D&D General "Hot" take: Aesthetically-pleasing rules are highly overvalued

[Don Durito]

I sometimes find in systems which cover everything in the rules no matter what you try to do as a player, somewhat frustraing, because it often feels as it doesn't matter all that much what I try to do, if it's just going to be decided by the same rules.

 

[pemerton]

Er...in either case wouldn't the shed simply get a saving throw, modified in its favour by the existence of the bucket brigade?

Certainly that's what'd happen in 1e...a modified saving throw vs fire*.

* - 'normal fire' or 'magical fire' depending what you were throwing at it.

There are no rules for item or object or structure saving throws in B/X. Their presence in AD&D is an example of "subsystem proliferation".

I disagree that mainstream appeal is an inherent good when discussing the quality of any given game.

Perhaps, but it's still a factor: what's the point of the perfect game if nobody plays it?

Mainstream appeal is not a factor at all. Campbell plays RPGs that most RPGers have never even heard of, and has no trouble finding games, and people to play with!

A number of the games I play or have played (Prince Valiant, Burning Wheel, Cthulhu Dark, Wuthering Height) have no mainstream appeal. But I play them just fine.

maybe that was part of why 4e didn't end up doing so well: the mainstream demand just isn't there for a Story Game type of system. I suspect there's a whole lot (maybe even a large majority) of players out there who, like me, see the game as something of a competition pitting the PC party (the players) against a game world (the DM) which is out to kill them as and while they explore it.

This only reinforces @Campbell's point that you said was wrong. If there is no mainstream demand for exactly the sort of RPGing a person is interested in, then by definition mainstream appeal is of no relevance to them in thinking about the qualities and value of RPG systems!

Ironically, perhaps, I've bolded one bit of jargon (or a keyword?) in there that to a non-AW player makes no sense. Roll I get, but what's '+hot' mean?*

It's a stat: Cool, Hard, Hot, Sharp, Weird are the five AW stats, rated generally from -2 to +3.

To be honest I'm a bit surprised that a RPGer of your experience would find this sort of thing so opaque!

I'd be fairly confident, were I to ever end up in one of those games, in my ability to within a rather short time do or try something that the game isn't set up to handle...

I'm pretty confident that this claim is nonsense.

 

[pemerton]

I sometimes find in systems which cover everything in the rules no matter what you try to do as a player, somewhat frustraing, because it often feels as it doesn't matter all that much what I try to do, if it's just going to be decided by the same rules.

In these systems, the assumption is that the fiction is what we care about, more than the mechanical process in and of itself.

 

[Campbell]

So I used to be really into games with universal resolution mechanics that treated every type of conflict the same, but over the course of the last 3-4 years where I have played mostly OSR games, Powered by The Apocalypse games, Forged in the Dark stuff, and other indie games (with a dash of Exalted 3 and PF2) I have really learned to appreciate discrete mechanics and subsystems because they actually say stuff about how things work in the fiction. Like they have insight to share with the table.

Like a social conflict should not necessarily feel like a skirmish. Capturing that in play can be a very good thing. It's why Classic Traveller is best Traveller and Stars Without Number is second best Traveller.

 

[pemerton]

So I used to be really into games with universal resolution mechanics that treated every type of conflict the same, but over the course of the last 3-4 years where I have played mostly OSR games, Powered by The Apocalypse games, Forged in the Dark stuff, and other indie games (with a dash of Exalted 3 and PF2) I have really learned to appreciate discrete mechanics and subsystems because they actually say stuff about how things work in the fiction. Like they have insight to share with the table.

Like a social conflict should not necessarily feel like a skirmish. Capturing that in play can be a very good thing. It's why Classic Traveller is best Traveller and Stars Without Number is second best Traveller.

I like both. Prince Valiant's uniform system - roll dice equal to stat + applicable skill + situations mods either vs target or opposed pool, with the option of extended resolution where the victor's margin depletes the loser's pool - is so straightforward and easy to apply, it makes play quick, rolls consequential, and the fiction loom large. And to some extent it's a fiction where we don't want minutiae like where exactly did the sword blow land.

