I've recently (couple months now) started going through looking at ORE stuff, primarily Nemesis and Reign.  While I'm not 100% sold on all the concepts, primarily different hit points per body location.  It looks like a generally solid system that is pretty easy to tweak out.

But the surface message on this forum brings a lot of hate and I'm just curious as to where it's coming from?  Is it an attitude to the actual mechanics through people using it or is it more a general attitude to the designers?

Quote from: kryystI've recently (couple months now) started going through looking at ORE stuff, primarily Nemesis and Reign.  While I'm not 100% sold on all the concepts, primarily different hit points per body location.  It looks like a generally solid system that is pretty easy to tweak out.

But the surface message on this forum brings a lot of hate and I'm just curious as to where it's coming from?  Is it an attitude to the actual mechanics through people using it or is it more a general attitude to the designers?

With me it's purely an intense dislike of the actual mechanics. I don't often have such a visceral reaction to mechanics, but ORE is definitely not my cuppa.

-clash

I'm a fan of the ORE myself, and I've noticed the same vibe you have around here, though I think I'd describe it more as a lack of enthusiasm for it rather than active dislike*.  Thus far I've seen one clearly worded complaint about it here, and that was with regard to a dislike of the perceived jump in character competency using the matched pools and various special dice.  Other complaints have been more vague:

• Not liking dice pools
• Not liking gimmicky dice
• Not liking hit locations
• Not liking everything being determined by a single roll

I don't think there's been any sort of active antipathy toward the designers, though Greg Stolze makes a decent living doing a lot of work for White Wolf, and Reign is perceived to be a current "darling" at tBP, so that casts suspicion on him.

As I said above, I like the ORE.  It's a solid, well-designed system that does things differently from traditional, simulationist RPG mechanics, and its designers, Dennis Detwiller and Greg Stolze, are consummate professionals.

!i!

[*With the notable exception of clash, who has voiced an intense, visceral dislike of the mechanics. ]

Whuh? I haven't seen any hate toward ORE; maybe I just don't read the right threads.

My own impression, from reading Nemesis and not really knowing much about the author (except that he's a "gaming personality" with fans and haters): mathematically, it's pretty hard to analyze, but I'm concerned that it may produce a lot of extreme results. So I'd hope it's been playtested extensively under conditions of "let the dice fall as they may"; otherwise it might require a lot of fudging or skipping over the mechanics, which I don't care for.

I was reading Nemesis more for the Sanity thing (I forget what it's called, came from Unknown Armies); that seemed well thought-out for its purpose.

Reign's premise looks interesting, in fact more to my tastes than either Godlike or Nemesis. But being a cheapskate and generally skeptical of new bright & shiny, I probably won't be picking it up soon without a demo or a firm commitment to play.

I think it is an interesting system. But it is definitely different. I think that maybe puts people off a little. I would like to play Godlike some time. But One or two of my players I think would have difficulty with the system. They can handle roll dice beat target number. But determining the length and width of a dice roll would be a slow process for them.  I dont have any probs with it and think its kind of neat. But I dont see it ever being a go to system for me.

I dislike ORE, I wouldn't if it lived up to its promise mechanically.

It simply doesn't work, as presented IMHO. (After two games of Godlike, where we gave the system a chance and far too steep a failure rate...made us give up the game system.)
Basically Eliot's fears are founded. You have a LOT of extreme results. (Failure, or huge success when you buy enough dice/special dice--its a steep steep slope with no even ground.)

Quote from: SilverlionI dislike ORE, I wouldn't if it lived up to its promise mechanically.

It simply doesn't work, as presented IMHO. (After two games of Godlike, where we gave the system a chance and far too steep a failure rate...made us give up the game system.)
Basically Eliot's fears are founded. You have a LOT of extreme results. (Failure, or huge success when you buy enough dice/special dice--its a steep steep slope with no even ground.)

I havent encountered that. But like I said I havent gotten a chance to play either. I guess thats the sort of thing that would bear itself out in play.

Quote from: Ian Absentia[*With the notable exception of clash, who has voiced an intense, visceral dislike of the mechanics. ]

It's the intensely gimmicky dice thing, I think, for me. Certainly the other things you mentioned are no problem. I really, REALLY wanted to like Godlike, but... ugh!

