TRPG General Chat

KRyan

00:00

@SevenSidedDie sure, but there is no situation under which that particular number isn't just flat-out wrong, even if it was a case like the dragons where the monster's supposed to tough for a group that level

but like I said, a singular example isn't that useful, since whatever, they got one wrong

I'm trying to make a statement about a broader picture which is way harder because I'd have to establish a trend

Lord_Gareth

(Anyone mind if I make a brief commentary on the earlier conversation w/r/t replacing Core classes with later classes because of transparent fluff?)

KRyan

which I don't have the time to compile

SevenSidedDie

Hold up, I'm not actually familiar with this creature, so I can't see what the first-paradigm perspective on it would be... lemme look.

KRyan

@SevenSidedDie Monster Manual II if that helps

Lord_Gareth

@SevenSidedDie Oh he's fun. He's part of a family of clockwork horrors

KRyan

00:01

under clockwork horrors

DuckTapeal

/gets popcorn

Lord_Gareth

Part of the trouble of how WotC published monsters is that they'd assign those monsters narrative roles that they just can't fulfill.

DuckTapeal

I was planning on finishing Season 4 of House today, but this is way better.

KRyan

@Lord_Gareth the Tarrasque comes to mind

Lord_Gareth

For example, Dalmosh of the Infinite Maws (MMV) is supposed to be this big bad late-game boss fight between the party and him, a gluttonous, all-devouring demon lord so insatiable that his stomach is another dimension.

KRyan

00:03

though I realize that it's also a pretty huge example of the paradigm shift

Lord_Gareth

Instead he's kinda this big dumb guy that you hover out of reach of and pepper with attacks until he goes down.

(Or a weapon you summon yourself, I suppose)

SevenSidedDie

Huh, that's a weird monster. The trouble with its CR from a first-paradigm analysis is that there's only one, so the CR is mostly irrelevant. It's a plot monster, so its actual in-combat situation is going to be entirely dependent on the campaign, enough so that the fight's context would drown whatever rating it had, accurate or otherwise.

@Lord_Gareth Yeah, I'm seeing the narrative role here. It can fulfill it, but it's entirely on the DM to do the fulfilling. It's not going to pull any of its narrative roll off with just its stat listing.

...Which is pretty typical, for a first-paradigm campaign actually.

KRyan

@SevenSidedDie which is similar to the situation with the Tarrasque, only inverted where on its own, the Tarrasque isn't nearly as dangerous as it's made out to be

That Damn Crab is another humorous example, but that was web-content which can be safely assumed to have lower standards and therefore isn't a fair example of the quality control on the published books

SevenSidedDie

@KRyan Yeah, the Tarrasque is a big-bad puzzle monster, but the puzzle is trivial if you already have all the pieces. Always not having all the pieces is the context that it was invented in.

KRyan

I don't use monsters that often so I'd have to do some digging to find some other stand-out examples

@SevenSidedDie right

Lord_Gareth

00:08

@KRyan Look at the Ship in a Bottle on the PFSRD. That thing is the Eater of Parties

KRyan

but even if you don't know how to kill it, the Tarrasque isn't dangerous to a mid-level party, unless they try something dangerous while trying to kill it

@Lord_Gareth eh, again, PF may not be a fair marker here

different company, potentially with different quality control

Lord_Gareth

@KRyan Oh just read it. Paizo is a 1st-paradigm dev team

KRyan

(and you and I both think their quality control is worse)

@Lord_Gareth they are, but they lie to their players even more than Wizards did

worse, they don't have Wizards excuse of it being new; Wizards made a mistake when it was something new, and they learned from that with the later books and 4e

Paizo had the perspective of the system of having been out for a long time, but they learned nothing

SevenSidedDie

@KRyan Depends on the mid-level party. If charop isn't happening, it's pretty dangerous. If it isn't, then it's outclassed, yeah.

KRyan

@SevenSidedDie flight obviates it, and flight's pretty common by mid levels even if you're not trying all that hard

I guess it's not for the fighter

flight's pretty common for the powerful classes though, even if you're not trying that hard, anyway

SevenSidedDie

00:11

@KRyan Possibly, they learned something: that they can have their cake and eat it too, just like WotC did. Wanting to appeal to everyone is doomed to add incoherencies to a game.

Alex P

@KRyan Obviates it by allowing you to escape? Or?

KRyan

(which is kind of an illustration of where I'm coming from, that optimization is not, in and of itself, the problem)

@AlexP stay out of danger. You can stick around if you want, but it means you have as much time planning or studying the thing as you want before attacking it

SevenSidedDie

@KRyan This might come back to the "non core classes? eh, no thanks" thing. I'm not aware of many core class characters that can get flight easily at mid-level. Most are still ground-bound.

KRyan

@SevenSidedDie yeah, their commercial success is proof enough of that, I meant in terms of game design though

@SevenSidedDie druid, sorcerer, and wizard, for starters

pretty sure bard and cleric though I'd have to double-check on their core spell lists

Lord_Gareth

@SevenSidedDie Boots and/or wings of flying are both core and cheap. Potions too if you want 'em.