But versions of Traveller that go for uniformity tend to suck, and flatten out the characters and the resolution.

I don't think I quite have the insight to explain what Greg Stafford got right (in Prince Valiant) and those versions of Traveller got wrong.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

So I used to be really into games with universal resolution mechanics that treated every type of conflict the same, but over the course of the last 3-4 years where I have played mostly OSR games, Powered by The Apocalypse games, Forged in the Dark stuff, and other indie games (with a dash of Exalted 3 and PF2) I have really learned to appreciate discrete mechanics and subsystems because they actually say stuff about how things work in the fiction. Like they have insight to share with the table.

Like a social conflict should not necessarily feel like a skirmish. Capturing that in play can be a very good thing. It's why Classic Traveller is best Traveller and Stars Without Number is second best Traveller.

Would you say that PbtA games do make social conflicts feel like skirmishes?

(Cards on the table: I run a Dungeon World game for friends. We don't play it nearly as "old school" as DW is originally intended for, but it works well for what we want. I have been slowly ratcheting up the social/intrigue elements of the game as things proceed, where the party must take into account how their actions will be seen, and must think about stuff like impressing the crowd, keeping secrets, or forging alliances. They have expressed a pretty clear, and thankfully positive, attitude about the game growing in these new directions, and have specifically referred to sessions where most of the "action" is social conflict as different in tone, both from "low-roll" sessions where mostly discovery happens and "big fight" sessions where they kick some tail.)

 

[Campbell]

Would you say that PbtA games do make social conflicts feel like skirmishes?

(Cards on the table: I run a Dungeon World game for friends. We don't play it nearly as "old school" as DW is originally intended for, but it works well for what we want. I have been slowly ratcheting up the social/intrigue elements of the game as things proceed, where the party must take into account how their actions will be seen, and must think about stuff like impressing the crowd, keeping secrets, or forging alliances. They have expressed a pretty clear, and thankfully positive, attitude about the game growing in these new directions, and have specifically referred to sessions where most of the "action" is social conflict as different in tone, both from "low-roll" sessions where mostly discovery happens and "big fight" sessions where they kick some tail.)

A lot depends on which one. Personally I prefer Freebooters on the Frontier to Dungeon World. I find the Dungeon World moves are a bit too generic for my tastes. I adore Apocalypse World, Cartel, Monsterhearts, The Veil, Pasion de los Pasiones, World Wide Wrestling, Power Beyond Doubt and Masks. They are some of my favorite games particularly because of the unique ways they model social dynamics.

I personally am very focused on social, cultural, and emotional dimensions of fiction. A big part of what sold me on Apocalypse World was the way it reflects on our capacity to do violence to one another. PF2 taking exploration and social conflicts seriously is also a big part of what drew to try running modern D&D again.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'm not--at all--saying that 4e's power list wasn't bloated (though there are reasons why your numbers are suspicious to me, that I'll get to in a moment). I am, however, saying that the strident insistence that "all Martial characters should draw their powers from the same Martial-only list" reflects an excessive belief that a certain meta-aesthetic ("one-stop-shopping," centralization, whatever you want to call it) is inherently and axiomatically more important than any game design considerations that might apply. That is, these assertions are made without context, plan, or anything like caution; they are instead asserted immediately, as obvious and unalloyed goods, without any (stated) thought to the potential negative consequences.

