A discussion of metagame concepts in game design

[The Crimson Binome]

Except that obviously a stupendous number of seem to like the game. What exactly is their folly?

The numerous and overwhelming flaws of 5E would be a topic beyond the purview of this thread. Let it suffice to say that, the game is popular because it intentionally targets an audience that doesn't really care, and such is no measure of its quality.

 

[Emerikol]

How about changing Action Surge to, "At the start of your turn, roll a D20. If you roll a 20 or higher, you gain another action. Add a bonus to these rolls equal to half your fighter level." You may need to adjust the bonus higher or lower depending on taste\balance.

It should be less metagamey since the Fighter is always trying to do more but not always succeeding instead of selecting when to do it.

Thank you for at least treating my thread question with reasonableness and respect. If you want special manuevers, and I'm flexible on that but they don't bother me and some people might like them, I agree they need some kind of activation. Your die roll approach is closing in on the target we are seeking I think.

1. Do you think there is a way to avoid rolling an extra die? I'm not against an extra die but maybe we can streamline it in some way.

2. If we do roll an extra die, should the die be a d20? What is the frequency we want these to occur? Should it be truly random? I've always wondered that your most devastating attack always seems to go off against the most formidable enemies. Perhaps it should be some sort of crit system. Every time you exceed the to hit roll by X you get a special follow up manuever.

3. Is there a separation here where some of the powers are truly randomly activated and others are done using the crit system above? It seems like some things make more sense being random whereas others seem to require you to have some sort of advantage.

 

[Shasarak]

The Greeks and the Vikings (and many others) told stories about giants.

Here are two possibilities:

(1) They were telling stories about beings who - despite, in the stories, seeming by all accounts to be big humans - really were not big humans, but were some other sort of thing that the Greeks and Vikings and others knew nothing about and never tried to describe;

(2) They were telling stories about big humans, and not imagining the world of those big humans to be constrained by considerations (like the limits of human biology relative to size) that they didn't even know about.

I know which possibility I think produces a more coherent conception of imagination and storytelling.

So when the Greeks are telling stories about Zeus and the other Gods fighting the Titans were they just telling stories about literal Gods fighting literal Titans? Or were they trying to describe Aliens who had taken some time off from making the Pyramids in Egypt to go and mess with the Greeks? Or maybe they were talking about big humans fighting other big humans? Or maybe they were just making up stories the same way that we make up stories now like the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

If you were a tall Greek standing around 150cm and you were attacked by a freakish large person standing 180cm tall then you would probably call that person a Giant. And when you got home your stories would most likely start to increase that size because if you were impressed with me fighting a guy 180cm tall then what about 200cm. Yeah now we are talking. Of course they are not a Giant though. I think it would be a mistake to confuse fiction for a factual account.

And afterall the one common thread that we can follow in all of the stories about Giants is that in none of them the Giant is defeated when it tries to stand up and breaks its ankle. That lie is not support by neither the fiction nor the facts.

 

[Emerikol]

Not entirely sure what you mean by "author mode", but the suggestions given were director stance.

No they don't. Dungeon World doesn't have turns. Burning Wheel can easily be played without turns - they're part of an optional subsystem.

So what's your point? That a world in which living things are magically created is one that follows the same scientific law as the real world?

I meant author stance. After reading the definitions, I realized that director means you create new content and author just means you player metagame but don't invent new things outside your character.

So I felt you were acting as the player but you weren't creating whole new fiction. Maybe I missed something.

Either way I don't want either. Actor stance alone for me.

 

[Shasarak]

You said make them up but you didn't give me the plausible reason? Assuming now magic is involved what is the reason for martial "powers".

Maybe it can be similar (but different) to your plausible reason for Magical powers?

 

[Shasarak]

Except that obviously a stupendous number of seem to like the game. What exactly is their folly?

A Stupendous number?

Are, are we still talking about the number DnD players?

 

[Emerikol]

Maybe it can be similar (but different) to your plausible reason for Magical powers?

Well it's a fantasy game set in a fantasy world, so spells and such seem part of the implied landscape. Martial characters doing things once per day doesn't fit any fantasy notion I have. A fighter sitting around talking about his daily power would seem odd to me. A wizard talking about his spell in his spell book would not. Maybe it is taste but I think a lot of people out there don't imagine fighters or rogues as being anything different from normal people except in a cinematic scope. So yeah, you have fighters who can fight off large numbers of enemies but that is cinematic not magic.

When I watch a show, and the hero knocks out a bad guy with one punch repeatedly, that is cinematic. It's not realistic but when watched on tv the instant response isn't "that's magic".

 

[Shasarak]

Well it's a fantasy game set in a fantasy world, so spells and such seem part of the implied landscape. Martial characters doing things once per day doesn't fit any fantasy notion I have. A fighter sitting around talking about his daily power would seem odd to me. A wizard talking about his spell in his spell book would not. Maybe it is taste but I think a lot of people out there don't imagine fighters or rogues as being anything different from normal people except in a cinematic scope. So yeah, you have fighters who can fight off large numbers of enemies but that is cinematic not magic.

Ok, so it is a fantasy game in a fantasy world with accepted use of daily magical powers. So would it be possible for the God of Battle to give the people most likely to spread his "worship" (like Fighters) abilities that they could use a certain number of times per day?

When I watch a show, and the hero knocks out a bad guy with one punch repeatedly, that is cinematic. It's not realistic but when watched on tv the instant response isn't "that's magic".

One Punch Man is obviously not magical because he tells you exactly the formula that he used to be able to One Punch everything. It is: 100 Push-Ups, 100 Sit-Ups, 100 Squats and 10KM Running every day.

So absolutely no magic involved at all.

 

[Shasarak]

Aristotle had a book called Physics. Does that mean that he wrote about universal gravitation?

Does the fact that Aristotle did or did not write about universal gravitation change the presence of universal gravitation?

That reminds me of a cartoon where Baby Coyote chases Baby Roadrunner off the edge of a cliff but does not fall because he has not learnt about gravity yet.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

1. Do you think there is a way to avoid rolling an extra die? I'm not against an extra die but maybe we can streamline it in some way.

You could tie it into the attack roll, since every fighter is probably attacking every round anyway. That would also let it scale with your number of attacks.

The obvious solution is that your Action Surge triggers whenever you roll a natural 20, but that might interact poorly with one of the feats, which already gives an extra attack on a critical hit.

My preferred solution is that your Action Surge triggers whenever you roll a natural 1, since that makes the fighter more consistent and reliable each round, balancing out bad luck with good luck. That might create weird interactions with halflings, though.

You could also make the trigger sub-class specific, so champions trigger Action Surge when they crit, and warlords trigger Action Surge when their dice do something funky, but that could get complicated. In any case, it should definitely be limited to one trigger per round, or else things could get out of control.