Ahnehnois
First Post
Fair enough. One can't come up with something completely original so much as combine existing elements in a new way.
FWIW, I'd rather read a Manbearcat essay than a pemerton essay.
Pros and Cons of Epic Level Play?
Manbearcat
Legend
Sorry. I didn't mean that those were your words (either in this thread or another). I've seen the "level treadmill" and "merely reskinned numbers" position many-a-times. Standard adjectives that, I would think, would go with that would have to be "contrived" and "vapid". If I (personally) felt something was intrinsically capable of (and built around being) solely a level treadmill (or MMO fantasy park is another common one) and marketed itself as an engine for (deep and compelling) high fantasy RPGing, I (personally) would call it contrived and vapid (and cry foul play as well).
Mostly I was trying to relate them to the 3 premises outlined above and to see what you thought when you interfaced those anecdotes with your position on those 3 premises. This isn't a trap. I'm not accusing you of bad faith or calling my game badwrongfun or anything of the like. I'm genuinely curious as to your thoughts but I'm trying to distill them and relate them specifically to things I know and have my head around. I'm at a loss as to why we might be somewhat far apart (seemingly) on this issue so I'm trying to better understand the nuance of your position.
Manbearcat
Legend
[MENTION=17106]Ahnehnois[/MENTION], then you must have an amazing ability to filter out flagrant grammar fouls, a disgusting abuse of compound sentences, and a prose deeply (deeply) overburdened with qualifiers and caveats. I have to go over my reports/papers in real life with a fine tooth comb for coherency and grammar before they are submitted. Due to this, I don't have the stomach for it on here and I'm basically just typing stream of thought. When I go back through my posts and reread them, it literally creates a bile response and I wonder how the hell anyone understands anything I wrote (plenty say that they don't!). If I had any pride or ego left, I would be embarrassed. If I could rewind my life and develop a minimalist prose that profoundly conveyed information (like say Cormac McCarthy or Richard Feynman), I would be extremely happy.
Ahnehnois
First Post
(Apologies to others for this totally tangential discussion)
I read scientific papers for a living, not only that but papers on the fringes of science, frequently from small-niche sources or translated from other languages. While my bar for my own writing is fairly high, I'm quite comfortable with reading material that is not necessarily technically well-written, but which has something impactful to say.
Communication is extremely difficult. One thing I noticed while studying cognition was that even very accomplished people make astonishing amounts of errors when trying to communicate in real time. I know I myself am quite frustrated with a certain loss of coherence I've experienced for medical reasons, and I often decry my own (significant) deficiencies in reading and writing. However, I think that the truth is for all of us that are words are not nearly as good as our thoughts.
Storminator
First Post
Ha!
"You must spread some Experience Points around before giving it to Manbearcat again."
I admit I often have to read what you write a couple times to get it, but it's usually worth it. This post, however, is pure gold.
PS
Celebrim
Legend
Using your example as an example is hardly proof my primary interest is proving something about your game.
*facepalm* That would be mechanical differentiation. Swim is not the same as Climb because walls are not the same as pools (unless walls and pools really are the same, which I suppose is possible).
Look at it this way. A wall is defined in game as being (among other things) that sort of obstacle which you can apply a climb skill check on, while a pool is defined in game as being (among other things) that sort of obstacle which you can apply a swim check on. This is the sort of thing that is so basic you probably never think of it, but its their lurking under the surface. In this way, walls and pools are defined as being inherently different. If on the other hand, these were the only relevant in game features of the two (and generally it wouldn't be in most PnP games, for instance one tend by definition to block line of sight and or line of effect), and all the system had was an atheletics check, it might end up being that the fictional positioning of wall versus a pool didn't matter.
Can you tell I write software for a living?
If you want to teach a computer to run an RPG, you have to make all this explicit. In a computer, the difference between flavor and mechanics is really clear. It's equally clear in a PnP RPG (at least to me), but PnP RPGs tend to have far more rules than people realize. Yes, the SRD does explicity define what a wall means in the game. Most people never think about that, they just assume that walls obey 'realistic' rules.
Sure it does. Different damage dice, different reach, different weight, different size, different critical types, and different options between the two. There are plenty of situations where it matters mechanically which you are wielding. You can't slice your way out of a purple worm with a spear, or set to recieve a charge with a dagger. In 1e AD&D there would also have been different speed factors and different weapon vs. armor modifiers - it would have matter greatly which you were using against full plate.
I'm not that up on the Burning Wheel rules, but IIRC correctly Burning Wheel operates at different granularities and attempts to achieve mechanical differentiation between weapons in different ways. That's different, but not the same as no mechanical differences. You might have been on target if you'd said something like OD&D did not mechanically differentiate between a short sword and a handax (or maybe even between weapons at all, that was before my time).
