higher word count than all that are original from...let's say most games except D&D.

Huh? Are you some kind of troll?

D&D just plain does fantasy RP better. Its what I always come back to when it comes to that genre.

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