Yeah, as I said, there's actually no specific fundamental underlying principle here. I just remember the day I cracked open a PHB1 in 2008, and as soon as I grokked what they had done, THE very first thought in my head was "this isn't scalable." I mean, I honestly don't even comprehend how anyone in WotC thought it WAS and why they made such a blazingly obviously bad strategic decision. I mean, it MIGHT almost work with 5e spell lists (as it did with AD&D ones) simply due to the fact that so very little additional material is planned, the lists were intended to BE complete as written. 4e was never intended to be so, it was designed, clearly and undoubtedly with near-infinite expansion as a central tenet.
Ironically, I might be able to get away with class power lists in my game, simply because I would be unlikely to create lots of expansions, but I don't even have the means to make 500 powers for my own use, so its moot. I contend that not categorizing powers is a superior design choice, but merely because it works, and because it probably would be more robust overall.
But, again, beyond that, there are other considerations in my game. You can only ever acquire any game element by means of narrative logic in play in my game. There is no process akin to 'XP' and 'leveling up' in which you go to some list and attach new stuff out of the blue onto your sheet. So, any of the issues one might bring up in terms of a single list that are relevant to that sort of process don't apply. Knights can get fireballs (well, maybe, play to find out) but they won't get them because a player picked them off a list and thought they were the mechanically best optimized option. It will happen because he learned the secret of fire while captured by the Azers, or something. Sure, you could go and deliberately get captured by Azers to get fireballs, go for it!
There are, in fact, only a very few prereqs for anything in my game, and those are simply based on mechanics, you can't utilize "bond with companion" if you don't HAVE a companion, which is a feature that only normally appears on certain classes. Maybe you can "multi-class", it would rely on the same sort of narrative logic process (nobody has ever tried, so far, so I don't have a rule for that).

Now, as for those numbers themselves: how on earth did you achieve that? Even if you restricted character options down to, say, 12 classes (about half of 4e's actual set) and made only 3 builds apiece on average (about 1 less than my rough-and-ready average of 4e's actual options) and eliminated all themes and made it so there were only an average of 2 paragon paths per class with zero PPs for anything else (such as race), and only offered one ED per power source, and only offered one specific power per build (including Utilities) at any given level where powers are offered, and only offered say 20 races (far lower than actual 4e)...well, let's see. All of these numbers are minimums, by the way--some PPs and EDs get more powers through their features.
Per class: 60 powers
Per race: 1
Per PP: 3
Per ED: 1

12*60+20*1+2*12*3+1*3 = 720+20+72+3 = 815

So, yeah, I'd be real curious as to how you managed to cram anything even remotely like 4e's diversity of builds and options into only 500 powers, given how many things "powers" were for. Because I didn't even touch on anything like items that do something (each of which will have its own power), basic/universal powers, themes/backgrounds that might offer powers, etc.

(Also, I'd like your cite on the 50k number. All evidence I can find--including stuff I myself have said about this topic in the past, when the digital tools still existed--puts it closer to a fifth or sixth of that amount, between 8k and 10k.)

OK, so HoML has around a dozen classes. There are only 'builds' to the extent that you could pick from a couple class features. So, lets say that totals out to 30 builds maybe? I don't technically have PPs and EDs as such, there are boons which can effectively emulate those, but EVERYTHING is boons, so its hard to say in detail what is analogous to a 4e ED, PP, ritual, feat, or item, exactly. Characters advance 20 times before they reach the capstone of being epic (20th level). That alone cuts the power lists by 1/3rd. I think we've pretty much reached the roughly 500 level already, by your numbers.
Honestly, powers TEND to be associated with power sources. That isn't COMPLETELY true, but it accounts for a lot of them. There are a small number that are effectively class-specific, as they relate to features of a class (there are for instance a series of powers that relate to the beserk state, which only berserks have, so nobody else will use them) A lot of 'core' powers however are pretty widely used. That includes some basic martial stuff, some basic elemental powers (which anyone who wants to blast things probably wants), etc. Priests and shamans and whatnot ALL cluster in the 'spirit' list, along with witches/warlocks.
If I really fleshed things out to the hilt, could I have 800 powers? I guess, maybe. I can't see the game growing beyond that sort of level though. I really stay away from the 4e 'sin' of having 18 of basically the same thing but with some really minor variation. Clearly there ARE some pretty similar powers, but they at least have considerably different thematics, or different risk/benefit (yes powers can be risky) profiles, etc.
As I said when talking about bonuses up thread, I don't believe in hair-splitting trivial differences. I want things to be distinct. If something occupies a specific niche, then I am not that interested in filling the same niche three more times. When you play and you do something, people should be able to say "Oh, look X happened!" It is just part of the larger-than-life kind of 'epic action' that is being aimed at.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I sometimes find in systems which cover everything in the rules no matter what you try to do as a player, somewhat frustraing, because it often feels as it doesn't matter all that much what I try to do, if it's just going to be decided by the same rules.

