Wizards could definitely shake things up - they've got some talented designers in the company and an ability to actually research and playtest that's kind of unmatched in the hobby (since they're so huge compared to everyone else, who kind of just have to go on vibes).
It's just that, well. As 5E shows, they're absolutely not interested in shaking that boat when they've got something that works for them. They're streamlining some things, scrubbing away the most objectionable material, but fundamentally they just want to stick to what their customer research says is D&D.
You'll see class abilities change and numbers fiddled with, but they'll probably never drop the concept of "A level 17 wizard" or move away from rolling a d20 to attack.
Oh, sure, but that's the thing. What i'm interested in at this point is generally not what Wizards is going to do, and i'm okay with that. Some of what i want (A better emphasis on abstraction where it makes sense, like armor and weapons, more interesting gameplay for martials) is theoretically possible, but like, that's okay. My tastes have changed, DnD does not have to be for me.
Now if i can just get more people playing Icon and Lancer...
In a vacuum, a slight errata to a system is fine, but given the community of 5E I’m certain there are dozens of better reworks of the classes already out there, many of them free. I suppose if you have the inevitable $180 going spare to buy three books for a questionably better update to a game you already own, go for it.
I’m actually more interested in old school revival games than anything with the official D&D name on it. If I must venture into ye olde dungeon, I’d rather do it torch in hand. On the flip-side, I still think all their good settings work better in other systems. I want to run Planescape in Blades in the Dark one day, and I heard someone in here was playing Ebberron in Savage Worlds, which sounds good to me!
I threw this together just now. Open question: if the top of the triangle runs off what’s below it, how can you make a better system by starting at the top? Seems impossible to me. If One D&D had started designing from the bottom I think the process would go way smoother. They’re updating the classes but haven’t even established the tone. I think if they’d done a few polls asking how heroic, realistic, lethal and such the system should be they could eventually build classes that suit what most people are playing. If no one wants travel rules, cut that out of the Ranger and put in more combat stuff instead. If everyone wants social encounters, give every class some social stuff, and so on.
I guess there’s only about three posts left, so answer that in your mind, put your hands to your forehead Xavier style and I’ll get it eventually.
Oh hey in the next thread I think the D&D players should make a point of looking at the rules for other games and pointing out the weird stuff in them. Tell everyone what you think of The Show class from Apocalypse World 2E. Poke at MOTHERSHIPs 47 skills. Do you think the fact you roll the difficulty of a challenge is just the most messed up thing in Ironsworn?
Mothership's extensive skill list is actually pretty good as I recall. If you're gonna have A Bunch Of Skills, remember to make there be a gameplay purpose to all of them and fit the slice of genre you're evoking. Mothership manages that, 47 things that you'd expect a cast of characters trapped on the Nostromo to maybe know and find relevant to their situation.
Jokes aside Mothership skills are good because they're tiered such that you start with generic, vague ones and deeper options just become niche science/soldier things to evoke character.
Oh hey in the next thread I think the D&D players should make a point of looking at the rules for other games and pointing out the weird stuff in them. Tell everyone what you think of The Show class from Apocalypse World 2E. Poke at MOTHERSHIPs 47 skills. Do you think the fact you roll the difficulty of a challenge is just the most messed up thing in Ironsworn?
When I read games I don't tend to really commit to mind stuff that is annoying - I more tend to remember stuff I actually like.
Well, except with Exalted, because I did play that for a while despite the actual game being terrible, but talking about how Exalted's rules are bad is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel. With dynamite. Never seen another game whose rules and intended vibe are so powerfully at odds with each other. Thankfully most people I played with were happy to put some paper over all the holes.
gavindelThe reason all your softwareis brokenRegistered Userregular
Since we're at page 100 and soon to be annihilated, this is a great time for me to gripe into the void.
Good lord, I hate clocks. I know that people like them, but my brain just checks out. "Ah, yes, I must make this number go up. Here, I spend my action to make the number go up. Oh, this one counts down? Sure, I spend my action to make it go down. Oh, I did really well? It went down twice! Amazing. What kind of pizza are we getting tonight?"
I am well aware that all RPGs are little more than clickity clackity number games at their core, but clocks in particular really strike at the heart of over-abstraction. "You need to do <THING> before <BAD THING>, please insert EIGHT <ACTION> to continue"
Then again, the rules-light revolution lost me three systems ago, so probably best to simply accept I want a higher level of mechanical fidelity than that field of developers prefers to put out.
