I think Black Armada hits a lot of the Forge's goals: games designed for narrowly focused play experience goals with simple mechanics and highly structured session progression, which combine to create player-level emotional responses in ways that less focused and structured games struggle to accomplish without extremely skilled GM/player effort.
I think they avoid many of the Forge's pitfalls along the way, particularly the last one--many Forge games don't really work for anyone who isn't already an expert in how Forge games are "supposed" to work.
Lovecraftesque is more like Dungeon World, in that its rules successfully codify the designers' experience and skill so that each group doesn't have to reinvent the wheel--but, for me at least, does it better than DW because the goal experience is more clearly defined and tightly focused.
OK, GNS is to me helpful for looking at how a game mixes its priorities, though I realize that my using it that way it is likely not how it was used during that stove-piping discussions of the time ... OK, thanks for that.
@BESW I understand that. But games are made for players to play as I see it. So a given system / game (it seems to me) is built with at least an idea of the player base in mind.
@doppelgreener I seem to recall a Forge post from (Edwards?) about D&D being incoherent, since it could not be very well shoe horned into a single stove pipe, but I may be remembering that from a different forge discussion on the Big Model thing ....
A gamist-first playstyle tends to include elements like looking for ways to 'cheese' characters, or getting a feeling of satisfaction by accomplishing a goal the GM didn't expect: some element of the table-level experience (rules, GM, other players, etc) is an adversary that the player is trying to overcome.
@BESW I see. And reading about it, also an element of "winning" against the system or some adversity. (Which variously simultaneously describes a lot of games. Lots of games present adversity to be overcome.)
Before I found discussion boards for D 1, I just played single player and played the game as I found it. I had not idea how the game engine worked, didn't care, and just tried to get to the end credits with each class.
@doppelgreener About a year later, I discovered an online discussion group and began to learn of the gamist challenges like 3@30. And then I read Jarulf's guide. At that point, I think I was enjoying it at the G level. I think that fits how the terms are used.
@doppelgreener I think that the term "incoherent" was used in the GNS discussions in a particular sense, in that it applied to things that didn't fit one of the big letters very well.
But since that can be "I've mastered the system so that I can make the character which best meshes with my friends' playstyles" and "I've tricked the GM into giving me a concession that will make the game stop working as intended," the term "gamism" isn't very useful.
I can also see where the condescension comes from since it's codifying system mastery and munchkinism into one package, which is like, the one thing people who care about this want others to stop doing.
But GNS is pithy and uses terms which look obvious yet aren't used in obvious ways, so it's got a lot of staying power: people can remember it, and then argue about it.
We've got some system mastery over Fate, others have system mastery over D&D, and overall it helps us very much avoid traps and tricks and allows us to advise and guide others through these games.
Broad disclaimer: I haven't ever found any of the models useful even when they've been brought up.
There are things I've found very useful in terms of describing and categorising games and players, but not the models.
@Maximillian Right. I've done that with lots of games. It's why I have lots of games I like so much, I'm also aware of the weaknesses of the ones I love most and so don't try to go places with them where they're weakest.
@doppelgreener This condescension is one of the downfalls of the Forge as a whole, I think, and why their games tend to feel esoteric and inaccessible. It's very didactic design.
@Maximillian yeah. I found that for me, a certain amount of system mastery makes me enjoy a game better, but part of that is due to my own experiences. To DM I had to really know how the game worked, and where weird stuff cropped up.
It's why I moved to Fate in the first place: I knew D&D well enough that I also knew it was flat-out uninterested in supporting the kind of gameplay I needed the way Fate could, because of where their strengths and weaknesses lay.
And it's why I'm also looking at systems like Cortex, because they have strengths in places Fate in turn has weaknesses.
D&D 3.5 "I mean you could take crafting feats to make that thing you want, or you might just wait and flat out buy it and use all those feats and skill points on things that contribute to a battle or a puzzle."
(I designed an epic level character who specialized in free-action "and now you're hogtied in anti-magic handcuffs" but gosh the turns took forever. Retired after one session.)
Right. D&D has its strengths. The stories I want to tell need different strengths, in areas D&D will not provide assistance. I don't need to use the one tool for an inappropriate job just because I have that tool, when I have a whole tool shop available to me.
