Deconstructing class abilities for purchase with XP

[Conaill]

So... I gather you would be willing to suspend your "willful ignorance" for those sources that *do* have clear OGC designations?

For many of those, that could be easily verified by checking the back of the book at your FLGS. And for PDF's... well, it's often not too hard to locate someone who has the product and would be willing to show you (or give you their opinion on) the OGC section.

Besides, isn't is primarily a small set of publishers (authors?) that are really obfuscating their PI/OGC statements? Seems like, if you really "agree with me completely" on the OGL reuse philosophy, you should do your utmost to limit that "willful ignorance" to as small a set of sources as possible. For example, did you check Mongoose's Quintessential Bard OGC designation? Or did you refuse to look at it "just in case"?


OK, back on topic...

Do you have any comments on BESM's use of a linear scale for increasing ability costs, versus your own (what looks like) quadratic scale? If you get a linear number of XP per level, shouldn't class ability costs scale linearly with level as well?

 

[Kaleon Moonshae]

So... I gather you would be willing to suspend your "willful ignorance" for those sources that *do* have clear OGC designations?

For many of those, that could be easily verified by checking the back of the book at your FLGS. And for PDF's... well, it's often not too hard to locate someone who has the product and would be willing to show you (or give you their opinion on) the OGC section.

Besides, isn't is primarily a small set of publishers (authors?) that are really obfuscating their PI/OGC statements? Seems like, if you really "agree with me completely" on the OGL reuse philosophy, you should do your utmost to limit that "willful ignorance" to as small a set of sources as possible. For example, did you check Mongoose's Quintessential Bard OGC designation? Or did you refuse to look at it "just in case"?


OK, back on topic...

Do you have any comments on BESM's use of a linear scale for increasing ability costs, versus your own (what looks like) quadratic scale? If you get a linear number of XP per level, shouldn't class ability costs scale linearly with level as well?

Actually, considering this ogl thing is still an infant, it isn't a small number of people who have obfuscated ogl info. Do most of them do it purposefully? no, but I would say a good number of products out there have unclear ogl distinctions. It makes things very hard on those of us anting to incorporate stuff into our own publishing. Especially when some of these suppliments try to claim very general licenses for 'creative content' that really isn't their original idea. A good example of this right off the top of my head is white wolf and some of their ogl claims in Excalibur. (not to mention historically their attempts to copyright things like sluagh and sidhe, which are proper names that are public use due to the fact that they are historical myths hundreds of years old.)

my two cents

(edit) Another issue, where you say did he refuse to use it "just in case" well, that would be the safe way to go. I hate to say it but creative property is a very rabid beast when you anger it, even if it is unintentional. If you check something to see if it is a good use of OGL, you look at it, and if it isn't good use and they claim something that you unintentionally use (maybe because of parrallel creativity, which isn't nearly as uncommon as authors sometimes like to claim) you have gotten yourself in trouble and a small publisher/author can lose a lot of money in it. It truly is, sometimes, safer to assume it's bad use of ogl than to check. I hate it, but others chime in here, haven't you found that it's the case soemtimes?

 

[Desdichado]

Conaill, I'm sorry, but I find your position to be pretty ludicrous. It's absurd to expect that every game designer will first research what has been published under the OGL for material similar to what he wants to do, and then build upon that.

And as for BESM's "quite a stir" I hadn't heard of their point buy system either. But Mutants & Masterminds does have a point buy system; one that actually made quite a stir. I'm pretty sure BESM did not build off of that one.

 

[Acid_crash]

If this kind of advancement is what you're looking for, I think you might be best served to check out a different kind of game. West End Game's new D6 rules should be exactly what you're looking for, if they use even the smallest vestiges of the D6 system that they did for Star Wars, before Wizards of the Coast picked up the license. Additionally, they're printing all of those rules slightly adjusted for either fantasy, adventure, or sci fi in a new printing (although not, apparently, a new edition) of the original rules.