SevenSidedDie

00:13

@KRyan The danger the Tarrasque presents is often not personal, too. If it's just a combat puzzle, then yeah, that makes it much safer. But if it's about to eat your sworn liege's city, it's somewhat more of a risk to remain at a safe distance.

Alex P

@KRyan Well, the Tarrasque is like a natural disaster that you can try to fight. I always figured it's not a big deal if YOU PERSONALLY can avoid the natural disaster. There's everyone else, you know. (Ha, we said that at the same time.)

KRyan

@Lord_Gareth I would not consider those things cheap

@SevenSidedDie yeah, I realize that the Tarrasque doesn't have to threaten you directly and it's quite good at that

ultimately, I don't think it even makes sense to give the Tarrasque stats

for the same reason it was a terrible idea to give the gods stats

SevenSidedDie

@KRyan That's the thing about monsters: they're easily underestimated, and if the DM plays them "straight", they're usually pushovers regardless of CR. And if they're played smart, whether it personally or its adventure context, the CR becomes completely irrelevant.

KRyan

@SevenSidedDie the Tarrasque has to be at least somewhat contrived, though, since it's Int 3

there are limits on how smart it can behave before it stops being what it is

SevenSidedDie

@KRyan Have you read the Dungeon World article "The 16hp dragon"? It's a good example of how stats aren't everything.

KRyan

00:16

which means the "smarts" has to be things outside of it, which is at least a little contrived

(it just happens to pop up next to the place you care about? not that contrived as these things go, but even from the get-go it's a little wonky)

@SevenSidedDie I have not, but I'll stipulate the point that stats aren't everything

SevenSidedDie

@KRyan Yeah, for the Tarrasque the "smart" is on the adventure context. If it's just sitting in an open arena and just waiting on the party's leisure (an extreme example of a dull, safe context), then it's not that dangerous. Put the McGuffin in its warpath though and it's somewhat more dangerous.

KRyan

but if stats are to have any meaning at all, they need to at the very least reasonably back up the claims made about them

SevenSidedDie

@KRyan Well, the Tarrasque isn't going to appear in a campaign by accident, even in an old-school sandbox with random encounter tables. It's necessarily a placed thing.

Alex P

So, okay, this whole discussion is about how playstyle (dare I say creative agenda) determines what you actually care about.

KRyan

@SevenSidedDie yes, but the placement has to be at least somewhat artificial to give the thing meaning

that was my point

Alex P

00:19

Mixed with the question of what D&D3.x is actually supposed to be.

KRyan

and that's minor, but it's also literally the very first thing that happens with it

SevenSidedDie

@AlexP Partly, yes. It's also about what assumptions were the norm when 3e was written, which were left out of the rules. And the resulting split in "what the game says" about how it's played.

@AlexP Right, yeah.

KRyan

@AlexP ultimately it is whether or not it is valid to make the statement that 3.5 is broken, as an objective thing, or if all brokenness is purely an artifact of a particular style

Alex P

@SevenSidedDie The thing is, I think if you played it the way Monte Cook intended it to be played, you'd still have a number of issues.

SevenSidedDie

@AlexP Yes, probably. Different issues though, likely.

KRyan

00:20

@AlexP I'm always dubious about assuming authors' intent, but I also believe that to be the case

@SevenSidedDie I also agree it's probably a different thing

Alex P

So, my experience with D&D3.x is that it pretends to be everything to everyone. Especially because, you know, D20! Saving the game industry by creating the one game that is all the games! &c.

SevenSidedDie

@KRyan Assuming author intent to win a "this is true!" argument is problematic, but assuming that the authors had intent, and that that intent is relevant to the development of the rules, is fair I think. As long as it doesn't wrap around into "but this is True!" again.

Alex P

So I think you're kinda stuck choosing either "Follow the mechanics where they lead and see how far they get you" or "Really pin down what D&D is and talk about it."

KRyan

there's how I would play it (where it's broken, but with the right group that can be ignored or fixed well enough to have a playable game), how d7 plays it (where largely the same thing happen, but he doesn't call that "fixing" and considers it just to be the default way it's played), how Monte Cook played it (which, if the articles about their playtesting are to be believed, was just dumb), and so on

@SevenSidedDie I agree, which is why I said dubious and not opposed. It can be relevant and it can be well-argued, that just rarely happens

SevenSidedDie

@AlexP Yeah, that's a big problem it has. If it needs to be everything to everyone, and everyone includes gamers who really like RAW to be objective and complete, then it has to both look like an objective and complete RAW, and also be interpretable/usable as merely guidelines. And not just a "rule zero" way either.

KRyan

00:23

also, as we both said, it isn't particularly relevant here because however Monte Cook would play it, it's not how either of us would play it, and you're not claiming that his playstyle would avoid the problems

SevenSidedDie

@KRyan Not so much "is the default" as "was the default for D&D at one point".

