Game Modules you'd like/expect to see...

[steeldragons]

Obviously, computers can handle things in much more than "1" or "0" ways.

Yes. By varying combinations of 1s and 0s. Thought that was obviously implied. But that's what I get for assuming, again.

RPG systems are highly fault-tolerant, much moreso than boardgame rules, laws, or computer programs. But faults are still faults. They should not simply be accepted, if they can be avoided, and they certainly should not be encouraged.

Your position, and bare with me since I'm kinda not following, is that table-top RPGs should follow computer programming design so as to not have "faults"? That will never be achievable.

Perfection is an ideal, perhaps a goal, but ultimately in the realm of humanity, a myth. In the realm of mathematics (within which I would include computer programming), perhaps not. Something comes out exactly "right" or it doesn't work/is "wrong" (my deplorable marks in advanced physics are a testament to that! lol).

But since D&D is a [table top] game of imagination and creativity and not a game of mathematics, perfection [no faults] is just a pipe dream.

More and more rules hard-coded into/mandatory in the "program" of the basic/core game is not going to make this any more achievable.

Accept it for what it is, options [as a feature, not a bug...this is NOT a computer program] and all, and have fun with it.

Modular design is nothing new to programming. I don't see any reason why the principles of modular design for that form of rules-building does not apply to RPG rules building.

No, it seems you do not. I wish I could explain it better. But I'm at something of a loss. It seems that simply saying "game design" translates to your ears as "programming"...a byproduct of the computer driven generation/culture we find ourselves in, perhaps.

There are rules within game design. But rules are not game design...no, I guess that doesn't help clear things up as much as it sounded like it would in my head. hmmm.

Less essential, sure, but that's not the same as inapplicable, or in any way harmful.

If you are saying that we need rules XYZ built in to the core game, then yes, it is harmful for those who prefer not to [want to] use those rules. Then you are advocating more DM fiat because it will be necessary to willfully ignore or change the rules for this or that group to play the way they like.

Whereas putting them "off to the side", as it were, still in the book, and saying "Use them or this or that bit of them as much or little as you wish" is not harmful to anyone. Nor encouraging DM fiat because it is "the rules" that you can play this game, right ch'eeuh, OR use xyz elements [optional modules] to make the game you want more by adding or swapping out abc.

No, they are not the same, of course. But there are plenty of principles that apply well across them. Color theory, for example.

Yes. But Color theory for one area of design is not at all mandatory, all- encompassing or translates well into others, as it seems you are arguing pro taking the tenets of software programming and applying it to RPG game design.

The color palette of the year might say "chocolate brown" is the hip/chic/evocative for X/go to color in the Y industry does not make it a good color to use in other design areas.

Do industry Y and industry Z both use Color Theory? Yes. Are they immediately applicable/swappable across those industries? For the purposes/betterment of the design of both? Most definitely not.

Every rules system is, ultimately, a "series of 0's and 1's". Rules are rules, whether RPGs or computers. They just differ in how much can be done that breaks those rules.

Yes, all rules are essentially, "yes, you can" or "no, you can't." How does that play into "here's this batch of rules to add to you game if you want 'yes, you can/no, you can't' for this element of play OR leave them out if you prefer?

Nothing is stopping you from applying whatever DM fiat and ad-hoc fixes you desire, to any RPG system, whether 1E or 4E.

No. Nothing is. But, it sounds like your arguments are advocating that you want as LITTLE DM fiat as possible. So, again, how is adding/tacking things on you want, while others might not, going to somehow ADD to DM fiat? DM fiat will always be permissible...it is in any game (well, not computer games, I suppose, unless you go back in and reprogram them). I'm not really concerned or arguing for that.

Case in point, I like alignment. My players like alignment. We have not seen nearly the amount of guff in play that others on these sites claim with it. I use alignment (9-point) in my game world/setting. It's built in. there are orders and religions and alignment plays into all of them. It is color and flavor that I/we enjoy.

Regardless of how 5e stipulates alignment to be included, I will continue to use 9-point (and smack down paladins and druids that step outta line ). I assume at least 1 method will be 9-point, but if the default comes out as "D&D 5e has no Alignment rules in game, but here's some other options", I am in no way DM fiatting it or "breaking the rules" to use them.

If the system says "This is Alignment in 5e and that's it!" ("1" or "0") Then, yeah, I need to "fiat" the alignment system in.

People didn't stop using ad-hoc rulings because the system somehow stops them from doing so. They stopped because they didn't want to anymore, and they had systems that did less to force them to.

