Arcana Unearthed: Pro's and Con's

[Mallus]

On the subject of implied setting...

I hate to interupt a good old-fashioned argument, but I was thinking about the issue of implied setting vis a vis game mechanics.

The place where implied setting bothers me the most is in the DMG, take your pick of editions, it doesn't matter. The rules for magic item costs/spell costs/cost to create items do a hell of a lot to imply a pretty specific kind of magic-heavy world; it contains tacit assumptions that relate and define economics, religious views, political and miltary structures, etc.

Now you certainly ditch a lot of these assumptions, reign in the magic, run a low-magic world, etc. But that takes work. It means you need to rebalance a lot of the game, which was built on the assumption that characters of level X have access to item/spell Y.

Having the rules that come bundled with all kinds of assumptions about the game millieu is nothing new.

Now given that gamers run so many vastly different kinds of campaigns from a rules system which isn't really generic at all {hell, its the opposite of generic; the D&D interpretations of fantasy archtypes have become archetypes themselves}, how bad can implicit connection to a setting really be?

Have gamers really become that lazy? Or I am just terminally out-of-fashion with the trend started by the d20 system?

 

[Tsyr]

Oooo-kaaay... When one resorts to copy-paste flooding, I think any hope of a logical conclusion has long since fled, but...

But it just blows my mind that you fail to see the vast divide between the two items you quoted.

You said (paraphrasing) If you bring up the WIS bonus, you aren't responding to what I said.

Then you bring up the wis bonus again.

You can't have it both ways.

This is a teeny tiny single example of among the sufficient pile of small examples.

And to be clear IN MY OPINION the mechanics and the racial relationships have more association with each other than I desire for my game.

Trying to force that to be a statement of fact is putting word in my mouth.

But it is a statement of fact. Mechanics are factual things. If there are mechanics linking the races, they should be evident and easy to spot and explain.

Yet you refuse to actualy explain them, citing it as just your opinion.

My point: The existance of mechanics in the span a book is not something that falls under the "opinion" heading, but rather the "fact".

I think you are reading what you are looking for into my words, because even when you quote them back to me they do not say what you claim they do.

How many ways can I read much into the single sentance:

I find the (for example) human - Mojh, Giant - sibbecai, verak - everybody relationships to be clearly apparent and tied to certain mechanics.

It's fairly self-explanitory, leaving little room for reading into. You find that there are mechancis tieing the races together. What about this am I not seeing, since apparently we are all too illterate to read what you post?

 

[drnuncheon]

Bryon,

I have to admit the same confusion as Tsyr. I don't understand how a fellow player saying something about a giant's Wis bonus equals races being tied together in the game. If there's a better, more apt example, then perhaps that one could be used? If I understand you right, perhaps the Verrik's Charisma penalty? That certainly talks about 'race relations', in that it's there because most other races find Verrik unsettling.

On the other hand, it's the same thing that you get in regular D&D with dwarves - other races find them "gruff and reserved". That's not really tying them in to other races, since you could easily transplant one to the other's setting and be able to assume that the AU races would also find dwarves "gruff and reserved" and elves and halflings would find verrik unsettling.

Maybe I'm haring off on the wrong track here, especially since you originally said "one of the Council of Magisters was praising the Wis progression of giants as helping define their nature." That statement to me doesn't seem to have any relation to the current debate, because that sounds to me like it's only about giants and their nature, and not their relationships with other races. (The con bonus of dwarves and the dex bonus of elves helps define their nature, too, after all!) I suspect that one of us is misinterpreting - can you provide the original source for that? Is there context that I am missing that would tie it more firmly to the firmly ingrained racial relations that you see in AU?

In any case, I'm not offended by you having an opinion. Puzzled, maybe, because you obviously came to very different conclusions than I did. Worried that you might be giving other people the wrong impression about AU, definitely - because I like it a lot, and I wouldn't want to see people not buying it because they read a bunch of negative stuff about it that was based on personal preferences and not facts, even though it sounds like it's based on facts.

In other words, saying "I don't like the akashic" is fine. Saying "the akashic doesn't fit into my game" is fine. Saying "the akashic is not compatible"? That's BS.

J

 

[Felon]

Re: On the subject of implied setting...

Have gamers really become that lazy? Or I am just terminally out-of-fashion with the trend started by the d20 system?

