Unpopular opinions go here
- Thread starter Whizbang Dustyboots
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I was personally so identified with playing unoptimized/“trap” options in my last group that some started calling those decisions by my RW name.
This ignored how much my play of said characters actually added to the games, both mechanically AND in terms of roleplay.
If the oft cited number of 30 million active players is anything close to accurate, that's a pretty big market.
Between Jon Peterson and Shannon Apple cline, the non-jerkhole history part is pretty well covered.
D&D has too many spells. Even just using the PHB Wizard gains access to 34 new spells at level 3, they can pick 2. That’s an absurd amount of new options to choose from. In addition to the lvl. 1 30 spells they Could consider or swap. If you’ve been playing for 20 years, sure, really, it’s a paucity of options, all stale, less so if you’re new. Add other books and it only gets more crazy ridiculous. It’s why those color coded guides to spells exist and why people use them and everyone has the same spells.
Subclasses, and sub-subclassing should dramatically reduce options and compensate with a unique ability. Obviously nothing will stop optimization, but if players pick 2 out of 10 or less (instead 2 of 30+) in their themed subclass there’s less need for a guide and more likelihood of people making inependant choices and being unique.
Subclasses, and sub-subclassing should dramatically reduce options and compensate with a unique ability. Obviously nothing will stop optimization, but if players pick 2 out of 10 or less (instead 2 of 30+) in their themed subclass there’s less need for a guide and more likelihood of people making inependant choices and being unique.
Oh i disagree, at least as far as exploration goes. That is a Designer problem 100%, with may be a rounding error for the GM.
Social stuff isn't something I think can be truly gamified to even part of that level without losing what it represents.
But Exploration though is a design problem, because it has to be fostered at a design level otherwise it won't ever be truly integrated into the experience. This has to come not just through the development of player facing systems that foster the desire to explore a gameworld, but also from the design of the gameworld itself, and that takes a great deal of thought that isn't going to be intuitive, simply because gameworld design has to be, well, gamey.
Breath of the Wilds gameworld is a premier example of that gameyness at play, and its heralded for being able to drive exploration as a fundamental and well integrated part of the gameplay loop due in large part to the design of the gameworld.
Between the games Triangle rule and careful line of sight management, the game does a lot to make players want to explore because the world is mechanically structured for it, in addition to being beautiful and interesting to look at.
Translating that idea into a TTRPG mostly means being very deliberate about how world maps (whether its a single island/province or an entire globe is immaterial) are designed, balancing the generally desirable realism with the game's need to make players want to see whats over the next hill, and its need to not spoil every other hill just by climbing the first one.
But as said, its also a player facing issue, as while some of the rewards for exploration will naturally reveal themselves (loot, resources, the Destination, etc) as you put together other parts of the game, you really want to introduce more deliberate rewards that players can tangibly interact with and associate with their exploration, but which will also motivate them to do it beyond just their curiosity or needs.
BOTW tends to accomplish that by just being fun and integrating the fun and exploration together. Finding new items to beat up mobs with so you can explore new areas to find new items to beat up new mobs with, etc etc.
It also hooks this basic loop into other parts of the game; the entire narrative of BOTW, in fact, is hooked directly in, as the free roaming open-world gameplay is narratively positioned as Link training to take down Ganon. Link isn't just dicking around while the Quest sits and waits for the Player to care, messing around is the Quest.
Now, where BOTW goes wrong is relying just a tad too much on its gameplay loop keeping you going (Tears' Fuze mechanic for instance goes a long way towards reining in the gameplay loop) and in being generally pretty poor story wise, which is understandable given the Zelda team to date still doesn't have a lot of experience writing non-linear narratives.
Now, adapting all of that into a TTRPG obviously takes work (I should know given thats literallg what Im doing), but not on part of players and ideally not even on GMs. Ideally, the game should be able to foster this all on its own, and GM and even Player Input should be set up so that they can only enhance the experience, not make it up wholesale.
DrunkonDuty
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Facon is as good as bacon.
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