Since we're at page 100 and soon to be annihilated, this is a great time for me to gripe into the void.
Good lord, I hate clocks. I know that people like them, but my brain just checks out. "Ah, yes, I must make this number go up. Here, I spend my action to make the number go up. Oh, this one counts down? Sure, I spend my action to make it go down. Oh, I did really well? It went down twice! Amazing. What kind of pizza are we getting tonight?"
I am well aware that all RPGs are little more than clickity clackity number games at their core, but clocks in particular really strike at the heart of over-abstraction. "You need to do <THING> before <BAD THING>, please insert EIGHT <ACTION> to continue"
Then again, the rules-light revolution lost me three systems ago, so probably best to simply accept I want a higher level of mechanical fidelity than that field of developers prefers to put out.
I'm not really a fan of the "fill with various actions to accomplish <larger task>" type of clock, for the most part. I think it can work for large-scale abstract situations (I can't think of a good example right now) but I don't like it for like, "sneak into the manor -- 8 segments." That feels too game-y. But I do like smaller clocks to represent that like, picking a high security lock is harder than picking Jimothy Bozo's front door. A 4-segment clock is nice in Forged games in particular because you can push yourself or use gear/setup actions to make that a single, riskier action vs. multiple safer ones. My most common use of action clocks in Blades is just as hit points. Hit points are just a clock.
I much prefer clocks as a threat/light consequence. "Guard alertness", "reinforcements arrive", "night falls" and so on. They give you options for consequences, especially on partial success rolls, that avoid the kind of cascading complexity that inexperienced GMs can fall into with fail-forward systems where every partial success generates a new obstacle to overcome and it never actually feels like you've succeeded.
Tynnanseldom correct, never unsureRegistered Userregular
edited September 2023
I'm having a lot more fun running my SnV game with clocks after my group and I finished our 5e campaign. They offer a ton more flexibility for the whole breadth of PC skills to come into play, and it allows my players to be a lot more creative in suggesting fun ways for their characters to circumvent a given problem. I usually use linked four-step clocks to represent the job's objective. First get into the facility (somehow), then find the thing (somehow), then get out (somehow). The details are up to player interest, narrative circumstances, and fun genre tropes for Heroic Sci-Fi.
I'll also echo what admanb said, which is their use as a looming danger. When I want to put pressure on, I can put up a clock representing some impending problem and tick it when rolls go south. I can also use them to represent time-dependent scenarios that tick with each action (allowing a player to Resist if they want to spend stress and narrate their character doing something *especially* smoothly).
Tynnan on
+1
Tynnanseldom correct, never unsureRegistered Userregular
The way things stand in the campaign running, if I want my Speaker to have a teeny tiny panic attack I can create a clock labeled "Lydia Arrives" and tick it a few times.
+1
gavindelThe reason all your softwareis brokenRegistered Userregular
Since we're at page 100 and soon to be annihilated, this is a great time for me to gripe into the void.
Good lord, I hate clocks. I know that people like them, but my brain just checks out. "Ah, yes, I must make this number go up. Here, I spend my action to make the number go up. Oh, this one counts down? Sure, I spend my action to make it go down. Oh, I did really well? It went down twice! Amazing. What kind of pizza are we getting tonight?"
I am well aware that all RPGs are little more than clickity clackity number games at their core, but clocks in particular really strike at the heart of over-abstraction. "You need to do <THING> before <BAD THING>, please insert EIGHT <ACTION> to continue"
Then again, the rules-light revolution lost me three systems ago, so probably best to simply accept I want a higher level of mechanical fidelity than that field of developers prefers to put out.
I'm not really a fan of the "fill with various actions to accomplish <larger task>" type of clock, for the most part. I think it can work for large-scale abstract situations (I can't think of a good example right now) but I don't like it for like, "sneak into the manor -- 8 segments." That feels too game-y. But I do like smaller clocks to represent that like, picking a high security lock is harder than picking Jimothy Bozo's front door. A 4-segment clock is nice in Forged games in particular because you can push yourself or use gear/setup actions to make that a single, riskier action vs. multiple safer ones. My most common use of action clocks in Blades is just as hit points. Hit points are just a clock.
I much prefer clocks as a threat/light consequence. "Guard alertness", "reinforcements arrive", "night falls" and so on. They give you options for consequences, especially on partial success rolls, that avoid the kind of cascading complexity that inexperienced GMs can fall into with fail-forward systems where every partial success generates a new obstacle to overcome and it never actually feels like you've succeeded.