Here's the thing: people buy a book like AU hoping it will give them something they can use with a minimum of fuss. If it turns out that what they paid for they can't get much use out of, or requires so much effort to implement that they'd be better off coming up with their own content, then they feel a little disappointment.

 

[Tsyr]

Re: Re: pay attention and learn to admit when you're wrong!

Here's where you're getting ridiculous and inflammatory. This is a commercial product, not something for his personal usage. It is indeed reasonable for people who shell out money for it to have it live up to their expectations when those expectations were generated by the author's statements.

No, actualy, it's not.

See, if Monte Cook had said: "Resurection will be so hard that you might as well roll up new characters as ever hope for resurection", you might have a point. But what happened was he said one thing (That it would be more difficult), and you chose to read into that how difficult it would be. He is not to blame for false expectations when the expectations are not a direct result of something he said. It would be as if I said WotC lied to me because they didn't make the paladin a prestige class when they said they improved it. I would have loved it if they had, but I had no reason to expect they would.

 

[Mallus]

Re: Re: On the subject of implied setting...

Here's the thing: people buy a book like AU hoping it will give them something they can use with a minimum of fuss. If it turns out that what they paid for they can't get much use out of, or requires so much effort to implement that they'd be better off coming up with their own content, then they feel a little disappointment.

That's perfectly reasonable.

And I agree that AU isn't something that can be integrated with a minimum of fuss --my intention is to use it in my homebrew world which is already pretty divergent from the D&D norm, so I expect to be doing some work.

But I'm not sure I agree that the majority of people of who buy AU are looking for an easily integrated software, err, rulesware package. I can understand not liking it, but I'm really having trouble with the notion that it requires too much work to make it work. I imagine thats a product of my gaming experiences; for me and my groups, it took time and effort to make every edition of the core rules work right for us.

 

[drnuncheon]

Re: Re: Re: pay attention and learn to admit when you're wrong!

But what happened was he said one thing (That it would be more difficult), and you chose to read into that how difficult it would be.

And really, it is a lot more difficult.

In 3e, it takes 1 minute - that's ten rounds - and a 9th level cleric. You can pound a spike in a door and delay the monsters for that long.

In AU, it takes one full week of work, eight hours a day, by a 13th level caster. That makes it especially harsh if you're operating under any sort of time constraint.

J

 

[Felon]

Re: Re: Re: pay attention and learn to admit when you're wrong!

See, if Monte Cook had said: "Resurection will be so hard that you might as well roll up new characters as ever hope for resurection", you might have a point. But what happened was he said one thing (That it would be more difficult), and you chose to read into that how difficult it would be. He is not to blame for false expectations when the expectations are not a direct result of something he said.

Essentially, your rebuttal was exactly the one I predicted above in parentheses.

Here's how I see this discussion going:

"Your false expectations are your own fault. Monte didn't specifically say that death and disfigurement would be more than inconvenient."

"No, Monte wasn't specific at all. Monte's assertions regarding death was that if characters never truly die that it diminishes the rewards of success and the consequences of failure, and that the whole game just becomes weird. Monte also stated that if players encountered a guy with a peg leg, they wouldn't wonder why he didn't get it fixed magically, and the implication there is that the guy simply is out of luck; he doesn't have the same option that he does in D&D."

"Ah, but see that's still not specific. Can't him for what's implied or how your expectations develop. You drew your own inferences."

"Of course I did; there was a lot of vagueness there. The design diary entry was designed to raise expectations, and my expectations sound pretty reasonable based off of what was said. If a person makes a vague claim to pique interest, shouldn't he consider what kind of conclusions people are going to naturally draw?"

"Nope, doesn't matter how reasonable or natural they are, he's blameless for anything he didn't directly advertise."

This seems akin to grifter logic; if I, Felon, make a claim that's sufficiently vague, I can't be faulted for what people infer from it--even if the inferrence derived is the one that common sense would lead one to construe.

For instance, by placing the relatively cheap prices on spells-for-hire (the same as in the PHB) there is a strong implication that the supply of 9th-level spells for hire probably isn't terribly low (because it's safe to say, cheap prices for awesomely powerful magic won't be due to poor demand). Any culture with a monetary system quickly grasps the straightforward concept of supply and demand. If Monte had intended for it to be extremely difficult to find someone to ressurect a player, common sense dictates that the hiring price would be much more severe than it is in the PHB (because you don't make things cheap if you want them to be hard to come by, see?). Thus, increasing the spell-level of a Raise Dead spell doesn't necessarily carry a heavy impact. But again, I'm using my own common sense to make an inferrence, so I can't fault AU for that eh?