KRyan

@SevenSidedDie I was more highlighting the fact that you and I are doing fairly similar things, I just consider it actively fixing what I see as being broken, and you consider it just how things are done automatically

neither of us is playing the rules as written (side-note: no one does that, not even those who claim to)

I'm just being explicit about what I'm changing, for the most part, and trying to establish new rules instead, while you're just winging it based on ... imagery? simulation/verisimilitude? something?

don't know if that's an accurate synopsis of what you're doing it

and of course, I don't actually write down an entire new ruleset, either

I really do feel like the majority of the argument regarding broken or not comes down to semantics

about what you consider to be "a part of the system" and what you consider to be an external "fix"

(obviously, the related discussions we've had about playstyle are all valid and extremely edifying, at least for me)

SevenSidedDie

@KRyan Based on how D&D was played before 3e.

Lord_Gareth

I would be participating more but baby on me

SevenSidedDie

@Lord_Gareth Those do tend to encumber the arms and torso somewhat.

KRyan

00:28

@SevenSidedDie right, but that was based on something; I've tended to gather it's primarily "image-based" style, where things are determined based on what matches how the DM imagines things in his head

at any rate, my point is that, when I say the system's broken, I mean you have to "filter" things, as you referred to it earlier

whether that's done ahead of time or on the fly as an accepted part of the game is irrelevant to whether or not the system is broken, in my mind

if the system requires you to filter it in ways it gives no indication it needs filtering, it's broken

SevenSidedDie

@DuckTapeal I just tracked down the bit about buying magic items (DMG 137). That's a fascinating example, because I never would have read it as guaranteeing magic items. Because, prior to 3e, being able to buy magic items at whim just wasn't a thing. Without looking for it, I would still read that as an absolute limit banning things more expensive, not necessarily permitting everything cheaper.

KRyan

which is a definition of broken I don't think you'd agree with

SevenSidedDie

If that's the only line about being able to buy magic items, then I'd still say it's a paradigmic difference, how one would read that cold.

KRyan

which I don't have any particular issue with; I think I understand your definition of broken and how the game isn't broken by that definition, but I'm going to continue to use my definition

and by which definition, I am going to label 3.5 as broken

Alex P

@SevenSidedDie I think it was at least kind of a thing. On account of Baldur's Gate, for instance. That's shaping expectations of D&D play just as much as pen-and-paper D&D is.

KRyan

00:31

in some global, "real" sense, not just an artifact of how one plays

SevenSidedDie

@KRyan I think I see the key difference in this line: "if the system requires you to filter it in ways it gives no indication it needs filtering, it's broken".

KRyan

@SevenSidedDie right: as has been a theme, 3.5 lies to you

you knew about/assumed that filtering because of your history

I did not, because I never played before 3.5

I only had 3.5's materials to go on

and I was given no indication that such filtering would be a matter of course

SevenSidedDie

When 3e was written, no indication was necessary for that, because there was no such thing as a game that wasn't wholly, entirely, filtered through the DM. The idea of a rule set standing on its own feet without interpretation through a DM wasn't really a thing that anyone had managed to write, or bothered much to try. WotC did try, though.

KRyan

@SevenSidedDie again, the 3.5 core books seem to claim, to a new DM that, if you just follow these guidelines, things will turn out more or less OK

and they do talk about Rule 0 and how to use it

you are talking about far more expansive uses of it than the 3.5 core rulebooks indicate

SevenSidedDie

So 3.5 is... maybe broken, because it doesn't tell you how to use it. But that's probably intentional: the whole "everything to everyone". So perhaps it was intentionally broken?

KRyan

00:35

@SevenSidedDie I really doubt they realized just how badly it would play if followed literally (and I mean that in its entirety, not just the mechanics but also the guidelines and DMing suggestions and the like)

so I don't know that "intentional" is fair

SevenSidedDie

@KRyan Yeah, rule zero is a new concept. It's only really meaningful when it's no longer the default.

KRyan

@SevenSidedDie and I think as much as anything it was meant as a thing to ... calm? new DMs

Alex P

So, I think D&D3.x is busted because the play advice sucks and because it's not very good at being the kind of game it seems to most want to be, structurally (which is a highly magical put-all-these-bits-together-in-cool-ways battle game, in my view). I think D&D3.x may or may not be busted at someone's table, but I'd be hard-pressed to imagine a group for whom it's the best fit ever unless there are some serious "sunk costs" issues in play.

KRyan

like, "don't worry about it, this isn't all on you; the rules have got your back"

when they really, really do not

far too often

SevenSidedDie

@AlexP Yeah, structurally, the second paradigm has D&D right. Structurally, D&D totally works that way.

KRyan

00:36

@AlexP I agree with every single thing you just said so very hard

@SevenSidedDie I think that statement's only accurate to 3.x and 4; I don't think it's true of TSR's stuff, and Next... everything I've heard about Next is that it's a complete mess of trying even harder to be everything to everyone

and winding up with the worst aspects of each paradigm more than anything

SevenSidedDie

@AlexP Yeah, it's not even best fit for me. I can run it without a lot of the problems its charged with, and I don't even have to try to avoid those problems (others I do). But would I choose it as the best rules support for the kind of game I imagine D&D to be? Not by a long shot.

@KRyan Sorry yeah, meant D&D 3. Didn't mean 4e, but it's also true of it, yeah. Next... I don't know what to think of Next.