That's the funny bit. Pacing mechanisms are perfectly fine. It is specifically the little circle clock or its card equivalents that drive me up the wall.
"This clock needs four successes" -> Gavindel takes a nap
"You have four minutes until the guards show up" -> Gavindel is fine with it!
There's some weird wrinkle in the abstraction itself that gets me. If you say "I will give each player one crack at it", that could be represented as a clock with X = # of players, but somehow it doesn't read the same way.
I blame the disingenuous loading bars of 2000's era gaming.
Tynnanseldom correct, never unsureRegistered Userregular
edited September 2023
The way I look at this is that the games that use clocks (and also flashbacks, in the FitD settings) are keenly interested in genre tropes as a source of inspiration and style. They are much MUCH more the sort of game that looks like a weekly episodic TV show in a given setting than The Lord of the Rings.
My players and I find this refreshing and very fun, but it's totally up to your preferences if that works for you and your table. No sweat if it doesn't.
In my Scum and Villainy game, my players are leaning very hard into Cowboy Bebop/Ocean's Eleven/The Expanse tropes. We're letting loose a bit and not taking things very seriously, and everyone is having the most fun we've ever had as a gaming group. It's very freeing. I get to kick them off a cliff if a roll goes bad, and they get to Uno Reverse me and explain how that was their plan all along.
Since we're at page 100 and soon to be annihilated, this is a great time for me to gripe into the void.
Good lord, I hate clocks. I know that people like them, but my brain just checks out. "Ah, yes, I must make this number go up. Here, I spend my action to make the number go up. Oh, this one counts down? Sure, I spend my action to make it go down. Oh, I did really well? It went down twice! Amazing. What kind of pizza are we getting tonight?"
I am well aware that all RPGs are little more than clickity clackity number games at their core, but clocks in particular really strike at the heart of over-abstraction. "You need to do <THING> before <BAD THING>, please insert EIGHT <ACTION> to continue"
Then again, the rules-light revolution lost me three systems ago, so probably best to simply accept I want a higher level of mechanical fidelity than that field of developers prefers to put out.
I'm not really a fan of the "fill with various actions to accomplish <larger task>" type of clock, for the most part. I think it can work for large-scale abstract situations (I can't think of a good example right now) but I don't like it for like, "sneak into the manor -- 8 segments." That feels too game-y. But I do like smaller clocks to represent that like, picking a high security lock is harder than picking Jimothy Bozo's front door. A 4-segment clock is nice in Forged games in particular because you can push yourself or use gear/setup actions to make that a single, riskier action vs. multiple safer ones. My most common use of action clocks in Blades is just as hit points. Hit points are just a clock.
I much prefer clocks as a threat/light consequence. "Guard alertness", "reinforcements arrive", "night falls" and so on. They give you options for consequences, especially on partial success rolls, that avoid the kind of cascading complexity that inexperienced GMs can fall into with fail-forward systems where every partial success generates a new obstacle to overcome and it never actually feels like you've succeeded.
That's the funny bit. Pacing mechanisms are perfectly fine. It is specifically the little circle clock or its card equivalents that drive me up the wall.
"This clock needs four successes" -> Gavindel takes a nap
"You have four minutes until the guards show up" -> Gavindel is fine with it!
There's some weird wrinkle in the abstraction itself that gets me. If you say "I will give each player one crack at it", that could be represented as a clock with X = # of players, but somehow it doesn't read the same way.
I blame the disingenuous loading bars of 2000's era gaming.
What about the opposite, where the "the alarm goes off" clock ticks on failing checks?
I feel like at that point the clock is, well, specifically a countdown clock and the abstraction becomes more concrete and understandable.
...At the very least, I hope we can all agree that it's better than the Tomb of Horror "slowly count down from ten out loud and cross-reference to see what happens based on how fast, and how, they reacted in real-time"
0
admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
Since we're at page 100 and soon to be annihilated, this is a great time for me to gripe into the void.
Good lord, I hate clocks. I know that people like them, but my brain just checks out. "Ah, yes, I must make this number go up. Here, I spend my action to make the number go up. Oh, this one counts down? Sure, I spend my action to make it go down. Oh, I did really well? It went down twice! Amazing. What kind of pizza are we getting tonight?"