At least for me though, the rules aren't driving that. So, maybe I'm a very quick, agile fighter (my 5e cat person character). So, yeah, the 5e rules are PRETTY uniform, if I was trying to jump and climb, that's usually DEX checks, losing people in an ally, maybe a CHA check (probably depends on how I describe it). Anyway, you are basically making the same 6 checks over and over, and how I managed to lose the city guard, doesn't really matter much in the long run what check I used, right?
But it does, in the sense that I'M PLAYING Mrrrreeeoooowwwww!!! the "alley cat" and climbing on the roof is his thing. If I was playing the gnoll barbarian then maybe I'd be just killing whomever came after me. Maybe either plan works, maybe they're basically all just a check or three. But the fiction is what I chose, and if the GM is sharp then there's also going to be narrative consequences (fictional positioning) that is going to be a factor. So maybe climbing on the roof gets me the attention of people I would rather not deal with, and maybe killing a city guard gets me some other type of attention.
So the gnoll ends up being labeled a badass guard killer, the cat ends up making the acquaintance of some new 'buddies' who live on the rooftops.

 

[Monayuris]

Sure, one way to play a RPG is to have the GM decide what happens in any conflict.

This is hyperbole. No one is suggesting that the GM just decides what happens in any conflict. The concept of a GM making rulings does not at all facilitate this situation. The concept of GM rulings is to make fair judgements when the rules do not cover a situation.

But D&D has never taken that approach to combat, or to trying to resist an evil magician's hypnotism, or trying to suck poison from a wound before you die. There's nothing intrinsic to those sorts of things, vs trying to burn down a shed despite the bucket brigade, that means the first need mechanics while the second just needs "GM rulings". It's simply a product of the fact that, in the wargaming milieu of the time, Gygax et al thought about swords and about hypnotists but not about firefighters.

Again with the bucket brigade. I would suspect that the number of D&D games in the world that include an orc bucket brigade is probably in the low 1 to 2%.

The bucket brigade thing is just a strawman. Which came from your post: Here. So the only person suggesting that D&D has anything to do with firefighters is you.

If a bucket brigade of orcs becomes an important part of my next game session, I'll reach out to you for guidance on how I should run it.

D&D can't do races, either, or cooking competitions, or even high jump competitions (every thief acrobat ties with every other thief acrobat of the same level, every time).

Well D&D is not about any of these things. If you want these things to be important to your game then fine... use whatever framework makes you happy. But I really don't care about any of this. None of these things are an important part of any game I run and if they do come up, I'll make a ruling and move on. Easy peasy. Cooking competitions, high jump competitions, races are small stuff compared to dungeon delvng and exploration. They don't need any time to adjudicate beyond a quick ruling.

Another strawman argument, by the way. Since no one in this thread is at all talking about cooking competitions.

My point is that you can have a system that copes with the firefighting as much as the sword fighting, with running races and cooking competitions as much as contests of will and contests of steel, and that such a system can be concise (much briefer than AD&D) and need not have either limits or bloating. I know because those systems exist, and I play some of them. (Prince Valiant is probably my favourite at the moment, but Burning Wheel is hot on its heels.)

I'm not expecting a system to cope with firefighting. That is again the same strawman argument. You are creating a completely unlikely and insignificant situation to make a point. Firefighting orcs is not something that is expected to be within the scope of the Dungeons & Dragons game.

Stop using that as an example of why one version of D&D fails against another version or another game.

I also find it a bit odd that for someone decrying limits and corner cases, you're now saying, or at least strongly implying, that it's fine that D&D has no rules for firefighting (a limit) because that's a corner case where a GM can just make something up!

I think you have me mistaken. I have never 'decryed limits and corner cases'. I simply have stated that corner cases not covered by the rules are well within the rights of the GM to adjudicate by way of GM rulings.

And again another mark for the same firefighting strawman argument.