What Do You Think Of As "Modern TTRPG Mechanics"?

zakael19 said:

(totally tangential) Where do we get the "ranger has a beast companion" trope from that seems to have become core to the class? Aragorn and the Rangers of the North are hardy survivalist warriors.

Click to expand...

Thomas Shey said:

Bluntly, most of them? Look at Fenris' post upthread if you want just an example in this thread. I've got at least a dozen I could name I'm pretty confident it would apply to however, and most of them are pretty well known.

Click to expand...

Micah Sweet said:

I generally give my money to small companies and independent creators, because they're more likely to prioritize the product over the profit, and I believe that leads to better material.

Click to expand...

Micah Sweet said:

Ok, but a discussion of game mechanics doesn't inevitably have to turn to popularity and making money, so I had no reason to assume publishing was your focus. I thought we were talking about rules.

Click to expand...

pemerton said:

I've got a view on this: it's analytical and genealogical.

Classic D&D is, at its core, a game of puzzle-solving. At the start of the game, the GM has all the information (in the form of the map and the key), and the players have almost none (perhaps some rumours, not all of which they can rely on). Over the course of play, the players acquire more and more of that information - by moving through the dungeon and mapping it, by listening at doors, by using detection/scrying magic, by judiciously opening doors etc. They can then exploit this information to plan and undertake dungeon raids, in the way that Gygax describes in his PHB.

In classic D&D play, the most important categories of action are movement, listening/looking/detecting/scrying, fighting, and talking. Movement only requires mechanical resolution in special cases (eg climbing, perhaps some balancing, etc) and the resolution of that (i) follows common sense (eg unsuccessful climbing can lead to falling) and (ii) has as its more significant consequence that the movement doesn't occur, and hence the PC is not in the place that the player wanted them to be such that they could do whatever the thing is that the player wanted them to do (eg open a door).

Click to expand...

Thomas Shey said:

I have to point out that the three one-man band authors I'm familiar with (the authors, respectively, of Fragged Empire, Wicked Pacts and the Sabre Fantasy and SciFi games) would be exceedly unlikely to design a game to support a GM desires in a that would not be visible to their players. I also think its a categorical error to assume small operators don't care about profit as a group, but even if its not a priority, they absolutely care about what their expected users will get out of it.

Click to expand...

Thomas Shey said:

Well, to be really blunt, even if you're writing rules for your own purposes, a set of rules that supports what you want but makes things harder on your players without benefiting your players in any way visibly is, as far as I'm concerned, a bad set of rules. So do you really want to argue "Writing rules for your own self interests at the expense of your players is a virtue"? If not, it doesn't matter whether these are even professional rules or not.

Click to expand...

Micah Sweet said:

Ok, but focus too much on what the most people will pay you for and you get WotC, so I'm strongly inclined to lean more on the side of bespoke subsystems and more niche interests. I honestly think you get better games that way, and better games should be a priority IMO over more profit once you hit the place that covers your financial needs for the project in question. If money was the most important thing it's likely you would be in some other industry (again, unless you're a high-up in WotC).

Click to expand...

zakael19 said:

(totally tangential) Where do we get the "ranger has a beast companion" trope from that seems to have become core to the class? Aragorn and the Rangers of the North are hardy survivalist warriors.

Click to expand...

Fenris-77 said:

I think this is really easy to say when you aren't actually paying for your groceries with money from RPG sales.

Click to expand...