What Hill Will You Die On?

[Alzrius]

There is no dichotomy in having "evil races" that are made up of free-willed sapient individuals of human-like intellect and outlook. It just means that, on the good-neutral-evil axis, each and every single member of that race has chosen evil of their own free will.

Is that improbable in the extreme? Absolutely. But the game world is one where the flat-out impossible is a routine fact of life (e.g. look at how many impossibilities there are in a flying, fire-breathing, spellcasting dragon), so things which are merely improbable are (in terms of verisimilitude) easy to countenance.

 

[CreamCloud0]

There is no dichotomy in having "evil races" that are made up of free-willed sapient individuals of human-like intellect and outlook. It just means that, on the good-neutral-evil axis, each and every single member of that race has chosen evil of their own free will.

Is that improbable in the extreme? Absolutely. But the game world is one where the flat-out impossible is a routine fact of life (e.g. look at how many impossibilities there are in a flying, fire-breathing, spellcasting dragon), so things which are merely improbable are (in terms of verisimilitude) easy to countenance.

At least in some cases like dragons you have the excuse out that it’s ‘not [all chromatic dragons are evil] but [all evil dragons are chromatic]’ where you’re flipping the direction of the cause/correlation dynamic

 

[Emberashh]

The rules are inescapably the physics of the game universe.

In the sense that they define how physical objects behave even if still abstracted? Sure.

In the sense that a person would willingly and logically walk past a rampaging Barbarian just because theres no flanking rules? No, absolutely not.

 

[nevin]

Not enough rules is playable.

too many rules makes things miserable and slow.

 

[Blue]

In the sense that they define how physical objects behave even if still abstracted? Sure.

In the sense that a person would willingly and logically walk past a rampaging Barbarian just because theres no flanking rules? No, absolutely not.

Just curious, why not? If everything they have ever been taught and observed, every story and legend, anything they know, every experience they have ever had, shows that it's just fine to walk past the raging barbarian, wouldn't it be out of character for them to suddenly care?

Of course, one of my hills is: Mechanics should not just allow the tropes you want, but work to make them naturally chosen because of how well they work. Mechanics that work against the feel want are actively bad. Mechanics that are neutral to the feel you want need to be examined to see if they should exist, or at least exist in this form.

So if you are making a game that cares about fight tactics, such as not walking past the rampaging barbarian, then the mechanics need to support it and not put an undefined burden on the players without any rule support to "act like this is a real fight", with whatever that means to the individual player.

 

[DammitVictor]

I refuse to die on any hill. Instead, I use hills as a dumping ground for bard corpses.

What do you think the hills are made of?

Q. How many dead bards does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Only two. The hard part is getting them in there. Or getting them back out again, depending on your perspective.

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Racial ASIs (even penalties and mental bonuses/penalties) for fantasy races make sense; the one defining characteristic that all "fantasy races" have in common is that they're not human. But what makes logical sense for the game universe isn't always what's best for the game. Gnomes should not be as muscular as goliaths, and goliaths should not be as intellectual as gnomes, but gnome barbarians and goliath wizards should be as viable/capable at their respective levels as their counterparts and the D&D rules roll all of that into ability scores.

---

The biggest problem with Racial ASIs isn't that they lock fantasy races into stereotypical class combinations, it's that they lock fantasy races into the wrong stereotypical class combinations. ±1 hit point per level is a much more substantial bonus/penalty for a class with d4 Hit Dice than a class with d12 Hit Dice, which had more to do with the proliferation of dwarf wizards in 3.X than AD&D players secretly wishing they could play them.

Charisma penalties for "ugly" races in 3.X meant very few tiefling or half-orc warlocks.

Part of the problem was that "player freedom" was used to justify removing all of the structure and definition of these nonhuman fantasy races. Racial level limits were rightfully discarded, but the limitations on what classes they could pursue was one of the biggest/only differentiating mechanics between them in AD&D. (Wasted by making 90% of races near identical to dwarf and/or halfling.)

The ideal solution is to nuke racial ability modifiers, and go back to either race-as-class or a much more varied list of legal class/multiclass options for each race.

 

[DammitVictor]

Any village idiot who grew up within a fortnight's walk of a troll den has been told time and time again by their parents and village elders to use fire (maybe not acid, but definitely fire) to fight trolls, regardless of any skills they may or may not be trained in. It is not metagaming to assume your PC knows this anymore than it's metagaming for them to tie their own shoes without ranks in Use Rope.

The arcane and obscure game mechanics we've spent hours memorizing for recreational use are common sense to people who've grown up-- day in and day out for decades-- in the worlds defined by them.

 

[Reynard]

Any village idiot who grew up within a fortnight's walk of a troll den has been told time and time again by their parents and village elders to use fire (maybe not acid, but definitely fire) to fight trolls, regardless of any skills they may or may not be trained in. It is not metagaming to assume your PC knows this anymore than it's metagaming for them to tie their own shoes without ranks in Use Rope.

The arcane and obscure game mechanics we've spent hours memorizing for recreational use are common sense to people who've grown up-- day in and day out for decades-- in the worlds defined by them.

There would certainly be "common knowledge" but how right would it be. Even today in our modern world, folk wisdom is full of falsities.

That's why I don't feel bad switching up things like troll regeneration and fire. Oops, it's a corruption. Fire is what heals them...

 

[Celebrim]

In the sense that a person would willingly and logically walk past a rampaging Barbarian just because theres no flanking rules? No, absolutely not.

You aren't really contradicting me. If there are no rules that punishing you for walking past a rampaging barbarian, then in the constructed universe it's logical to walk past them and characters will. The constructed reality will be determined not by the reality of our world, but by the reality created by the rules. And if you as a participant in those games don't like that, then you'll either have to alter the rules or just live with it despite the annoyance.

If your rules say that jumping off a 100 foot cliff carries no risk to a character, then logically the character would be willing to in the right circumstances jump off a 100 foot cliff. The character is behaving according to the logic of the setting. If you don't like the logic of the setting, then you need different rules. Throwing a temper tantrum about metagaming or how the character wouldn't do that is just bad GMing.

Those are big blatant examples, but there are also more subtle ones. Typically, where I see problems is world building based on the real world and a deep understanding of real-world history, but where you are using very different rules than exist for the real world leading to frustration when the PC's start interacting with your world per the rules and "break" the setting in various ways.

 

[Andvari]

If you and your group are having fun playing an RPG, nothing else matters.

Aha! But what if innocent kittens get…

With the usual caveats that no one is being hurt, blah blah blah.

Oh.