And mostly if I try to turn a screw with a hammer I'm going to be making life very difficult for myself and might do damage to both the thing I'm doing and myself.
"I want a story!" "I want involving fights." "I want to feel needed and contribute to a team." "I just want my guy to be awesome and you need to pay attention to how he's awesome."
@doppelgreener What I liked a lot about Empire of the Petal Throne, for all that it was a very close cousin to D&D original, was the polish and thought that Barker put into it. Probably some of the best DM learning I could have done, in terms of seeing how someone put a setting together in a rational way for an irrational premise.
yeah, it was good. Only three games over two days, but it was definitely a hit. The three players in the first game came back with two more to play again, and two of them were back again for the third game the next day.
I think the whole con heard the screams when Lady Blackbird accidentally poisoned herself.
It was definitely the right game to pick. The steampunk aesthetic and piratey flavor caught peoples' interest, and the open-ended resolution let me tailor the style to each player as needed.
I learned how to crack ice from my dad. he'd make mom and him a whiskey sour when he got home from work one day of the weak. he'd shake up the drinks in a used/cleaned peanut butter jar. If I helped him crack the ice (wrapped in a towel, cutting board Whack with a hammer) I'd sometimes get to try and sip the residue in the bottom of the jar
@Maximillian Heh, the response that (I just want to argue with people) gets from me is "at another table, thanks, life's too short." We have the interwebs for arguments now.
Several of the players had never done any TTRPGs before, and comparing them with the D&D-experienced players, it reinforced my experience that ten-foot-pole paranoia and murder-is-the-first-option playstyles are taught by D&D-like systems. The new players were quick to embrace fail forward, silly risks, and social solutions. The D&D-experienced players were more cautious, planned out everything in advance, and considered mass murder the default solution to any given situation.
I was gonna add some bits about longer casting times to show how even then you can cast if you find a spell that you can throw out even after using your action to re-up the casting time
@BESW Have none of them played video games? Those promote murderhoboism as well. Heck, in Diablo III, I am nothing but a murderhobo. It's all there is to do.
@NautArch But they aren't asking this. They are asking about casting them simultaneously. Which is a very specirfic case of casting on the same turn and also not covered by any other Q I could find.
@Rubiksmoose Casting "simultaneously" is casting on same turn. THen that means it's a question about cantrip/non-cantrip and spellcasting on turn requirements.
@Rubiksmoose I'mjust saying that to me, it's not clear what their actual question is. I"m trying not to make assumptions about what they're actually after. If you think you know and it gets reopened, then post your answer. But for me, I"m not voting to reopen because I don't understand the source of their problem yet.
@NautArch agreed. They don't understand the rules so we should answer the question to help them. The issue is they are coming from another game where it does make a difference (since casting a new spell interrupts any other casting)
The rules for bonus action spells state:
You must use a bonus action on your turn to cast the spell, provided that you haven't already taken a bonus action this turn. You can't cast another spell during the same turn, except for a cantrip with a casting time of 1 action.
However, counterspe...
@trogdor I think there have bene studies on video game stimulus response, not sure how good they are, and some on chess. Been years since I read about them. Lots of studies on casino gaming tooo..
@DavidCoffron Are you thinking that they believe there isa difference between "simultaneous casting" and casting an Action spell/Bonus Action/Reaction spell?
This question is prompted by both Sage Advice and this similar Pathfinder question. Let's use the scenario from Sage Advice:
Can you cast a reaction spell on your turn?
You sure can!
Here’s a common way for it to happen: Cornelius the wizard is casting fireball on his turn, and his...
@trogdor Ever since I heard someone compare trying to understand the brain by measuring brain activity to trying to understand a computer by observing the electrical currents through it I can't shake a weird feeling about such studies
@DavidCoffron @Rubiksmoose THe more I read it, the more I think you guys are right in that the true question is "Can I cast two spells on the same turn" by means of "Is casting two spells on the same turn simultaneous casting and is that possible or does the first spell not complete?"
@trogdor I remember when Myst was all the rage. That was more of a puzzle game. What I like about the TTRPG is the interpersonal interactions. So yeah, brain working differently in a variety of ways.
@DavidCoffron Gotcha - so this is them trying to apply another system's rules to 5e. I don't think they understand the "turn" in 5e and that's probably where an answer should lie?
