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I tried to ignore it, but they seem resolute on forcing the idea of common, uncommon, and rare races through. I understand he doesn't like tieflings and dragonborn. Man up and tell your players "hey guys, no tieflings or dragonborn in this game ok."
Tennessee Booth- Huckster (Deadlands Reloaded)
Ulvein- Drow Executioner (4E WLD)
The trick is balancing those three categories of options. If you put them all in one bucket and players choose from the bucket every N levels, some characters would get nerfed in combat if they picked all social feats, so their players always go for stuff that keeps them alive. If you let them choose one of each each level, that flies in the face of the whole simple game thing they seem to be going with, or you let players skip the choice and you go back to the nerfing. If you break it up so it's feats every N%3 levels, skills N%3+1, traits N%3+2, you run the risk of drawing things out too much and reducing the overall impact of the choices (because you make so few of them from any one category).
It comes down to a design decision that they obviously haven't made yet. I personally think option 2 or 3 is the best depending on how they want things to feel (so they'll probably go with 1 and ruin the idea).
Part of me thinks that they have just wholly misinterpreted the feedback that 5e should be easy to run, and thus concluded that all of this kind of thing needs to be figured out by the rules.
Compartmentalizing feats to combat, skills to exploration, and social stuff to some other system seems unnecessary within the D20 framework.
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Tennessee Booth- Huckster (Deadlands Reloaded)
Ulvein- Drow Executioner (4E WLD)
The problems I have with 3.5 and Pathfinder are not related to the feat system. I think there is so much math involved that running a game to high levels becomes an exercise in tedium, as combats simply take far too long if they're designed to challenge the players or are too easy if they're designed to be quick.
Did the 4E feat system change that much in 4E? I can't remember at the moment. I know you get them at even levels, as opposed to odd ones.
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I mean, using FATE as an example of how theme and system are unrelated is amazing to me. Fudge dice cluster around zero very tightly, so you have to get bonuses from elsewhere to really be effective. And those bonuses are usually from Aspects, which are defined at character creation. So in these mechanics, Who You Are matters much more than What You Do, which is theme/fluff.
It just seems to me that people are saying 'Nah they're the same' when they're obviously not.
But it's these sorts of blog posts that make me wary of their "modular" approach. Instead of saying "We're playing D&D, but no Tieflings, no Dragonborn, and no Primal classes," now we'll have to say "We're playing D&D with the Martial, Arcane, Shadow, Elemental, Divine, and Psionic class modules, the Feat module, the Basic and Intermediate Skills modules, the Core and Uncommon race modules, the Inherent Bonus module, the Gridded Combat System module, the Expanded Weapon Statistics module, the Advanced Combat module, and the Common, Uncommon, Rare, and Artifact Items modules."
Yay for being so much easier to run!
More importantly, who decides what modules are getting included? I'm weary of a system that gives so much power to the DM. Sure, ultimately, it should be his decision, but you know what I like? When my players are happy and get to play what they want. If that means compromising on both sides, all the better.
@poshniallo I feel similarly and remain unconvinced they're not. No one has taken the time to say anything other than, "No, you're wrong," which isn't a very compelling argument.
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I agree, and that makes me even more wary, because now everyone needs to understand every module and how they interact with each other just to decide on what kind of D&D they're going to play, rather than an inclusive system which assumes all things are part of the game and only requires targeted exceptions. If their goal is to make D&D easier to run and play, they're not going to achieve that goal with modularity, unless that modularity is so broad that it's essentially the same thing it's always been (a core game with expansions).
Tennessee Booth- Huckster (Deadlands Reloaded)
Ulvein- Drow Executioner (4E WLD)
This model requires the DM knowing what kind of game they're going to run, the DM telling the players, the players being on board, and the DM never changing their mind mid-stream. Which can happen. The thing about D&D though is that there's pretty much two modes to it: all combat all the time, and combat with some interaction/socialization/whatever. So either way, the combat feat is almost always a safe choice, and that elbows out the other options.
I mean, even if you're in an RP-heavy game, what are you going to take, a feat that gives you a bonus to defenses, or a feat that lets you speak more languages? Sure the language thing may come up, but it's not like your failure to speak primordial means you have a better chance of dying every session. You can take the languages feat but the opportunity cost is a lot higher than if you just take the bonus to defenses and go "no hablo titan".
Jesus christ yes. The best move I ever made as a DM was recognizing that 4e let me not care about micromanaging the game and/or every character's details, and just say "if it's in the CB you can take it, with the only exception being really esoteric setting-specific options, and even then I'll probably just mull it over for five minutes and decide I don't give a fuck and let you take it".
