Similarities 4E PF2?

Parmandur · Jul 17, 2019

Tony Vargas said:
Yep, understandable. Storyteller sold a /lot/ of books in the 90s, and they were, especially for rulebooks, pretty good cover-to-cover reads, but good luck finding a specific thing you vaguely remembered reading in one of them. Serious point-build systems, Hero, GURPS, could sometimes go the exact opposite, especially in presenting their core mechanics, very dry stuff.

Both more complex and presented in a less clear way, yes. But the less clear way is /natural language/, which is more comfortable to read, even if, having read it two or three times, you're still not clear on the intent. It was a design decision made up-front and shared from the Next playtest on - and generally well-received.

Which just shows to go you, human nature.

Maybe PF2 will manage /both/ form & function, both comfortable/entertaining presentation /and/ clarity/precision, organization & a good index.

I prefer my rules in clear, concise, efficient presentation that's easy to find & understand the thing I need at the moment, yeah, sounds good.
I'd like the setting information that makes a good cover-to-cover read in an entirely separate book, thanks.

IMX, though, I need entirely separate /games/ to get both. ;(

Lonely fun is a big part of the RPG hobby, and what one finds to be fun alone dictates a lot here: clear, concise technical rules don't give me any lonely fun, hence I'll invest less time or pursue playing a game if that is the primary thing. Narratively flavorful reading gets my motor going, rules are just a background framework.

The Crimson Binome · Jul 17, 2019

Jer said:
Mathematical game balance can only be achieved at the encounter level. Because in order to be able to come up with metrics you can "balance" you need to be able to know the resources available to the players when they come into an encounter. The more variable the possible resources they have as they enter the encounter, the harder it is going to be to reliably determine encounter balance.

Doesn't that go back to the old "war vs sport" analogy? The question isn't how to have balanced encounters when you have variable recharge rates. The question is whether balanced encounters are even a desirable goal to begin with.

Pathfinder 2 design shows an unhealthy obsession with controlling numbers, which leads me to believe that they've adopted the "combat as sport" approach, which is never going to appeal to the audience of Pathfinder 1 players who hated 4E for exactly that reason.

Personally, I don't see the appeal in overcoming a challenge which has been carefully contrived in such a way that I should probably be able to beat it as long as I don't make obvious mistakes, but which is also engineered to make it seem like I'll be on the verge of failing at any moment.

CapnZapp · Jul 18, 2019

Aldarc said:
[MENTION=12731]CapnZapp[/MENTION], that's certainly true, which is one reason why many other RPGs out there are more conscientious about time pressure mechanics. E.g., running out of light/torches in Torchbearer, countdown clocks in Blades in the Dark, and randomized countdown rolls in Index Card RPG.

The countdown clocks in Blades, in particular, is pretty genius. Everytime the PCs go into downtime mode to recover, the countdown clocks for their surrounding factions will continue ticking. Not just one, but all of them. Eventually they will trigger, with or without the PCs addressing it, changing the game states. The world around the players advances regardless of their resting. Ignore these things at your own peril, and the situation will boil.

Sure. However, the D&D community is rather insular and simply uninterested in "other games".

So far all those other games could be printed on the Moon, for all their impact on dndish games (read "no impact whatsoever")

Rephrased: until those mechanics appear in the official Player's Handbook (or maybe a Pathfinder equivalent) they could just as well not exist at all...

CapnZapp · Jul 18, 2019

Parmandur said:
Lonely fun is a big part of the RPG hobby, and what one finds to be fun alone dictates a lot here: clear, concise technical rules don't give me any lonely fun, hence I'll invest less time or pursue playing a game if that is the primary thing. Narratively flavorful reading gets my motor going, rules are just a background framework.

Yes obviously.

I can't believe PF2 is about to redo the same mistake 4E did, by going for a "clear" presentation.

The allure and excitement fundamental to D&D is its class-based approach, where each class is its own special snowflake present for you to unwrap.

Only a programmer would want to "clarify" that by breaking class abilities down into it's basic parts and them present them in a tedious catalog separated from the mystique of the class itself.