I guess that's a matter of opinion. I certainly see some differences in mechanical resolution. But I think you are meaning by 'mechanical resolution' only overall system. That is, D20 usually involves throwing a D20 against a target number, and on success performing some resolution, as opposed to throwing a dice pool and totalling the number of successes. That seems an overly narrow definition of mechanics.
Well, while it may be true that mechanical differentiation is not all that counts, I would suggest that negotiations between a shopkeeper and a king are similar enough that they belong in the same category of thing.
As for mechanical differences in negotiating with a King and a shopkeeper, the overall rules may be the same - roll a d20, compare the modified result to a modified target - they are at least potentially different in D&D RAW and are certainly different among many common D&D social rules variants. For example, if you perform an Intimidate check on the King and the shopkeeper, the King's status is likely in most D&D played RAW to impact the odds of success. For example, the King may have higher HD, higher Will saves, etc. Likewise, the King and the Shopkeeper might be mechanically represented by different amounts of Sense Motive skill, differentiating the ease of Bluffing one or the other - perhaps in this case our Shopkeeper has higher Sense Motive than the gullible King. In my case, if you were trying to persuade the King of something, your station in life relative to the King would impact the difficulty of doing so. All other things being equal if you are a slave or shopkeeper, for example, the King is much less likely to hear your suggestions favorably than he would if you were a knight or duke, and more likely to consider your statement impertinent.
But I see very little difference ultimately in being a slave negotiating with a shopkeeper and a knight negotiating with a king.
I think you are trying to count a lot of things that are mechanical differentiation as things that are not mechanical differentiation. If the fictional position determines which mechanics may be feasibly used, the setting of DCs, which resources can be expended, then we can say that it is mechanically different from another fictional position.
While we are on the subject of computers, what do you know about state based machines?
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Kinak
First Post
Covered that for you"You must spread some Experience Points around before giving it to Manbearcat again."
I admit I often have to read what you write a couple times to get it, but it's usually worth it. This post, however, is pure gold.
Cheers!
Kinak
Storminator
First Post
Covered that for you
Cheers!
Kinak
Thanks Kinak! And amusingly . . . "You must spread some Experience Points around before giving it to Kinak again."
Apparently we've been here before!
PS
Celebrim
Legend
Let me clarify that, since I know people are going to jump on it in completely the wrong way.
A lot of this argument is over whether epic is something primarily associated with being high level. But what does it mean to be high level?
You might say, "Well, by high level I mean that when we are 1st level we were fighting kobolds and ogres, but now that we are 30th level we are fighting demon lords!"
But to me, that doesn't mean you are high level at all. If at first level we were facing monsters of level N+4, and we level up to 'high level' so that we can now face monsters of level N+4, we haven't really changed anything about the game. The game might be fun and worth it in and of itself, but we are still playing virtually the same game we were playing back when we started. The situation is analogous to something like Diablo III, where the reason you level up is to obtain gear of level N, so that you can obtain gear of level N+3, and so forth. It can be a fun experience in and of itself, but you are really on Manbearcat's leveling "treadmill". You may be having fun, but you aren't really going anywhere.
Note that this is an analogy. I'm not saying 4e is Diablo III; I'm just noting similarities between the two because they both utilize "fixed math". Differences will of course arise in areas where they are different, and I've already praised certain insights in 4e like 'epic destiny', although I personally prefer to handle that in different ways for the same reasons I prefer not to have the Leadership feat in 3e. Nonetheless, if I really were to run my game past 20th level, the epic destinies of 4e would inform my game more than the epic handbook of 3e.
So, that said, how do I define high level?
Well, I define high level thusly. When you are low level, almost everyone you meet treats you as being a peer or even an inferior. And when you are high level, by contrast almost everyone you meet is your inferior. When you are low level, almost everything involves a certain amount of challenge. When you are high level, almost nothing does. What matters is less what is above you, but what is behind you. Your relationship to the established setting is changing.
This can force on the game a change in perspective. The sort of challenges you set for yourself are no longer merely about your own success and survival. A game as simple as Diablo III can't handle this. It has to level up the world with you because its got no other way to adapt and its sole providable game play of interest is setting against you various challenges to your reflexes and game mastery. But a PnP game can adapt, and so has so many more possibilities.
A typical homebrew game probably adapts to some degree. But an adventure path game as written typically doesn't, and in my experience not every game even recognizes the possibility or is consciously adapting. Also, 3e to some extent and 4e to a great extent provided for scalable challenges to a degree that earlier editions didn't. Arguably in 1e you had to adapt or you'd run out of gameplay at some point depending on how generous the DM was with treasure. In 3e or 4e to option to not adapt is on the table. All I really am interested is showing a newish player that reads the thread that the options are there so that they can consciously choose how they want to play a particular game, rather than falling into a pattern out of habit rather than choice.
One computer game that tried to adapt in this way was Spore. As the player achieved success at the current gameplay, the creature evolved and opened up an entirely new style of game.