-clash

I like Reign. I think it's a game which benefits a lot from the testing the ORE has received over the years, and the system is a lot more polished than it was in, say, Godlike - lots of bugs have been ironed out.

Additionally, I've not seen a better system for modelling organisations.

Quote from: SilverlionI dislike ORE, I wouldn't if it lived up to its promise mechanically.

It simply doesn't work, as presented IMHO. (After two games of Godlike, where we gave the system a chance and far too steep a failure rate...made us give up the game system.)
Basically Eliot's fears are founded. You have a LOT of extreme results. (Failure, or huge success when you buy enough dice/special dice--its a steep steep slope with no even ground.)

It's the anti-bell curve.

-clash

I don't see what's so gimmicky about the dice.  It's a dice pool system where your target number is floating.  So unlike a WoD system were the TN is 7+ in ORE it floats.  You generally get fewer successes then in a WoD role because a) the target is fixed (but random) b) you generally role fewer dice.

The expert/wiggle dice are a little gimmicky I'll give that argument but as I've read it they are pretty straight forward and offer up some good examples of how they work mechanically and what they represent in a play example.

I haven't tested it yet and my fear does lie in the extreme results situation.  Which is my main concern It seems like unless you have a good dice pool you are going to fail more often then not.  Now they do provide a caveat that unless the situation really calls for a roll then don't roll.  Which could leave many things in the hands of the GM, which can leave many people uncomfortable.

Combat is one area I need to test, not that I don't get it.  But again the extreme situation is where I'm leery about in combat.  

Of all the ORE systems Reign holds the most interest for me because of it's subject mater and the ease *they* claim of moving from a personal level to a company level.  That concept alone is pretty damn slick and from the excerpts I've read they seem to handle it well.

Quote from: flyingmiceIt's the intensely gimmicky dice thing, I think, for me.

The dice gimmicks are pretty much in-your-face.  That was actually one of the design goals that Greg set forth from the get-go.  I recall that, shortly after designing the mechanics for Unknown Armies, he had begun to experiment with funny dice-rolling, using different types of dice, using different combinations of dice, different ways of scoring dice, etc.  What he was trying to do was to hardwire as much of the rules content as possible into the dice themselves, and, in turn, to extract as much information as possible from a single roll.

!i!

Quote from: Ian AbsentiaThe dice gimmicks are pretty much in-your-face.  That was actually one of the design goals that Greg set forth from the get-go.  I recall that, shortly after designing the mechanics for Unknown Armies, he had begun to experiment with funny dice-rolling, using different types of dice, using different combinations of dice, different ways of scoring dice, etc.  What he was trying to do was to hardwire as much of the rules content as possible into the dice themselves, and, in turn, to extract as much information as possible from a single roll.

!i!

D'OH! Now I get it! Now I am enlightened, and my love for ORE flows like waves in luminiferous ether!

Well, he obviously succeeded in his design goals. That's a laudable thing, perhaps, but it doesn't affect whether or not one will actually like the result. That's obviously a personal taste thing!

-clash

I played a short campaign of Nemesis (cf. my Project Nemesis Notes).  Our group basically agreed with the gimmicky claim.  

We were playing a gritty WWII game.  Without superpowers, what was very noticeable to us was that the rolls were relatively cumbersome, but in most cases weren't that distinctive.  Width was almost always 2, and height was an even spread from 1 to 10.  There was a tail that diverged from this (i.e. getting multiple matches lets you choose between two location), but it wasn't clear that the tail represented anything useful.  

Character creation didn't allow much distinction of characters -- admittedly difficult in our scenario since all the PCs were WWII grunts.  The combat system had a number of odd features, like nearly fixed damage since damage is based on width.  So a head shot from a rifle always killed, but a head shot from a pistol never did.  

I liked the Madness Meters as a concept well enough, but the ORE mechanics were not to my tastes.

I've played a one-shot of Godlike before and I rather enjoyed it.  I thought that the ORE system, whilst certainly not perfect, was a novel and innovative way of managing the 'single roll for everything' design goal and it certainly worked in play for my group.  I can't recall the details now, it was some time ago, but I do remember that it was fun!