Edit: and even if I wanted less stuff, it's easier to start with a giant set of balanced material and remove it, than start from zero and figure out what gets voted in. But yes, in my opinion paramount is letting the players play what they want.
That's the ultimate problem with the "game" being a bunch of modules. If a point is reached that each iteration has different modules and thus feels different, it's not going to unify a fucking thing. It's going to be like the old days where each group had their own binder of D&D Our Way and none of that info transferred between groups.
There were two different arguments in this whole mess of discussion:
1) Mechanics can/cannot be separated from the fluff
2) Mechanics can/cannot add to the fluff
Generally, the consensus on the first one has been that they absolutely can. Sure, whatever.
Many people have said that the second one can be true, but then insert the first argument to disprove it. This is SJs, "Mechanics can add to the fluff, but I could just as well change the names of everything and make a system for farming, because they're not linked."
This is what I've been arguing against. My example with the Steel test shows that the design decision absolutely did flavor the game. The counterpoint to this was that the fluff came first and that it was more accurate to say it influenced the mechanics. We don't know this. What we do know is that the fluff ("Pain hurts you in this game and every wound has the potential to stop you in your tracks") is mechanically reinforced (minuses to all actions and the Steel test).
It doesn't matter that the mechanics could be rolled on d4s, 6s, drawn from a deck of cards, whatever. What matters is that the Steel test is part of the mechanical framework of the system in the first place.
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I do think they were successful for WotC but I have two issues with them, to Incenjucar's point:
1) They feel mostly stapled on
2) I don't like the general notion of someone paying to be better at D&D, by way of bonuses or more options or more fiddily bits or whatever
If that quote about 5e meant they're going to reproduce Fortune Cards for it, then blegh. If they're going to come up with some mechanism that allows you to have a hand of auto-successes that you draw from, and some loser cards in your hand that you effectively discard when you're cool with failing, then that could be interesting. CthulhuTech had an alt framework that I think was something like that, basically you had a known pool of numbers which you could use to build your successes and failures, rather than always relying on dice rolls.
Player of Li Mei Feng, Monkey Princess, The Dresden Files Low Profile
GM of Monsterhearts: Blackwood
Saying that, it really relies on a few things.
1) The language in question is one that's likely to actually be used in the game. Here's where a limited set of language families is much better than learning highly specific languages for single cultures.
2) The language will give you an opportunity to talk around a situation that might otherwise have been dangerous or turn a relatively neutral situation into something beneficial. If examples don't immediately spring to mind then I don't know what to say to you.
3) You're playing in a game that supports point 2 and makes it an attractive option through combat being dangerous, not too rewarding and not the primary objective of the game.
If these things aren't in place then sure, taking a language becomes a trap choice.
Point 1 is the tricky part and, to be honest, I'd rather check for each character when a new language is encountered (based off INT and taking into account feat/skill choices) to see if they can piece together an understanding of it from the bits of language adventurers are bound to pick up. At chargen if you want a multilingual character than just give them a high INT and take the Linguist Feat or whatever, chances are you'll be able to talk to some of the monsters and work around them that way. No wasted feats learning languages that never arise in the game and, obviously, non-human PCs will start with their own language alongside common.
Point 2 relies on good GMing, as does so much of an enjoyable game, but really they're things that even new GMs should be learning to do pretty soon in.
Point 3 is where D&D Next actually comes in, and I'm not sure which way they'll go with it. It sounds like the combat focus will be pulled back from how it was in 4e but I don't expect we'll see a return to earlier editions with things like non-balanced monsters, XP for treasure and the whole grave-robber aesthetic for character art.
SoogaGames Blog
lolwut
Yes, but you're sort-of missing the point when you say that. You can tailor different mechanics to better suit particular themetic / flavorful elements in your game (you gave the example of a standard universal resolution system, like GURPS or d20. That's perfectly fine, but universal mechanics are trading-off flavor in exchange for accessibility).
To use a board game example, consider the Audio CD mechanic in Space Alert! I mean, you could use other things and produce a similar mathematical result, but the mechanical choice of using a CD supports the game's theme.
To use an RPG example, consider the way that Rifts and similar Palladium products actually gives weapons a real sense of weight to the player by having their damage scale via an upward ramping dice pool.
You can use any mechanic for anything, sure. But some mechanics can better convey a certain theme than others.
I think there were a couple of others.
I actually did address your post directly.
I know that's exactly what designers do. I've read interviews with designers talking about combat with penalties for wounds vs no penalties for wounds and the reason they chose one - to make players scared of combat, to make the first blow more significant etc etc, or to let players have a feeling of power etc.