Next tries very hard to support the first paradigm, without making the second invalid either. As might be obvious, I think it's a much deeper divide than they hope. I don't think Next can bridge it in the same group.

KRyan

@SevenSidedDie see, this is where I'd just say "you don't have to try to, but you are avoiding them" which reinforces my point that they are actually there, even if you are naturally avoiding them by the way you'd play the game anyway

@SevenSidedDie as someone on the other side of it, I think you're very much right. all the people I game with consider it a really bad joke

SevenSidedDie

@KRyan If you avoid them without ever noticing them, is it really "avoiding"?

KRyan

I'd say, yes, it is

particularly since, in my experience, you got uncommonly lucky in that regard

and I think most, say, new groups just starting out without the history and experience you brought to the edition from the get-go, I think most of them wind up stepping in it one way or another

SevenSidedDie

@KRyan I don't know about that; it's just continuing the assumptions of previous editions. Which was what a lot of people did, since 3e was sold as "just like 2e, but with all the fiddly bits smoothed out."

KRyan

00:42

sooner or later someone plays a druid, and a fighter starts feeling bummed out that he can barely keep up with the druid's pet

@SevenSidedDie which is why my example was a new group, rather than an old one trying a new system

SevenSidedDie

@KRyan Yeah, new groups just starting out have no hope of spontaneously generating the first paradigm.

KRyan

aaaand I have to go again

but this has been good

Alex P

@SevenSidedDie What do you think about DW and the "paradigms?" Does it successfully manage to marry them by making the on-the-spot stuff more explicitly part of the structure of the game?

SevenSidedDie

@KRyan As much as I prefer that first paradigm, the second is valid: it's a functional response to the structural problems of the system that are laid bare without that prior context.

KRyan

massively educational for me, and it allows me to avoid feeling invalidated by your statements about 3.5

SevenSidedDie

00:44

@AlexP I'm not sure. I think it works wonderfully, but I'm unsure about how it would interact with the second paradigm. The fiction-first nature of its rules do seem to cause some people trouble, but I can't know if that's a second paradigm thing without asking "did you learn RPGs on WotC D&D?"

I know that Adam is a fan of all editions. He manages to thoroughly enjoy B/X and 4e; and much of Dungeon World evolved out of his group's "let's go back to 2e!" campaign.

@KRyan And for me to avoid making blanket statements about 3.5 without qualifying them right.

Alex P

(An aside, hopefully not derailing: I think DW is the AW game I like least because it's more about giving you a more reliable way to run the familiar than a new take on something. AW is Vincent Baker's take on post-apocalyptic fiction, which I can actually dig even if I don't like the genre in general. DW is more like "Here's a system to run traditional D&D / your D&D with," to me.)

Joshua Aslan Smith

yoz

@alexp it doesnt have silly, ambiguous clock mechanics

Metool

[edit] Oh.

Alex P

@JoshuaAslanSmith The clock is ugly. Monsterhearts does it better without the clock.

SevenSidedDie

@AlexP I totally get that. In fact, I resisted DW for a long, long time because I felt it didn't really translate the specific magic I saw in AW. Like, did you read the thing about the AW playbooks, where if the playbooks are plotted on a 2D graph, the Battlebabe is a knife sticking out of it?

Joshua Aslan Smith

00:52

@alexp but I'd never touch monsterhearts because of the content

agradine

I should probably check out DW at some point. I've heard good things about how interacts with the pulpier bits of Eberron

Joshua Aslan Smith

a lot of AW hacks still have the clock

SevenSidedDie

@JoshuaAslanSmith I felt the same way until someone explained strings to me, and then I was all "wow, that is not a genre I would normally play, but I can see that being awesome."

Trufac, I was not a post-apocalpyse fan until AW.

Alex P

So, replace the clock with a track.

The "three minutes to midnight" kind of thing is actually not very evocative in terms of the AW world, I think.

@SevenSidedDie Ditto. I think it's because of the "hardholder trap" kind of thing.

SevenSidedDie

@AlexP I think that might be an age thing. Most people now didn't live through that period of history with enough awareness of global events.

Joshua Aslan Smith

00:54

@sevensideddie no honestly I would never play monsterhearts, not even once, not interested in what its about.

Alex P

I think my favorite bit of post-apocalyptic fiction is Slow Music.

SevenSidedDie

@AlexP Whereas I love the second axis playbooks, the ones that are stuck to/defining the setting. I was hoping Advanced DW would include the world-mired classes, like a hierophant, a lord, that kind of thing.

Joshua Aslan Smith

@SevenSidedDie theres a ton of stuff like that on drivethrurpg

Alex P

@SevenSidedDie Well, I get what it's for. And I think it does speak to the whole "Okay, actually I assumed the apocalypse was in 1980" thing that Baker talked about. But to me the whole joy of AW is that it's not 1980s apocalyptica.

SevenSidedDie

@JoshuaAslanSmith Really? The alternate classes I've seen haven't struck me as that kind of thing. Do you have a link?

Alex P

00:56

@SevenSidedDie Yeah, this is why AW Dark Age sounds cool to me.