@DavidCoffron @Rubiksmoose If anything, I don't understand how you can cast Counterspell on a turn you cast Fireball as a reaction. It's still your turn :)
One of the better bits involved them actually discovering an alien ship but being completely unable to figure out how it works because the aliens have senses and physical capacities that interface with the ship in ways humans can't fathom.
I've gtg unfortunately. @ me or comment if you have any suggestions or critiques for me. If what I've put down does not help I would like ot understand why so I can improve it.
@UrhoKarila What do you mean by "simultaneous". That's why I'm asking about the Turn system. THe turn is 6 seconds long. You can have an Action, a Bonus Action, and potentially a Reaction in that 6 second period.
SPellcasting could be any one, or all, of those.
So "simulataneous" isn't really a 5e thing. Time is funky in 5e.
@DavidCoffron: I took a dive into the PF system of spellcasting in that linked question. It was a bit of confusion initally about version differences, and then bemusement that the mechanics of the game allowed for this sort of thing
"It's terribly complex, prone to failure, and can fail if you take damage but nah it's fine you can cast two at the same time they're pretty easy" is just an interesting concept
So the CS is obviously cast before the FB resolves. So we're looking at an order of actions that's - A begins to cast fireball ....- B begins to cast Counterspell ....- B resolves Counterspell - A resolves Counterspell
- A begins to cast fireball ....- B begins to cast Counterspell ........- A begins to cast Counterspell ........- A resolves Counterspell ....- B resolves Counterspell - A resolves Counterspell
Really, it's more like -A Casts fireball -- B casts counterspell in an attempt to stop it -- A casts counterspell in an attempt to stop B's counterspell.
So B attempts to counterspell A's fireball. In the process of casting counterspell, A response with counterspell meaning B never gets the chance to attempt to interrupt fireball
@UrhoKarila yeah, nothing precludes that since regular casting doesn't require concentration like it does in Pathfinder (only longer casting times do)
@UrhoKarila I would ask a separate question for that (using a different example that makes it more clear the hand is actively being used. Try burning hands)
Alternative scenario: Caster without the War Caster feat, wielding a shield is using one hand to cast A shield is subject to don/doff rules, so can't be removed as a free action Assuming a somatic-active hand can't be used for the S elements of another spell, counterspell can't be cast (without losing the original spell)
@UrhoKarila all the thrikreen homebrews ive seen are fundamentally different than how thrikreen are imagined (as having extra usable hands) or are ridiculously overpowered. No fault to the homebrewers though. Handedness is a very important resource in 5e.
("This column doesn’t replace a DM’s adjudication. Just as the rules do, the column is meant to give DMs, as well as players, tools for tuning the game according to their tastes.")
Which puts a lot of responsibility on the DM to finalise the game design in ways other games just don't do, because the game designers consider it their responsibility to finalise those details to make sure the game is reliably functional.
... which is a paradigm I can much better get behind.
Contrast to virtually every other modern RPG which is expected to be playable as-is out of the box without rules finalising decisions & rules conflict resolution decisions needing to be made by the group, because such decisions are interpreted as indicating an unfinished or underpolished product which winds up reflecting poorly on the creator.
In light of the standard set by its contemporaries, the degree to which D&D chooses to rely on finalisation on the part of a DM (often completely new and unprepared to make such decisions because they only started playing tabletop RPGs at all let alone this game a few hours or weeks ago) is tacitly choosing to leave it in an unfinished state and choosing to leave final decision-making to those eminently less prepared for it.
Historically, it's just doing what it's always been doing. (Except when they decided to ditch this paradigm in D&D 4e, and establish some common mechanics that shedded the need for this paradigm.)
But contemporarily it's doing stuff the industry has decided isn't acceptable on behalf of a game designer.
@doppelgreener Tbh this is why I fell in love with D&D. I like flexible mechanics because it makes the world richer in my opinion. It wasn't until I found other TBTRPGs that manage to keep a rich world without having flexible mechanics (often by separating narration from mechanics) that I widened my perception of what constitutes a fun RPG for me. 4e felt too much like a battle tactics game to me (without some homebrewing which I readily did) which is fine for what it is, but I didn't enjoy as much.