And the start of this conversation was SJ saying mechanics and fluff are 100% entirely totally separate. Which I tried to avoid getting sucked into - he's entitled to his own opinion, even if I am sure he's mistaken, but he kept repeating it for a few pages and I couldn't help myself.
I'll address it and say that this is complete nonsense, because all you've done is define several different ways of doing the exact same mechanical thing. You can't say that all mechanics are the same and then as evidence use a bunch of mechanics that you've defined to be the same (and also say that the only thing he REALLY cares about is whether the goblin is dead, because that's just you redefining terms even more).
Take d20, Dark Heresy, and Shadowrun. All of them have vastly different ways of handling health, wounds, and damage taken, and how it impacts your character. d20 just has generic hit points, which are always healed completely generically (at least in D&D, I don't know if modern handles it differently, or some other variant.) This leads to a very heroic style of combat, as you can perform huge impressive stunts and maneuvers the entire fight, right up until you croak, or are healed up.
Shadowrun has a stun and body damage track, both of which can contribute to dice pool penalties the more damage you take. This makes even smaller bits of damage more important, because you can be worn down much more easily. It's very easy to be brought down from a gradual wearing down, even from something as innocuous as a taser, as you just get so many minuses eventually that you can't really do anything effectively. This means that each fight is more important and dangerous, and you have to be more wary. It's easier for the gnats to take down the rhino.
Dark Heresy has a wound system, which is kind of odd in that you never really die from your wounds, only from criticals - it's just that criticals get worse and worse the more damaged you are. There's also a lot more chance for permanent damage and scarring in dark heresy, it's possible to have limbs and eyes hacked off and gouged out. This makes the combat much more tense the longer the fight goes on, as you're risking a lot more - especially when one roll of damage can determine if your guy just has his stomach ripped open, or his entire arm cut off.
Just from the way the wound and damage systems are set up, we have 3 very different results in terms of the flavor and style of the system, none of which has much to do with the specific fluff of the weapons used, or anything else. This is what I think the argument is generally about, in that I think one side will read this and think 'yes, that's it exactly', and the other side will think 'no, that's not what I mean when I say fluff/flavor, I mean something else', so hopefully this will help people define what they mean.
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No other RPG I've played other than D&D has quite so much tension between the combat/non-combat sides of the game, so if this simplifies things for them and makes it easier to balance everything, then I'm for it. Didn't they mention some way of breaking it apart a while ago, like having a combat class, and a non-combat...something? Style? Personality? Like a parallel non-combat class that you'd pick, and then bolt the two together. I liked that idea a lot.
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You're right, and this is one of the greatest examples of a mechanic that we've kept in because of original D&D even though it doesn't work well. The trouble with languages is that you can either speak them or you can't, and because language use is so complicated to resolve, there are no more rules about them than that. So if you can speak orc, you can interrogate the chief and discover they didn't really kidnap the princess and it's all a double-cross by the grand vizier.
Or you can't.
Much better to replace the whole thing with knowledge skills of some kind. Knowledge: Humanoids could include language skills, maybe give bonuses to combat, whatever.
If that dungeon or whatever was a significant portion of the character's exploits, then great, good choice. However, compare that with ten, twenty, thirty encounters where your defenses are one lower or you do a d4 less damage per hit or whatever.
Your examples are all good and technically possible, I'm not denying that. Linguist (or whatever other non-combat feat) can be a good choice, but I'm rather stating that combat bonuses are pretty much guaranteed to be a good choice, when it comes to D&D. It's hard for non-combat choices and combat choices to share the same decision space.
This is what I'm talking about. Putting the non-combat somethings in a different design space can allow for that kind of thing without messing with combat crunch. Personally, I interpreted 4e as the rules basically saying "we don't care what you do outside of combat" and run it that way --- you want followers, a keep, whatever? Fine, great. Get a bunch of gold or kill some important dudes. Want to seduce the pants off everyone? Pump up your social skills. Want to trick the Raven Queen into a contest where victory means you steal her pantheon? Go right ahead if you think you're ready. The rules leaving all of that varying degrees of ambiguous was good enough for me. If 5e wants to make rules for it, that's fine, but it shouldn't be at the expense of combat stuff.
4e didn't do that, and I think if they segregate it in 5e the right way, it could be the first thing I find interesting about the game. But, interestingly, I think the rare non-combat choices in 4e still have some some degree of combat utility.
For the games that want that kind of nuance, that'd be cool. Personally I'm fine with the binary setting.
"I am shocked when people want to play options that they find awesome, options which I may not find awesome or which may not be the same recycled fantasy tropes from a generation ago."