I am well aware that all RPGs are little more than clickity clackity number games at their core, but clocks in particular really strike at the heart of over-abstraction. "You need to do <THING> before <BAD THING>, please insert EIGHT <ACTION> to continue"
Then again, the rules-light revolution lost me three systems ago, so probably best to simply accept I want a higher level of mechanical fidelity than that field of developers prefers to put out.
I'm not really a fan of the "fill with various actions to accomplish <larger task>" type of clock, for the most part. I think it can work for large-scale abstract situations (I can't think of a good example right now) but I don't like it for like, "sneak into the manor -- 8 segments." That feels too game-y. But I do like smaller clocks to represent that like, picking a high security lock is harder than picking Jimothy Bozo's front door. A 4-segment clock is nice in Forged games in particular because you can push yourself or use gear/setup actions to make that a single, riskier action vs. multiple safer ones. My most common use of action clocks in Blades is just as hit points. Hit points are just a clock.
I much prefer clocks as a threat/light consequence. "Guard alertness", "reinforcements arrive", "night falls" and so on. They give you options for consequences, especially on partial success rolls, that avoid the kind of cascading complexity that inexperienced GMs can fall into with fail-forward systems where every partial success generates a new obstacle to overcome and it never actually feels like you've succeeded.
That's the funny bit. Pacing mechanisms are perfectly fine. It is specifically the little circle clock or its card equivalents that drive me up the wall.
"This clock needs four successes" -> Gavindel takes a nap
"You have four minutes until the guards show up" -> Gavindel is fine with it!
There's some weird wrinkle in the abstraction itself that gets me. If you say "I will give each player one crack at it", that could be represented as a clock with X = # of players, but somehow it doesn't read the same way.
I blame the disingenuous loading bars of 2000's era gaming.
I think I have the opposite problem where as soon as you say "four minutes" I go "okay so how much time does literally any action take" because even a game like D&D that purports to simulate precise time in combat rounds doesn't really work. I guess if you say "okay so if you succeed this will take an inconsequential amount of time but on a partial success it'll cost you a minute" I'm fine, but as soon as you say "this will take 15 seconds" I'm out.
gavindelThe reason all your softwareis brokenRegistered Userregular
To some extent, I think the feeling is that the clock is extraneous. Why can't rising tensions be described as the effects actually seen by the characters? The sounds of approaching boots, the distant alarm, and other signs of trouble?
The best situation I can see for a clock is this:
Your characters have a time limit
They do not know they have a time limit
That time limit is gonna hit them like a killbox squad from a mid-2000s Camarilla session
There is no in-universe feedback. Think snipers setting up on roofs a half mile away, undetectable by your equipment or senses
You need some mechanism to describe to the players that their characters are about to get blasted if they dawdle
This is a bit difficult to handle in my opinion. Pure simulationism would be "they get killboxed and TPK". Actual game experience has taught me that the out-of-nowhere-overpowering-force goes over at the table about as well as diarrhea in a pool.
One way to cheat is to give them in-universe handwave for how they sense things they shouldn't be able to sense anyways. (This is what "sense killing intent" is for in my game) Another way is to straight up tell the players what's coming. Clocks fall more towards the second: the storyteller is giving a fair warning that in X actions they're gonna drop a brick on things.
...At the very least, I hope we can all agree that it's better than the Tomb of Horror "slowly count down from ten out loud and cross-reference to see what happens based on how fast, and how, they reacted in real-time"
Some of those old modules were mind-boggling. There's reasonable limits ("Five minutes max of discussion"), and then there's just being a jerk about it.
To some extent, I think the feeling is that the clock is extraneous. Why can't rising tensions be described as the effects actually seen by the characters? The sounds of approaching boots, the distant alarm, and other signs of trouble?
Generally I think it should be both? Clocks are in a lot of ways an extension of Apocalypse World's "show them the barrel of the gun" GM move, which is the "you hear the sound of approaching boots" that sets up "the guards arrive" on a future move, but Forged is a slightly less boom-boom system so it adds clocks (technically expands on, since AW uses clocks but mainly for higher-level activity) so you have a more clear and manipulatable system. Because Forged has built-in tools that let you interact with those systems more more specifically -- the GM says they're going to tick the "guards arrive" clock and you get to decide whether or not to resist. You don't resist and the GM ticks the clock and says "you hear the sound of approaching boots. Or the opposite where you take a Devil's Bargain to tick the clock but add a die -- "I'm going to take my time with this."
Most clocks are just a UI update on the concept of "X successes before Y failures".