Ever see the Jeff Daniels/Michael Richards movie Trial and Error, where Rip Torn's character is on trial for selling engraved plates commemorating Abraham Lincoln at a nickel apiece...and it turns out what his customers get in the mail is a penny? According to the logic I'm being confronted with, there was no wrongdoing. A person can be taken to task for what he says, but not for what he omits.

Now, I use a more extreme example there because that's what it may take to try open your eyes to my point of view, but just to be perfectly clear, I don't say that Monte is some sort of, uh...montebank, swindling people into buying AU with false promises. However, I do think the remarks about the significance of death and disfigurement are severly overstated, and could easily lead to false expectations like mine. I don't think my mind went off on some wild direction on its own. If these things weren't intended to have dire consequences for the PC (and being laid-up for one week is not all that dire) beyond the standard level loss, then that should've been made clear. If you don't agree, fine. But my position holds firm. As does yours no doubt.

I really like the hero point suggestion Monte uses for this - the "use a hero point to avoid death and get a disfigurement instead". That strikes me as a reasonable way to bring disfigurement or wounds into a hp based game which almost by definition doesn't care where your wounds are.Cheers

Yes! Hero points rock! Definitely one of the high points of AU. It gives the players a resource to keep them from dying in the first place, and a way to "self-defribulate" when they fail a saving throw against, say, a basilisk's gaze.

 

[Morgenstern]

Had more time to actually read through the book today. I'm gonna stand by one of my intial impressions - the layout is blah, but now I see why: if this were a .pdf, this would be the most ink usage friendly format I've ever seen. Those pages are WHITE.

That said. Um, I'm gonna have to TOTALLY disagree that the races are in any way setting specific. Skip the cutesy flavor text and go to the racial mechanics, and you have a list of modifiers and abilites that would drop in anywhere, any time. If fact, I was a little startled how completely typical they are. 100% compliant and a little ordinary honestly. Though I find this is largely made up for with the racial classes (as I hoped, they were quite sugestive on how to do my own in the future). Have to laugh that the cat and dog racial classes have almost identical bonuses, with only the order you receive them in changing, and the cats getting a speed increase. Fi you insist that the flavor text IS the race, then yes you can trip yourself up with the trappings. The flavor text isn't what I'd be buying the book for (remember, I said first time around I was looking for a mechanical toolbox to spruce up my own setting), so the racial levels stuff is pretty much exactly what I was looking for - a non-game wrecking mechanic for stronger than normal races that could be played along side regular ones. (BTW, I think ECL absolutely fails as a balancing mechanism, but that's a rant for another time )

The Weapons and armor were interesting. Some I'd use, and some I'd merely read for insights. Articulated armor strikes me as a bit overdone, but the underlying mechanic is -very- interesting. I'd aply it to some of the armor types in OA in a heartbeat. The dire weapon bit was cool, but I had though it was the highligh of a bunch in the design diary, and it turned out to be virtually the only weapon template. Still, I found the section full of examples and ideas I'll haul off to other games.

The spell templates- now that section really is sweet. I haven't read the spells yet, but I'd port the templates back to regular D&D right now!

Be a few days before I can glace through it again. Still reading a store copy and mulling it over. It is rapidly moving on to my pick it up list though. You may now return to your indivual attempts to convert all others to your respective viewpoints . I say~
"The book is in most major bookstores and they don't shrink wrap - go read a bit and make up your own mind. It is certainly good enough to be worth your time cracking the covers"

 

[Berandor]