I responded directly to your post two posts down with:
"Either could be appropriate depending on how you fluffed it in setting. To say there is some ONE mechanic for any given fluff piece is weird, but eh, I disagree with the idea that mechanics inform flavor. When I'm using a fireball to cause damage to enemies (mechanic) it doesn't matter that I'm using explosive pixie powder instead of bat guano (flavor). Still a big ball of fire. Now should a setting influence the flavor of things, sure. I wouldn't expect guns to be in Forgotten Realms. As to your last point about having rules for grids and LOS being actively unhelpful to a game, I have no idea how that even begins to make sense. Even Vampire has rules for where things are in relation to you and could easily be played with a grid and miniatures. I don't believe that affected the ability to play a game of heroism and personal morality at all."
So I still don't think you've provided anything.
Tennessee Booth- Huckster (Deadlands Reloaded)
Ulvein- Drow Executioner (4E WLD)
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This is exactly the case I've been making. Tone and flavor might even make a certain mechanic seem like it belongs, but that is for other reasons entirely.
also "killing a goblin" is not a mechanic sage, it's an event that happens in the world, so i think you missed my point when i said that any narrative event can be resolved with any mechanic
i never made any statement about any mechanic being better or worse for the job, and i've said twice now that that's not what i'm talking about, because in good game design they should be linked
but they aren't permanently fused together
Player of Li Mei Feng, Monkey Princess, The Dresden Files Low Profile
GM of Monsterhearts: Blackwood
This is like saying that fluff doesn't create tone, it just supports a tone that was decided beforehand. Of course it was created beforehand, tone isn't created accidentally, it's done intentionally using tools like mechanics and fluff. The fact that a tone was decided beforehand is a truism, and not really an argument for anything.
Other than that, you've just got another unsupported assertion that mechanics don't create tone.
I don't even understand what this means. I don't think I implied you said any mechanic was better or worse, in fact I was implying the opposite. You are saying that all mechanics are functionally the same, and I'm arguing they can have extremely different effects on the tone of a game. Can you address the examples I gave? Otherwise I'm going to think you're ignoring them because they're too good, and hard to refute.
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i'm not saying all mechanics are functionally the same, i was using those examples to say that any mechanic can be used to resolve any situation to illustrate that mechanics and story can be examined independently
your examples are basically just "well this mechanic really enforces the flavor of game X" which is great but a different discussion altogether (the merit of mechanic X to illustrate theme/flavor/fluff Y)
i'm combating vanguard's idea that every mechanic necessarily has to be married to flavor/theme/tone/whatever we're calling it - mechanics can enhance flavor, but they don't need to.
Player of Li Mei Feng, Monkey Princess, The Dresden Files Low Profile
GM of Monsterhearts: Blackwood
It doesn't seem like he's saying what you think he is. I think he's just saying that there are SOME mechanics which are designed to influence the tone/flavor. Yeah, it's possible to design a game system where every dispute is resolved via coin flip, and be completely flavorless. I don't think anyone is really disputing that.
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he is using it to reinforce his idea that mechanics and fluff have to be linked on all levels - page 64 or so
that's a pretty strong absolute statement here and what i've been predicating my points on
and since you already agreed that we can design a game system completely divorced from any predicated flavor, i think we're really just coming at a similar conclusion from two different directions
Player of Li Mei Feng, Monkey Princess, The Dresden Files Low Profile
GM of Monsterhearts: Blackwood
"This is like saying that fluff doesn't create tone, it just supports a tone that was decided beforehand."
-Correct!
"Of course it was created beforehand, tone isn't created accidentally, it's done intentionally using tools like mechanics and fluff."
-Correct! And also the reason I used words like "intended" and "designed"!
"The fact that a tone was decided beforehand is a truism, and not really an argument for anything."
-Correct!
"Other than that, you've just got another unsupported assertion that mechanics don't create tone."
-Correct! Because they don't! "Steel" does not create tone. It is created to support a desired tone. "Hit Points" do not create tone. Hit Points are created to support a desired tone. It's not a statement about whether mechanics and tone are linked. It's a statement about the nature of that link, really more along the lines of where these things come to be in the design process of a game. Think of it as a chicken and egg statement. The tone comes first.
Just look at WotC's 5E posts. They've all been about what kind of "tone" and "feel" the designers want for the game, and how they're trying to design and choose mechanics, fluff, art styles, and even logo styles that support that tone. They're not starting with "Okay guys, Hit Points. Let's make a game that feels like Hit Points."
Player of Li Mei Feng, Monkey Princess, The Dresden Files Low Profile
GM of Monsterhearts: Blackwood
I reiterate that 5E sounds like a trumped-up full-color glossy GURPS that's less mechanically sound.