As a UI update, they work fine. As a universal solution to problems, they fall flat, because they're not a universal solution (and in their defense, they were never intended to be, that's the fault of people using them as one rather than a problem with the concept).
I'm a bit biased though, because a) I dislike the level of abstraction used by games using clocks, generally and b) I strongly dislike the narrative mechanics that are common in games that use clocks.
...At the very least, I hope we can all agree that it's better than the Tomb of Horror "slowly count down from ten out loud and cross-reference to see what happens based on how fast, and how, they reacted in real-time"
In the context of Tomb of Horrors, this mechanic was awesome, though.
Tomb of Horrors was never intended to be played in a campaign or in a home game. It was a tournament module for conventions. Players would sit down with pre-gens and see how far they could get in three hours (or however long the timeslot at the con was). If they died, they just grabbed another pre-gen from the stack and rejoined the party.
A lot of the issues people have with Tomb of Horrors are because that context has been lost, and it's being evaluated as a normal campaign module.
Tynnanseldom correct, never unsureRegistered Userregular
Yeah, like, ultimately there's an axis with a gradient between "hyper simulationist wargame" and "write and produce an episodic TV show" and wherever your group falls along that axis there's probably a game for you. Amongst many other axes.
+3
QuetziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered User, Moderatormod
I like small clocks but not big clocks. Consequence of a scene or a series of difficult tasks, sure (I am much more likely to do consequence clocks overall, as I think those are more useful and more fun). The long term ticking offscreen between adventures that BitD sets up with its whole clockwork world less so, those I found hampered more than they helped.
+1
MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited September 2023
What's a clock in this context?
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
You can tie it to rolling dice, or just mark progress on a clock as is relevant.
Most game hosts are using clocks, just abstractly in their head. If the dungeon delvers enter the goblin hideout at dawn, you’re probably making the goblins more alert to their presence every time they make a loud noise, and are probably moving the day along every time they declare they’re going to spend a long time searching or resting, and Bob the Elf has the Red Itch, the progress of the illness perhaps tied to failed Constitution rolls every night.
Before the thread collapses, wading into the clock fray
It's funny to see the same love it/hate it clock takes as always because I think a big part of it is presentation! I was a-ok with them as a player but suddenly seeing the mechanics for it from the other side i was like 'eh this is actually way too abstract for me' so personally Id agree I'd like to see them hidden (GM only as it were)
I played with a GM using a universal hitpoint system, so that EVERYTHING had hp, and that was basically the X number of successes to beat challenge thing. Roll poor? The sealed door loses 1HP, you're going to be here a while. Critical? Whump you've opened it. Which is fine, but 'you do a full four hit points of lockping-ness (??) with your action' didnt really fly with me .. even though its the same as combat! Its the same system. All just presentation
When I read the clock stuff in Blades in the Dark, my first thought was "hang on a minute, this is a DnD 4e 'x successes before y failures" skill challenge but with the serial numbers filed off"
And seeing as how 4e went down like a fart in a lift, I was surprised at how well the mechanism was received
For me clocks sit in the same space that 4E's skill challenges used to- they bothered me until I stopped thinking of them as being the objective themselves, and instead an abstracted way to depict progress, where the game lives in the narrative, not rolling dice. Rolling the dice doesn't win or lose a situation, it just tells you how the situation progresses.
I think D&D pretending to be a simulationist system was to blame there, at least for me- it makes you think of things too literally, and then when you hit (necessary, it's still a game) abstractions things feel artificial. And in the most extreme examples it turns you into someone who just wants to roll dice to kill pretend goblins for loot, because Those Are The Mechanics.
+1
MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
I don't think I've ever played a Dnd game in my life that followed the rules exactly.
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
+3
Tynnanseldom correct, never unsureRegistered Userregular
4e is very different from FitD in most ways though
I don't think I've ever played a Dnd game in my life that followed the rules exactly.
I don't think I've ever played a session of any RPG whatsoever that followed the rules exactly, honestly. We always add or substract stuff and override the games when they do something dumb.
Posts
Oh, sure, but that's the thing. What i'm interested in at this point is generally not what Wizards is going to do, and i'm okay with that. Some of what i want (A better emphasis on abstraction where it makes sense, like armor and weapons, more interesting gameplay for martials) is theoretically possible, but like, that's okay. My tastes have changed, DnD does not have to be for me.
Now if i can just get more people playing Icon and Lancer...