Joshua Aslan Smith

@SevenSidedDie firstly what do yo umean by world-mired?

basically class concepts that aren't murder hobo-esque?

Sidebar: Best moment in reading DW rules was when I got to the description of the Adventurer Enemy

Alex P

The barbarian has a cute define-details-about-your-culture mechanic but it's a bit weird since the other classes are all MORE battlebabe than the barbarian, not less.

@JoshuaAslanSmith Have you seen AW itself?

Classes like the hardholder and the saavyhead do a lot to define the setting as a whole.

SevenSidedDie

@JoshuaAslanSmith The playbooks in Apocalypse World have two kinds of axes that they have game-shaping power on, and nobody is equal on both axes. One axis is power over yourself, the other is power over setting. The Hardholder has almost no power over herself, but lots and lots of power to define major parts of the world the game takes place in. But they're also "stuck" to their world-based stuff, because their power in-game is external to them.

Joshua Aslan Smith

yeah I wasnt sure if he meant literally mired in the world as in their class features physically tied them to a place or what

gotcha

SevenSidedDie

@AlexP The battlebabe is the weird one, in that they violate those two axes, and imply a third. Vincent's never said (to my knowledge) what that third is, but you can see it a bit, intuitively.

Joshua Aslan Smith

01:01

Dashing Hero for 1 is something Ive seen in play and a lot of it is about making every place you go a bit of your own and you get to define how

rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/112061/…

SevenSidedDie

@JoshuaAslanSmith So yeah, class concepts that are, well not exactly "not murderhobo", but that have sheet choices that can define the world, and their power lies outside themselves in those choices. Like a lord, might not be good at fighting (think old guy who rules the Twins in Game of Thrones), but wield power over people or things.

Joshua Aslan Smith

wow theres been a lot of content added since I last looked

I feel compendium classes can also accomplish that

I do agree with you that DW is more focused on the affecting change personally side of the fence but I think thats just the kind of world/story its trying to tell

SevenSidedDie

@JoshuaAslanSmith Yeah, actually. I was saying I resisted running DW for ages because it didn't have that specific thing I like in AW, but now that I'm actually running it, I quite like what it does do. I don't feel like those classes are really missing; they're for a different kind of game. DW does D&D style roleplaying really well, often better than D&D, and I appreciate it for that.

Joshua Aslan Smith

yep

SevenSidedDie

@AlexP But yeah, I'm looking forward to Dark Ages. What DW doesn't exploit, but which the Apocalypse Engine is really excellent at, is conveying setting, mood, theme, style, game concept, etc., all in a very compact package. It allows for fleshed-out games despite being unfamiliar with the game types (like Monsterhearts, for me) with very little needed experience with the genre.

Alex P

01:08

@SevenSidedDie That's definitely a niche worth filling.

Joshua Aslan Smith

@SevenSidedDie do you have a link>

KRyan

@SevenSidedDie honestly, for conversations with me, I feel like you may not have to at this point: I can read your "not broken" as "after you fix it" and you can read my "broken" as "when you play without filters" and we'll be on more-or-less the same page. but insofar as I think a lot of people, particularly people new to RPGs, aren't going to assume filters when playing 3.5, as it seems to say you don't really need them except in weird corner cases rather than as a matter of course,

you may confuse them if you say "not broken" because they aren't going to supply the assumption of the filters that make that statement valid under your definition

(in short, I think most people would define those filters as "fixing" it, and therefore, if it needs those, it was "broken" before you did that)

(but I could be wrong about most people, certainly)

SevenSidedDie

@KRyan Possibly. Yeah, useful for other people. And, I've got some practice now conveying a foreign paradigm, so maybe I'll have some chance of doing so, if I embark on that conversation with someone.

Joshua Aslan Smith

@KRyan concur

SevenSidedDie

@KRyan I still think this might be more than semantics, but possibly not enough to bother teasing it apart. I keep thinking of games like Lacuna, or Ghost/Echo: they're incomplete, but not broken... Or games like B/X D&D, which doesn't tell you its play style at all, but it's not broken. There are lots of games that simply fail to work, if you're not the audience.

@JoshuaAslanSmith Here's the announcement for Dark Ages: lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/thread/780

Alex P

01:14

@SevenSidedDie Data point: I got Lacuna because it seemed cool but I hate it on my bookshelf because it feels like it doesn't guide me at all.

SevenSidedDie

I honestly haven't been following it closely. I'm the kind of RPGer that notes that something is developing, then ignores it until it's done.

KRyan

@SevenSidedDie I don't have any meaningful experience with any of those (B/X is the only one I even recognize) to really offer any comment on that suspicion

SevenSidedDie

@KRyan B/X is just so old that, if someone tired to play it with what we're calling 'second' paradigm (I'm sure the numbering is not correct, the more we use it), they'd quit in disgust pretty fast. Its functional playstyle(s) are sufficiently foreign that there's no "broken", it would be considered unplayable. But it works fine, if you know what its rules are for.

Alex P

3:16 is interestingly incomplete. If you follow the rules to a T, it's all about winning but there's no way to actually win for real.