Nary a class or template to be found--free form advancement to your heart's content!

But I warn you, it's HELL on GM/DMs. *shudder*

Nawwwww it's not HELL on GMs...just a pain in the butt.

But, so is trying to create that 15th level major NPC with all the feats, equipment, skills, classes available (and spells if magic user) for that campaign...

IF I had a credit card, I would buy this product, but I don't have one so.............

 

[Conaill]

Conaill, I'm sorry, but I find your position to be pretty ludicrous. It's absurd to expect that every game designer will first research what has been published under the OGL for material similar to what he wants to do, and then build upon that.

Which part do you find ludicrous? That every game designer should research what similar material has already been published under the OGL?

Or do you find it ludicrous that game designers should reuse OGC from other sources?

 

[Desdichado]

Which part do you find ludicrous? That every game designer should research what similar material has already been published under the OGL?

Or do you find it ludicrous that game designers should reuse OGC from other sources?

I find it ludicrous that you would expect every game designer to know about everything published, and/or that you would expect them to build off of something already published even if they knew of it. Does anyone complain that Iron Kingdoms, Freeport, Steam and Steel, Sorcery and Steam, and the DMG (as well as numerous others) all have completely different rules for Renaissance firearms that don't build off of each other? I'd much rather have competing, and different systems that I can cherry pick my favorite sets of rules from (Freeport's get my vote, for the record.)

Even if The Sigil knew about the BESM point-based d20 rules, why would you expect him to build off of them? It's entirely possible that he doesn't like them and thinks he can accomplish the same thing better.

And you also didn't answer my other question -- why does The Sigil get such a hard time from you for not using the BESM d20 rules, but you say nothing of the fact that the BESM d20 rules do not (insofar as I know) refer to the Mutants & Masterminds rules, which were published under the OGL before BESM d20 was.

If you think the whole point of the OGL was for one person to come up with a rule for something and everyone else to build off of that, then you're sadly mistaken. The whole point of the OGL was to open up the core mechanics of the D&D game so that other publishers could fill niches that Wizards of the Coast did not find profitable to fill, but without requiring them to develop a unique system from scratch to do so. Alternate rules are only a side effect of that, not the main point. And everyone uses whatever alternate rules they want in their publications, either someone else's open content, or something new that they create. Game designers, especially pdf publishers like The Sigil, are not "professionals", they have day jobs. Even Sean K. Reynolds recent review of Eberron shows that he apparently didn't know what Action Points are; he compared them to Star Wars force points rather than simply saying something along the lines of, "Action points are pretty much unchanged from their appearance in d20 Modern, Unearthed Arcana or Dragon Magazine. And this is the author of the Forgotten Realms book, and one who worked for Wizards of the Coast when d2o Modern came out (although someone might correct me on that timing; I don't recall the exact time SKR left.) I don't think it's reasonable to expect them to have all the OGL products ever printed and be intimately familiar with their particulars so they don't make something that's "incompatible" with, say BESM's rules for the same thing. By default, you're going to use one or the other, not both, so why do you care if they're compatible or not?

And I also think its really stretching it to expect that a niche product like BESM, where the stated genre is anime roleplaying, should be automatic for traditional fantasy gaming. Although a lot of gamers do like anime, a lot of them don't too. And if they don't, they'd have no reason to ever look at an anime game.

 

[Umbran]

There are some who would say that those originally designed "synergies" are unbalanced or (dare I say it?) broken to begin with.

They would be speaking errant nonsense. You expect and want synergies. You want players go to "Hey, neat! Look what I can do now!". There's nothing broken about having synergies, so long as everyone gets them. You don't need them to all be of similar type, but you do want them spread about in equal measure. That is balance.

That "balance" is merely an illusion given legitimacy by nothing more than the WotC printing presses.