There's flexible mechanics, but D&D also frequently puts them at odds in ways where we don't know how to put them together. (See: most of this site's volumes.) It also frequently tells us we cannot do the things we're interested in doing, because there aren't tools for it available.
There are plenty of contemporary games which are extremely flexible, without creating this burden or denial of choice.
Of course it takes a level of system mastery to seemlessly modify confusing rules or make new ones on the fly to suit your needs. That's something I've never had a problem attaining since I enjoy learning everything about a game and understanding the underlying systems at work. It is not something new GMs are prepared for (which is what I dislike about D&D to some degree)
@BESW And those games are better. I just didn't know about them in my TBTRPG infancy
@doppelgreener Agreed. I think they should have been more up front about the handling of ambiguous rules. Releasing a Dungeon Master's Guide makes it seem like that's all you need to understand running the game, but not only is the advice in the book lacking in many places, sometimes it is just bad advice.
Tbh the only reason I play D&D now is because I know it the best and I'm with a few groups who only play D&D and I have lots of fun with them. If I learned another system well enough and found a couple great people to play with I would jump to that system immediately (it's just hard with the pseudo-monopoly D&D has over the TBTRPG community)
I don't mean to say anyone's wrong for playing or liking D&D. But it is the most well-resourced game in the industry. One of its books even hit a top 10 best seller list recently. It is doing a lot of things that, in any other game in the industry, get readily seen as flaws, and leaving a lot only partly done with this much resource doesn't seem acceptable to me.
@doppelgreener One of the things I've questioned a lot recently is why these flaws are here. They have plenty of resources, skilled designers, and they were playtesting for 5e for at least a year (IIRC). Not sure if it was laziness or incompetence or they just are using their resources for something else.
@DavidCoffron There's a lot of evidence that the dev team didn't have the resources they needed, and that ever since Wizards took over the D&D franchise they've been making decisions to chase demographics they don't fully understand.
For example, you can playtest all you want but it won't help if you don't know what you're playtesting for.
Devs bragged that the (very limited) 3.0 in-house playtests featured deliberately and dramatically sub-optimal character builds instead of rather than in addition to the kinds of the builds the game text seems to expect.
For 5e, I got the impression they were running more of a popularity contest than a playtest, trying to court the anti-4e demographic.
@BESW To be fair, some of the feedback for UnearthedArcana I've seen seem very counter to how I hope the game goes in the future (see DawnforgedCast on Youtube for a possible clarification on my point).
I've seen a fair number of playtests from different RPG devs, and the 5e playtest was haphazard and unfocused. I have no reason to think they knew how to process the feedback into actionable items.
Their stated design goals wobbled all over the place over the course of development and the final product only reflects the original announcement inasmuch as it's still trying to court disillusioned pre-4e players.
Although the MtGArena playtest was very well done. They responded to feedback effectively and efficiently. Some things didn't get in (probably because Wizards would make less money if it did), but for the most part they made it work. So Wizards has it in them
@BESW One of the first things I learned in business class is inter-department communication is a major factor in success (to make sure the same mistakes don't happen on multiple levels/sectors)
@trogdor I mean, they are a company. You can't fault them too much (but I readily fault them enough xD)
D&D also labors under the twin burdens of being the game with the longest most internally contradictory traditions (and the fanbase most attached to those traditions in all their contrariness) and one of the only games owned by a major toy company which expects it to make profits that are frankly unrealistic for an RPG.
This makes it impossible for the devs to focus narrowly on a single target experience, because they have to satisfy multiple non-overlapping demographics with a single product in order to get the sales numbers they need, while being unable to integrate too many modern RPG innovations because the game needs to remain "true" to its traditional background.
The original 5e pitch would have been AMAZING if it'd been successful: to create a core mechanic with snap-on modules for different traditional elements so that you can mix-and-match different features of different editions to make your own game.
The rules for bonus action spells state:
You must use a bonus action on your turn to cast the spell, provided that you haven't already taken a bonus action this turn. You can't cast another spell during the same turn, except for a cantrip with a casting time of 1 action.
However, counterspe...
This question is prompted by both Sage Advice and this similar Pathfinder question. Let's use the scenario from Sage Advice:
Can you cast a reaction spell on your turn?
You sure can!
Here’s a common way for it to happen: Cornelius the wizard is casting fireball on his turn, and his...