Joshua Aslan Smith

lol

hmmm will probably not use Dark Ages. All those references are not ones Im really into. So right now it more of a reskin then a rules hack from what i read though

SevenSidedDie

01:18

@AlexP I have 3:16 but never attempted to play it. I suspect it would not work for me, based on what I've read in reviews and threads. Probably my need for fluff to matter would get in the way, but perhaps I'm guessing wrong.

Alex P

@SevenSidedDie I think it's ultimately a game about using the fluff to transcend the rules.

SevenSidedDie

@JoshuaAslanSmith There's almost no separation between "reskin" and "rules hack" in AW engine games, since the playbooks largely are the game. But yeah, if those inspirations don't do it, not for you.

Alex P

You rank up and gain abilities and gear (in a semi-competitive way, actually). But the (military) campaign doesn't stop. It just churns and churns and eventually it'll grind you down to nothing. So, well, what do you DO?

SevenSidedDie

@AlexP Ooh, so it's a koan game. Clever. Possibly frustrating.

Joshua Aslan Smith

@AlexP was it inspired by the forever war at all?

Alex P

01:21

@JoshuaAslanSmith Yes. Though I think more so by Armor and being snarky about 40k.

Joshua Aslan Smith

the lack of winning is probably part of the experience if its got any forever war

hmmmm Armor is interesting

I cant ever decide if its truly nihilistic or no

way to hide text in chat?

does anyone care if I ruin Armor by John Streakly?

Alex P

@JoshuaAslanSmith One thing about Vincent Baker is that he might take those inspirations and turn them on their head. So it may be worth looking into if you like their promise but dislike where they ended up.

SevenSidedDie

I don't know, does spoiler markup work here?

Joshua Aslan Smith

what is spoiler markup?

SevenSidedDie

/me tries to remember how to do spoiler markup

Alex P

01:22

You could post your spoiler in a pastebin?

And just link to it.

Joshua Aslan Smith

>! test case

Alex P

pastebin.com

Joshua Aslan Smith

nope

>!testing

SevenSidedDie

>! with a space?

Nope.

Joshua Aslan Smith

96

Q: Add markdown support for hidden-until-you-click text (aka spoilers)

Use cases: Programming puzzles. This way the answer can be posted the same time as the question, eliminating doubt that no answer is possible for hard questions and proving that the question is not a homework exercise (since the author already has the answer) The socratic method. In your answer...

so it works in questions

but yeah I guess not implemented in chat

@sevensideddie do you care?

SevenSidedDie

01:24

Yeah, works in normal posts, q&as. Just not here. And I believe not in comments either.

Alex P

Yup

SevenSidedDie

Ehh, maybe not? But I'm not the only one here. There are lurkers too.

Joshua Aslan Smith

books been out for like 30 years en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armor_%28novel%29

SevenSidedDie

Speaking of paradigms, I have not clicked the "ring of regeneration" question since it had zero answers. I am afeared of its 9-and-counting answers now...

Joshua Aslan Smith

hahaha

theyre all raw and all cheesy

do you like raw cheese?

SevenSidedDie

01:25

@JoshuaAslanSmith Yeah, not how that asker seems to be angling.

@JoshuaAslanSmith Only from France. :)

BESW

Has anyone made a Meta-Crisis joke yet?

Alex P

So, 3:16. There are more ranks than you can legitimately reach through mechanical rank-ups.

SevenSidedDie

Though, they are literally asking for it. If they wanted a "just use (in-fiction) common sense" approach to the ring of regeneration, they wouldn't need to ask to figure it out.

Alex P

The final rank, the brigadier, has a device that just blows up everything. Like, entire solar systems.

As a one-use panic button.

Joshua Aslan Smith

@alexp so I think Armor isnt nihilist/anti-war because in the end a-certain-person-who-wont-be-named makes the decision to do the classically heroic thing and its of his own volition. Also streakley has said that the computer error that results in repeated combat deployments was an excuse for the story, pure mechanics rather than some braoder social commentary like catch 22 or forever war

SevenSidedDie

01:27

@AlexP The hell. Totally a koan game. I need to actually read this now.

(The only two games I've ever written were koan-type games, deliberately obscure in their purpose, to be discovered by exploring their structure.)

(No comment on their success at that design goal, though...)

KRyan

@JoshuaAslanSmith what? the top answer is "there literally aren't rules for losing a hand in the first place, so you're going to have to decide what it means yourself (but here's a hint: cutting off Sauron's ring worked really well against him!)"

Joshua Aslan Smith

hahahaha

@besw here you go

hmmm that might have occured after I stopped looking at it

KRyan

@SevenSidedDie I also don't really agree here; the asker has a rules quote with several phrases bolded and is asking about the rules very explicitly, so I don't think it's unreasonable to give a very-rules-based answer

Joshua Aslan Smith

The contradictions of concepts that go into a lot of 3.5/PF questions really frustrate me. I'm torn between pointing and laughing and trying to reach my hands out through the internet to shake their shoulders and say, "you were born into bondage. Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A prison for your mind. "

KRyan

by the way, @SevenSidedDie, have you seen my edits to the elf answer? your interest in my original answer helped me frame what I was getting at with the search thing quite a bit

Joshua Aslan Smith

01:33

SevenSidedDie

@KRyan Not unreasonable to, no, but they're asking about one of those corner cases that (in my paradigm) nobody ought to expect the rules to actually cover explicitly.