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
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I’m actually more interested in old school revival games than anything with the official D&D name on it. If I must venture into ye olde dungeon, I’d rather do it torch in hand. On the flip-side, I still think all their good settings work better in other systems. I want to run Planescape in Blades in the Dark one day, and I heard someone in here was playing Ebberron in Savage Worlds, which sounds good to me!
I threw this together just now. Open question: if the top of the triangle runs off what’s below it, how can you make a better system by starting at the top? Seems impossible to me. If One D&D had started designing from the bottom I think the process would go way smoother. They’re updating the classes but haven’t even established the tone. I think if they’d done a few polls asking how heroic, realistic, lethal and such the system should be they could eventually build classes that suit what most people are playing. If no one wants travel rules, cut that out of the Ranger and put in more combat stuff instead. If everyone wants social encounters, give every class some social stuff, and so on.
I guess there’s only about three posts left, so answer that in your mind, put your hands to your forehead Xavier style and I’ll get it eventually.
http://skullkingsemporiumofthestrange.pbworks.com/w/page/138502779/MotherShip Skills
When I read games I don't tend to really commit to mind stuff that is annoying - I more tend to remember stuff I actually like.
Well, except with Exalted, because I did play that for a while despite the actual game being terrible, but talking about how Exalted's rules are bad is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel. With dynamite. Never seen another game whose rules and intended vibe are so powerfully at odds with each other. Thankfully most people I played with were happy to put some paper over all the holes.
I am well aware that all RPGs are little more than clickity clackity number games at their core, but clocks in particular really strike at the heart of over-abstraction. "You need to do <THING> before <BAD THING>, please insert EIGHT <ACTION> to continue"
Then again, the rules-light revolution lost me three systems ago, so probably best to simply accept I want a higher level of mechanical fidelity than that field of developers prefers to put out.
I'm not really a fan of the "fill with various actions to accomplish <larger task>" type of clock, for the most part. I think it can work for large-scale abstract situations (I can't think of a good example right now) but I don't like it for like, "sneak into the manor -- 8 segments." That feels too game-y. But I do like smaller clocks to represent that like, picking a high security lock is harder than picking Jimothy Bozo's front door. A 4-segment clock is nice in Forged games in particular because you can push yourself or use gear/setup actions to make that a single, riskier action vs. multiple safer ones. My most common use of action clocks in Blades is just as hit points. Hit points are just a clock.
I much prefer clocks as a threat/light consequence. "Guard alertness", "reinforcements arrive", "night falls" and so on. They give you options for consequences, especially on partial success rolls, that avoid the kind of cascading complexity that inexperienced GMs can fall into with fail-forward systems where every partial success generates a new obstacle to overcome and it never actually feels like you've succeeded.
I'll also echo what admanb said, which is their use as a looming danger. When I want to put pressure on, I can put up a clock representing some impending problem and tick it when rolls go south. I can also use them to represent time-dependent scenarios that tick with each action (allowing a player to Resist if they want to spend stress and narrate their character doing something *especially* smoothly).
That's the funny bit. Pacing mechanisms are perfectly fine. It is specifically the little circle clock or its card equivalents that drive me up the wall.
"This clock needs four successes" -> Gavindel takes a nap
"You have four minutes until the guards show up" -> Gavindel is fine with it!
There's some weird wrinkle in the abstraction itself that gets me. If you say "I will give each player one crack at it", that could be represented as a clock with X = # of players, but somehow it doesn't read the same way.
I blame the disingenuous loading bars of 2000's era gaming.
My players and I find this refreshing and very fun, but it's totally up to your preferences if that works for you and your table. No sweat if it doesn't.
In my Scum and Villainy game, my players are leaning very hard into Cowboy Bebop/Ocean's Eleven/The Expanse tropes. We're letting loose a bit and not taking things very seriously, and everyone is having the most fun we've ever had as a gaming group. It's very freeing. I get to kick them off a cliff if a roll goes bad, and they get to Uno Reverse me and explain how that was their plan all along.
What about the opposite, where the "the alarm goes off" clock ticks on failing checks?
I feel like at that point the clock is, well, specifically a countdown clock and the abstraction becomes more concrete and understandable.