Again, errant nonsense. "Balance" is given legitimacy through the fact that, by and large, the system works. The proof is in the pudding. Just because soem folks don't like the flavor of this pudding, doesn't mean it isn't good pudding

But if it were true, then an individual element-purchasing system would be no worse than leveling.

Not so. The class-leveling system packages the abilities in bundles. In order to get some of them, you have to give up other things. You don't have access to all of them (and thus all the synergies) willy-nilly, al la carte. The class-levelilng system is a give and take, you see. And that helps keep it more predictable for the GM.

Again, not that breaking it down to points is inherently bad. Many games use such a structure. But, it does make the GM work more.

 

[Conaill]

I find it ludicrous that you would expect every game designer to know about everything published

Never said that. But I do think game designers should not keep themselves ignorant of existing material *on purpose*. I can understand that someone may want to start from a creatively "clean" slate, so as not to bias the flow of ideas. But I would think it's only natural that at a later stage, a designer would check how his ideas mesh with what's already been published.

... and/or that you would expect them to build off of something already published even if they knew of it. Does anyone complain that Iron Kingdoms, Freeport, Steam and Steel, Sorcery and Steam, and the DMG (as well as numerous others) all have completely different rules for Renaissance firearms that don't build off of each other?

[raises hand] I do!

Ok, not for the firearms rules in particular, but I have for example expressed my frustration about the panoply of incompatible naval rulebooks out there. (Ok, not exactly about the *availability* of alternative rules, rather about the missed opportunity to converge towards a set of "best practices" rules.) And so has my DM, and a number of other players in our current sea-based campaign, as well a number of people I've talked with online.

Even if The Sigil knew about the BESM point-based d20 rules, why would you expect him to build off of them? It's entirely possible that he doesn't like them and thinks he can accomplish the same thing better.

Of course. It's also entirely possible that some chunks of it suit him just fine, and that he would think that it wouldn't make much sense to come up with alternative rules that are almost but not exactly the same. Or - heaven forbid! - he might actually notice a good idea he hadn't thought of already. Or maybe he might want to focus a littel more on a particular aspect that BESM hasn't covered very well.

I'm not saying game designers should slavishly follow what has already been done. If you see a poorly designed rule - or one which has proven to be so through playtesting since the rule was first published - by all means, come up with a better one! But "willful ignorance", i.e. refusal to even *look* at existing rules, is IMHO way too far towards the other extreme.

And you also didn't answer my other question -- why does The Sigil get such a hard time from you for not using the BESM d20 rules, but you say nothing of the fact that the BESM d20 rules do not (insofar as I know) refer to the Mutants & Masterminds rules, which were published under the OGL before BESM d20 was.

Ah, didn't know that was a question... I haven't seen the M&M rules, but my impression was that they were more superheroes / D20 modern specific. Whereas the BESM system is much closer towards standard D&D, as is Sigil's system.

I'm not just picking on Sigil. The topic came up, and I said what I had on my mind. If a topic came up about BESM, and the author said he purposefully avoided looking at M&M, I would react the same way.

Besides, Sigil already said he agrees with me. So nyah!

The whole point of the OGL was to open up the core mechanics of the D&D game so that other publishers could fill niches that Wizards of the Coast did not find profitable to fill, but without requiring them to develop a unique system from scratch to do so.

Actually, from WotC's point of view, the whole point of the OGL was that they thought it would let them sell more core books.

But I think a lot of us were hoping that it would have the same effect as what the Open Software movement is aiming to accomplish: public discussion and improvement of the system as a whole. Alternative rules get proposed, bad rules get thrown out, people settle on a subset of "best practices" and continue to build on those.

Instead we see an explosion of more rules, more feats, more prestige classes, more everything... and no sign of consolidation and standardisation whatsoever. No wonder the d20 industry seems to be going through a slump right now.

 

[Desdichado]

Ah, didn't know that was a question... I haven't seen the M&M rules, but my impression was that they were more superheroes / D20 modern specific. Whereas the BESM system is much closer towards standard D&D, as is Sigil's system.