@JoshuaAslanSmith I have no idea if we agree on why, but I think we agree in that sentiment. :)

Alex P

The thing that annoys me is that, to the extent that rules do cover the corner cases, the options they offer are often really not that interesting or fun. :(

KRyan

@SevenSidedDie actually, I'd argue that regenerate and the associated ring have no business being in the game at all, seeing as dismemberment isn't a thing in the game in the first place. Or that there really should be rules for that, because I really don't know of a good way to handle that

SevenSidedDie

@KRyan I looked at it briefly but in a hurry. It looked like there was still stuff I'd take exception to, but small enough that it's not worth the comments. :)

@KRyan That's... interesting. I think this is another paradigm gap thing: How is dismemberment not in the game?

KRyan

@SevenSidedDie the major changes were "the more important something is, the less likely you are to need auto-searching to find it, because the DM starts needing you to find it, and the game grinding to a halt isn't fun for anyone," and "if you are giving your wizard nothing better to do than take potshots with a bow he's crap at using, you are failing that wizard's player for as long as that goes on, so you really ought to keep it to a minimum or else you're really being quite rude to him or her."

@SevenSidedDie nothing ever says that it results in dismemberment and nothing ever says what being dismembered does to you

and plenty of things exist in the game that logically should dismember you, or worse

but they're all abstracted into "HP damage"

Alex P

01:40

@SevenSidedDie Dismemberment isn't in the game because the game has fairly involved (abstract but invovled) rules for injury that don't feature dismemberment.

Metool

@KRyan Elf?

KRyan

so how am I supposed to know to ignore that and now have you get dismembered

1

Q: Are the elf races really so bad?

Every popular charop class handbook I read seems to indicate that Elf is a terrible race choice, or at best "okay" (but sub-optimal) for some of the sub-types of elf. It seems to me that they actually get some nice bonuses, like the +2 Dex, some improved saves, immunity to sleep and resistance to...

dnd-3.5e optimization races

and then if I do have you get dismembered, how do I run that?

like, OK, you can't use your hand

is that it? what if it's your foot, you couldn't move as quickly, clearly, but how much slower? what does it mean for things other than movement speed, like Jump or Tumble or Reflex?

SevenSidedDie

@KRyan (As in, the edits are helpful improvements in the context of that answer and question. But some of the wording is tangentially debatable... but yeah, not important enough, or central enough, to debate to improve that question's help.)

KRyan

and while I could just make all that up on the fly, or come up with my own system, it really feels to me like this is the sort of thing the system usually has answers for, if it's going to be a part of the game

they've got all kinds of attacks and consequences for them, conditions galore, and not on of them touches on dismemberment

BESW

►

SevenSidedDie

01:44

See, I find it hard to believe that dismemberment suddenly disappeared as a thing that could possibly happen to a person living in Greyhawk, even an adventurer, therefore dismemberment can happen. Not often (because circumstances where that would be fun are rare), but neither impossible.

Joshua Aslan Smith

I feel that RPG developers need to adopt Agile models from software developers. RPG systems and releases have issues that were (and are still to and extent) endemic in the software community

KRyan

@SevenSidedDie that doesn't mean it is a part of 3.5, though, that means it's a part of Greyhawk, and honestly nothing written about Greyhawk under WotC, or any other D&D property, mentions the possibility of being dismembered

err

at all

SevenSidedDie

@JoshuaAslanSmith I've lately been reading GURPS due to some things Rob Conley wrote in an answer here, ages ago. It seems to have taken that to heart. All these things have answers, if you want to ask the game for them.

KRyan

maybe the Book of Vile Darkness but even there it's probably like "sacrifice your hand to your dark lord"

Joshua Aslan Smith

@BESW Oh jack....

SevenSidedDie

01:46

@KRyan Vorpal swords?

KRyan

@SevenSidedDie cause death, straight up

ok, it does cause decapitation

Joshua Aslan Smith

@KRyan I just laughed so hard at that

@KRyan highlander rules, you lose your head, your dead

KRyan

@JoshuaAslanSmith yeah, the Book of Vile Darkness is ... really awful

Alex P

Swords of sharpness.

Joshua Aslan Smith

obvious the regeneration ring doesnt care as we joked about in chat before

SevenSidedDie

01:47

@KRyan Ah, so they got rid of the limb-only results. Interesting. Still, that death is by decapitation. There's nothing... metaphysically impossible about dismemberment in the fiction of a D&D game.

Alex P

That's the limb-severing one in AD&D2.

Joshua Aslan Smith

@KRyan I laughed both because of how terrible banal and lame it read as and also because for that very reason I want to roleplay doing that now

KRyan

@SevenSidedDie certainly, but it's not a part of the system. They literally at no point make it a thing that can happen as a result of any printed circumstance

SevenSidedDie

@AlexP Oh, right.