On the other hand, programmers routinely utterly underestimate how separated they are from the rest of human nature (I was one myself)...

CapnZapp · Jul 18, 2019

Saelorn said:
Doesn't that go back to the old "war vs sport" analogy? The question isn't how to have balanced encounters when you have variable recharge rates. The question is whether balanced encounters are even a desirable goal to begin with.

Pathfinder 2 design shows an unhealthy obsession with controlling numbers, which leads me to believe that they've adopted the "combat as sport" approach, which is never going to appeal to the audience of Pathfinder 1 players who hated 4E for exactly that reason.

Personally, I don't see the appeal in overcoming a challenge which has been carefully contrived in such a way that I should probably be able to beat it as long as I don't make obvious mistakes, but which is also engineered to make it seem like I'll be on the verge of failing at any moment.

Sure, when you put it that way.

But let me ask you: which is more fun
a) a combat encounter that might take a long time to resolve but never feels dangerous and never could pose a threat
b) a combat encounter which inadvertently turns out to be impossibly hard; monster AC you can't hit, special attacks you can't defend against
or c) a combat encounter that's challenging but not too challenging, so you actually have a reason to deploy your abilities in smart ways and are encouraged to actually team-work to make the sum of your party greater than its parts

In other words, are we maybe talking about different things?

Giving the DM accurate tools is one thing. Either you control the environment so you can predict the party's status at any given point (control rest and healing), or assume a fully rested party for any given encounter (the encounter-based balancing approach).

But that's separate from setting up frustration by always keeping the heroes on the verge of failing - that's the issue of pacing the challenge.

Indeed, if every encounter tests the heroes to the max, yes you'll get the sensation of "one single mistake and we're done for" (cue the Fantasy F*cking Vietnam role-playing joke).

But if anything, accurate balancing makes it *easier* to vary the challenge, not harder.

Remember all of that takes place behind the DM screen. As a player you shouldn't deny the DM good tools just because you want to live in a bubble of illusion the great game you're in came together just by accident.

All that means is you prefer to play with a master DM who has internalized all the DM know-how.

That does not bring new gamers into the hobby. In fact, it would mark you out as a grumpy old grognard, and their time is... well not now

Tony Vargas · Jul 18, 2019

CapnZapp said:
All that means is you prefer to play with a master DM who has internalized all the DM know-how.
That does not bring new gamers into the hobby.

I suppose it doesn't, by itself. A TT gaming renaissance, being able to research the game on-line without the top hits being rants about how wrong and evil and not-D&D it is, the name recognition and rep of the "First RPG," these things bring new folks in to try (or at least, don't keep) D&D for the first time. A master DM who has internalized all the DM know-how, is just waiting for them, he didn't bring them there - but he will surely do a better job /retaining/ them, not letting them leave after a couple hours thinking "wow, that sure was a confusing, boring, stupid, game, I'll never play that again!"

it would mark you out as a grumpy old grognard, and their time is... well not now

Actually, the last 5 or so years have been a great time to be a grognard! OSR has had a big influence on the hobby, D&D has finally recaptured it's 80s popularity by repudiating just about everything grognards hated about 3e and 4e, and training a new generation of fans to appreciate it's take on RPGs as if it were the only one.

Grognards won.

TwoSix · Jul 18, 2019

Saelorn said:
Personally, I don't see the appeal in overcoming a challenge which has been carefully contrived in such a way that I should probably be able to beat it as long as I don't make obvious mistakes, but which is also engineered to make it seem like I'll be on the verge of failing at any moment.

So not a fan of Dark Souls, I take it?

Parmandur · Jul 18, 2019

Tony Vargas said:
Actually, the last 5 or so years have been a great time to be a grognard! OSR has had a big influence on the hobby, D&D has finally recaptured it's 80s popularity by repudiating just about everything grognards hated about 3e and 4e, and training a new generation of fans to appreciate it's take on RPGs as if it were the only one.

Grognards won.

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