...At the very least, I hope we can all agree that it's better than the Tomb of Horror "slowly count down from ten out loud and cross-reference to see what happens based on how fast, and how, they reacted in real-time"
I think I have the opposite problem where as soon as you say "four minutes" I go "okay so how much time does literally any action take" because even a game like D&D that purports to simulate precise time in combat rounds doesn't really work. I guess if you say "okay so if you succeed this will take an inconsequential amount of time but on a partial success it'll cost you a minute" I'm fine, but as soon as you say "this will take 15 seconds" I'm out.
The best situation I can see for a clock is this:
This is a bit difficult to handle in my opinion. Pure simulationism would be "they get killboxed and TPK". Actual game experience has taught me that the out-of-nowhere-overpowering-force goes over at the table about as well as diarrhea in a pool.
One way to cheat is to give them in-universe handwave for how they sense things they shouldn't be able to sense anyways. (This is what "sense killing intent" is for in my game) Another way is to straight up tell the players what's coming. Clocks fall more towards the second: the storyteller is giving a fair warning that in X actions they're gonna drop a brick on things.
Some of those old modules were mind-boggling. There's reasonable limits ("Five minutes max of discussion"), and then there's just being a jerk about it.
Generally I think it should be both? Clocks are in a lot of ways an extension of Apocalypse World's "show them the barrel of the gun" GM move, which is the "you hear the sound of approaching boots" that sets up "the guards arrive" on a future move, but Forged is a slightly less boom-boom system so it adds clocks (technically expands on, since AW uses clocks but mainly for higher-level activity) so you have a more clear and manipulatable system. Because Forged has built-in tools that let you interact with those systems more more specifically -- the GM says they're going to tick the "guards arrive" clock and you get to decide whether or not to resist. You don't resist and the GM ticks the clock and says "you hear the sound of approaching boots. Or the opposite where you take a Devil's Bargain to tick the clock but add a die -- "I'm going to take my time with this."
As a UI update, they work fine. As a universal solution to problems, they fall flat, because they're not a universal solution (and in their defense, they were never intended to be, that's the fault of people using them as one rather than a problem with the concept).
I'm a bit biased though, because a) I dislike the level of abstraction used by games using clocks, generally and b) I strongly dislike the narrative mechanics that are common in games that use clocks.
In the context of Tomb of Horrors, this mechanic was awesome, though.
Tomb of Horrors was never intended to be played in a campaign or in a home game. It was a tournament module for conventions. Players would sit down with pre-gens and see how far they could get in three hours (or however long the timeslot at the con was). If they died, they just grabbed another pre-gen from the stack and rejoined the party.
A lot of the issues people have with Tomb of Horrors are because that context has been lost, and it's being evaluated as a normal campaign module.
Flames of the Meta-Dragon
DIESEL
Against the Fall of Night Playtest
Nasty, Brutish, and Short
They’re just a method of tracking things that may come to pass; inevitably, or if the players succeed, or if they fail.
Blades has good rules for them:
https://bladesinthedark.com/progress-clocks
You can tie it to rolling dice, or just mark progress on a clock as is relevant.
Most game hosts are using clocks, just abstractly in their head. If the dungeon delvers enter the goblin hideout at dawn, you’re probably making the goblins more alert to their presence every time they make a loud noise, and are probably moving the day along every time they declare they’re going to spend a long time searching or resting, and Bob the Elf has the Red Itch, the progress of the illness perhaps tied to failed Constitution rolls every night.
It's funny to see the same love it/hate it clock takes as always because I think a big part of it is presentation! I was a-ok with them as a player but suddenly seeing the mechanics for it from the other side i was like 'eh this is actually way too abstract for me' so personally Id agree I'd like to see them hidden (GM only as it were)
I played with a GM using a universal hitpoint system, so that EVERYTHING had hp, and that was basically the X number of successes to beat challenge thing. Roll poor? The sealed door loses 1HP, you're going to be here a while. Critical? Whump you've opened it. Which is fine, but 'you do a full four hit points of lockping-ness (??) with your action' didnt really fly with me .. even though its the same as combat! Its the same system. All just presentation
And seeing as how 4e went down like a fart in a lift, I was surprised at how well the mechanism was received
I think D&D pretending to be a simulationist system was to blame there, at least for me- it makes you think of things too literally, and then when you hit (necessary, it's still a game) abstractions things feel artificial. And in the most extreme examples it turns you into someone who just wants to roll dice to kill pretend goblins for loot, because Those Are The Mechanics.
I don't think I've ever played a session of any RPG whatsoever that followed the rules exactly, honestly. We always add or substract stuff and override the games when they do something dumb.
(Happy enough to it no one else wants to)
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