Alex P

It's worse when there are no rules for dismemberment in a Star Wars game. >.>

Joshua Aslan Smith

01:48

its comically over the top villainy

SevenSidedDie

@KRyan That's assuming that the only circumstances that can occur must all flow from a mechanical determination, though. Why?

Joshua Aslan Smith

lets be real, the only way you lose limbs is your DM is a hardass

KRyan

@SevenSidedDie I wouldn't say I am assuming that it cannot happen in a game of D&D, I would say that I don't consider it to be a part of the system of D&D 3.5, because nothing printed in the system references circumstances that can cause it to happen, or the consequences of it happening

Alex P

@SevenSidedDie So, there's a framework provided by the game. Hit points and combat rounds and saving throws and whatnot. For stuff outside that framework entirely, it's easy to think "I should just come up with my own thing."

KRyan

any time a DM wants it to happen, they have to go outside the system and invent what happens

SevenSidedDie

01:49

@KRyan Oh, okay. Sure, it's not part of the system. But there are lots of things that fictionally happen during a game of D&D that aren't system.

Alex P

For stuff that looks like it would fit into the framework, right into the middle of it, it's harder to make stuff up on the fly because most people implicitly think "Well, it should fit in with what I already have."

KRyan

@SevenSidedDie right, but then my only point is that it's really weird to not include dismemberment as a part of the system, but to include healing dismemberment as a part of the same system

I feel like they should have just picked one

Alex P

Not impossible. But try to imagine how you'd write some rules for dismemberment in 3.x that would "feel right" in the context of the other rules.

SevenSidedDie

@AlexP This is where the original design goal of D&D 3e was short-sighted. They just wanted to regularise the existing rules, so they did, but that created a tight-knit set of rules. Where before there was lots of room for "oh, you're just missing a hand. It's obvious what that means", it became much more, "Huh, how are we going to make that work."

Alex P

@SevenSidedDie The tools provided very much don't give you much wiggle room, I agree.

SevenSidedDie

01:52

@AlexP I wouldn't write them, I'd just say, "Dude, you're missing a hand. Obviously, no, you can't still dual-wield. No, it doesn't matter if there's no rule saying that, you don't have a hand."

BESW

@JoshuaAslanSmith We now have a relic-hunting dandy.

Alex P

@SevenSidedDie Well, yes, but a lot of people house-rule on the basis of "Imagine how someone would write up 'real' rules for this and imitate that, just super-quick and without sweating all the details."

SevenSidedDie

@AlexP An incomplete, but wiggle-room-limiting system. This is the great, grand issue with d20.

Alex P

@SevenSidedDie Yes.

So, Burning Wheel comes with injury rules that can cover stuff like this.

BW doesn't have any real rules for diseases.

Joshua Aslan Smith

@BESW I saw, excited, so were waiting on 2 other players at this point right?

BESW

01:53

@SevenSidedDie Yes, but.... [devil's advocate] If I can take 50 points of damage without loss of function and need to make a death-by-massive-damage check, do I need to make a death-by-massive-damage check for losing my hand?

Alex P

But it's easy enough to hack 'em in, if I need them.

BESW

@JoshuaAslanSmith The relic dandy is Problematic, and the psychic is Operafloozy, who is writing up a bio now.

KRyan

@SevenSidedDie hand is easy, foot is harder

Joshua Aslan Smith

@BESW I think CP2020 handled this sort of thing very well. Had cripple rules for limb damage, If you limb took enough it was obliterated and you instantly went into shock and started making death rolls

Alex P

Because the game as a whole says "Do what makes sense in the ficton" and also traits are much more flexible than feats.

SevenSidedDie

01:54

@KRyan That's just an artifact of the whole assumption-inertia I've been talking about, and why I'm pretty sure the first paradigm is what 3e was written in. Dismemberment might happen in pre-3e, out of system. A special trap. Having it crushed as a legal punishment. So the ring accounted for that, despite no "system" in 2e that made dismemberments happen. (Let's ignore the Sharpness Sword a moment; it alone doesn't justify a the Ring.)

Joshua Aslan Smith

your head is a limb

if your head takes crippling damage you die

unprotected headshots were autocrits

whenever you shot someone and hit them, if it wasn't aimed anywhere in particular (most shots) you rolled a 1d10 for each hit

SevenSidedDie

@KRyan Foot is harder, agreed. Not insurmountable though. And not enough to somehow make such injuries impossible for the human body to suffer.

Joshua Aslan Smith

that d10 determined its hit location

Alex P

I think D&D's problem in general is that it has lots of areas where there is a lot of abstraction without simplicity.

Joshua Aslan Smith

every shot had a 1 in 10 chance of hitting your head

SevenSidedDie

01:57

@AlexP Yeah. In general, the 3e project was ill-conceived. "Let's regularise everything! But not specify everything, because that stuff isn't adventurous enough! But our game can do anything for everyone!"

Alex P

BECMI-style D&D partly solves that problem by saying "The abstraction is something the GM should just trump, whenever."

SevenSidedDie

@AlexP Unsurprisingly then perhaps, B/X is my favourite edition, moreso than the ones I actually learned to roleplaying with.

(After Dungeon World, but only some people accept DW as an edition of D&D. ;)

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