Well, the same could easily be said of BESM, which is, after all, an anime specific game, regardless of how well the rules are adaptable to other genres. And some M&M rules made it into Unearthed Arcana, so they certainly are not too out there for D&D.

But still, my opinion is that we're better served as customers by having competing sets of rules for the same thing so we can pick the ones that work best from our point of view.

And in the case of something as specific as point-based advancement, you can't really have one system and then have another product that adds to that; you pretty much have to use one system at the expense of another. I guess I can see where you're going with this from a generic point of view, but not from a specific point of view.

 

[Kaleon Moonshae]

Never said that. But I do think game designers should not keep themselves ignorant of existing material *on purpose*. I can understand that someone may want to start from a creatively "clean" slate, so as not to bias the flow of ideas. But I would think it's only natural that at a later stage, a designer would check how his ideas mesh with what's already been published.


[raises hand] I do!

Ok, not for the firearms rules in particular, but I have for example expressed my frustration about the panoply of incompatible naval rulebooks out there. (Ok, not exactly about the *availability* of alternative rules, rather about the missed opportunity to converge towards a set of "best practices" rules.) And so has my DM, and a number of other players in our current sea-based campaign, as well a number of people I've talked with online.

Of course. It's also entirely possible that some chunks of it suit him just fine, and that he would think that it wouldn't make much sense to come up with alternative rules that are almost but not exactly the same. Or - heaven forbid! - he might actually notice a good idea he hadn't thought of already. Or maybe he might want to focus a littel more on a particular aspect that BESM hasn't covered very well.

I'm not saying game designers should slavishly follow what has already been done. If you see a poorly designed rule - or one which has proven to be so through playtesting since the rule was first published - by all means, come up with a better one! But "willful ignorance", i.e. refusal to even *look* at existing rules, is IMHO way too far towards the other extreme.

Ah, didn't know that was a question... I haven't seen the M&M rules, but my impression was that they were more superheroes / D20 modern specific. Whereas the BESM system is much closer towards standard D&D, as is Sigil's system.

I'm not just picking on Sigil. The topic came up, and I said what I had on my mind. If a topic came up about BESM, and the author said he purposefully avoided looking at M&M, I would react the same way.

Besides, Sigil already said he agrees with me. So nyah!

Actually, from WotC's point of view, the whole point of the OGL was that they thought it would let them sell more core books.

But I think a lot of us were hoping that it would have the same effect as what the Open Software movement is aiming to accomplish: public discussion and improvement of the system as a whole. Alternative rules get proposed, bad rules get thrown out, people settle on a subset of "best practices" and continue to build on those.

Instead we see an explosion of more rules, more feats, more prestige classes, more everything... and no sign of consolidation and standardisation whatsoever. No wonder the d20 industry seems to be going through a slump right now.

Actually I don't see all that much standardizing in the software industry either, except that most let you use already established file formats (but not all even do that). Take open office programs, many are *almost but not quite alike* and reflect their designer's personal tastes, just as ogl here does. I am sorry, but I do not like the insinuation that I should write my rules to follow someone's else's idea just because he got to the gate first. I *may* (and often do in homebrew stuff) use other people's ideas, mainly because I can not help it, you read something and it does influence your own ideas, but I do not feel required to use any other person's systems. Let's take mecha in a fantasy setting as an example. I love Sorcery and Steam, Steam and Steel, Dragonstar, the polyhedran mecha minigame, and a especially what I have seen of this new dragonmech or whatever it is, but none of them so far have given me a system of rules that I completely agree with. My own rules for fantasy mecha are different from them all and I don't feel bad about this. D20 is about *options* not *hiveminds* and I love that about it. If I think I can come up with a better system for something out there than anyone else has I *can try* and maybe succeed. Maybe just three people will like my concept better (I know, that's shooting high for my crap) but they then have something they do like better and are happy.

just my rambling two cents while at work