My 2 cents:
I bought AU to both port it into our FR group and maybe as a long-term goal start a DT campaign.
I'm really happy with the book, though the races took a while to warm up to.
However, I also feel that the claims of compatibility were a little extensive, maybe even deliberately vague. I don't think AU is incompatible with standard D&D, but I think it is a little more work than I - reasonably - hoped for.
However, AU imo is compatible with D&D, because their mechanics intermesh flawlessly. I think you could have both spellcsting systems side by side, even though I feel it would be a little redundant. In low levels, the AU casters would be better than the D&D casters, no doubt, because their flexibility weighs in stronger when the casters only have few and low-power spells.
In higher levels, however, I think D&D casters pack more punch, so strictly combat-speaking they would probably be stronger than AU casters.
I also think that the "semi-casters" are better than D&D's (Bard, Paladin, Ranger) because they get access to more and higher level spells - but I don't think they'd overshadow their counterparts totally, other than classes sharing the same job and may one being redundant (paladin or champion, Unfetters or Rogue, Magister or Wizard/Sorcerer, Greenbond or Druid, ...).
So, the system imo is compatible, but to me, the work needed to import classes, races, etc. would be too much for the result, especially when it would lead to having redundant classes.
I can emphasize with people who only bought AU for porting over parts of it now being a little miffed at the unexpected extra-work. I can't agree with claims of AU being incompatible.

I also noticed the - imo - regrettable trend of people defending AU in the first days instaed of reall listening to the complaints/questions first. It is understandable, though. AU was greatly anticipated, and being able to playtest it and see it before others is partly responsible for that; the people - especially the CoM - clearly love the game and were expecting others to love it with the same passion. So early complaints were especially jarring, and they tried to find a reason for people to get over their complaints and start loving AU. It's only natural. Imagine having a son starting to play junior league, and you know he's a really good player, and you have learned not to notice his lack of team spirit because it's your son, and in the first game of the season he accidentally collides with the pitcher, and another parent asks you whether you haven't taught your son any social skills. You get defensive.
This trend has nearly disappeared, however.

Last, AU is a game like others. If you expect something out of a product - however reasonable these expectations may be - and it doesn't deliver or isn't really to your taste, you regret having spent the money. Perhaps you also get a little angry. More, the things you don't like likely jump into your face whenever you think about the product as a whole.
Perhaps you don't like the implied setting. Then everytime you think of a race, the flavor of the setting is invariably in your mind and not excisable from the pure mechanics, because naturally, races get their mechanics due to their personality and place in the world, which is influenced by the setting.
With standard D&D, these implied characteristics are traditionally existant, and you don't really see them as such. However, dwarves are thought to live under the earth and fight against orcs and goblins; elves are meant to live in forests; half-elves are meant to be well-respected (in 3.5) while half-orcs are viewed as somewhat crude; elves and dwarves don't like each other, and halflings were jovial and rural and are now nomadic and adventurous. except for the elf/dwarf issue, all these implications are expressed in game mechanics; still, a lot of worlds use these races slightly differently, sometimes even without changing their modifiers. Even favored classes are an expression of implying a certain setting, where elves are not rogues, dwarves don't become wizards, and halflings only seldomly take up a calling as a monk.
AU is new, and it's races, while not original, weren't really available as standard player races. Therefore, every detail of their description and mechanics is regarded as new and inseperable from the whole. In the end, each implied characteristic is as easily changed as in D&D; due to the fact that AU races generally have less such characteristics, I would even say the overall change is easier.
This is not really important, however, because standard D&D races needn't be changed to work with a standard D&D campaign, while AU races likely will have to be. However, I feel it is unreasonable despite any and all statements to the contrary to expect it being possible to import any new race into a D&D campaign without a certain amount of work, whether these races stem from the Kalamar Player's Guide, Mythic Races or AU. I don't think this work must necessarily be extensive, but it can be depending on how deeply your campaign integrates each race. Even FR races need work to be imported; however, since the implied setting is meant to work with both the FR and the standard races, this work has already been done by the designers. AU isn't meant to be played with elves and dwarves, so you'll have to do it. The fact that it can be as easy as "The verrik live here" shows the compatibility of the system.

You could easily import Sibeccai (for example) into every campaign while keeping their feelings of insecurity (change it to elves, wizards, dragons, whatever) or getting rid of it (just don't use it, there's no mechanic for it).
Most of the debated points here can be traced back to a matter of personal taste, which is fine, but are presented as the views of a majority or even as undebatable fact, which isn't. I think BryonD won't be happy with AU for personal reasons; to him, the flavor of the races is not easily seperated from the mechanics. Even though I feel otherwise, I can't change his opinion without forcing him to sit down and try seperating it, which would be quite silly.

I'm happy with AU, and he's not, and that's that. Let's trash the recent issue of Dragon together.