In my experience "People" have not stopped using ad-hoc rulings. But, as with everything on the interwebs, individual experience varies, of course. Broad swathes of what "people" are doing are almost never true for most things.

This system [5e]...with modules to add for this, that or the other set of "rules" you want in your games...would/could/should be one that does not "force them" to handle this or that element in play in any particular way other than how they like.

Good design has nothing to do with limiting the full range of possibilities.

I don't believe I said it did. Offering you modules of rules you want in your game is "limiting [your] full range of possibilities" how, exactly?

It only has to do with expressing possibilities in ways that do not require DM fiat, adjudication and ad-hoc fixes.

I sincerely disagree that that is the definition of "good design". "Good programming", perhaps. But see my last post regarding design =/= programming.

If your game/group says we're using this module or that module, that requires DM fiat how exactly? Now, if you adopt XYZ rules and your DM makes an ad-hoc ruling against the module's rules anyway...that's on the DM and to be handled with your group. That's not on the system. Nor do I see any way you could hard-code it into the game without, again, pissing/turning a LOT of people off.

But, again...not the point of the thread...and I am as much at fault as others in keeping up this discussion. Feel free to respond to what I have asked or pointed out here...but other than that, could we move on please?

Another thread to debate this further would be more than welcome. But not in this thread.

Please and thank you.
--SD

 

[Minigiant]

Sanity Module:
Sanity point and sanity damage.
Forbidden knowledge, Temporary and permenent loss of sanity, psychological disorders due to sanity loss, confusion, loss of hope.

Contact Modules:
Who you know? How they can help you, what can they make for you, what and where they can get you? Whose ear you have? Trading favors. Using favors. Buying favors. How you they your buddies? How much abuse you can give someone before they screw you over? How your contacts can drew you over?

Running guilds/orders/groups:
Managing Guild members.
Guildhouses.
Guild Morale.
Guild salaries.
Sending guildmembers on missions for you.
Guild wars.
Like a mini Lords of Waterdeep.

Super D&D:
Ridiculous extremely fantasy combat maneuvers and spells.
Expanded skill uses.
Additional applications for racial and class features.

 

[dkyle]

Your position, and bare with me since I'm kinda not following, is that table-top RPGs should follow computer programming design so as to not have "faults"? That will never be achievable.

I'm saying that principles of modular design in software design can help understand modular design in RPG design, because it helps reduce faults. Faults are bad. Does not mean we cannot have faults at all, but if we can avoid them, all the better.

More and more rules hard-coded into/mandatory in the "program" of the basic/core game is not going to make this any more achievable.

I'm not arguing for more rules hard-coded in, or arguing against modularity. Perhaps I'm not being clear. I'm merely arguing that lessons learned form modular software design should not be glibly ignored because it's on a computer. Rules are rules. Just as in software, modularity in RPGs is not as simple as "here's some rules ideas you can use if you want". Good modularity must be planned for, and carefully designed.

No, it seems you do not. I wish I could explain it better. But I'm at something of a loss. It seems that simply saying "game design" translates to your ears as "programming"...a byproduct of the computer driven generation/culture we find ourselves in, perhaps.

There are rules within game design. But rules are not game design...no, I guess that doesn't help clear things up as much as it sounded like it would in my head. hmmm.

"Game design" is rules, and only rules. Rules are what makes a game, a game. Modularity in 5E is a matter of rules, of game design.

But RPGs aren't pure games. When you playact out a social encounter, you are not playing a "game". You are roleplaying. Nothing wrong with that, but I think it's important to understand the distinction.

If you are saying that we need rules XYZ built in to the core game, then yes, it is harmful for those who prefer not to [want to] use those rules.

I am not saying that. I'm saying that "stick it in a module" is not an easy answer to every debate on what should and should not be in 5E.

Then you are advocating more DM fiat because it will be necessary to willfully ignore or change the rules for this or that group to play the way they like.

I don't see a meaningful difference between ignoring a rule, and using DM fiat instead, and just using DM fiat because there is no rule.

Regardless of how 5e stipulates alignment to be included, I will continue to use 9-point (and smack down paladins and druids that step outta line ). I assume at least 1 method will be 9-point, but if the default comes out as "D&D 5e has no Alignment rules in game, but here's some other options", I am in no way DM fiatting it or "breaking the rules" to use them.

I don't think you are, either. Using a module is not DM fiat. That's not the point Eldritch_Lord and I have been arguing over.

What we're arguing about is more that, if people

In my experience "People" have not stopped using ad-hoc rulings. But, as with everything on the interwebs, individual experience varies, of course. Broad swathes of what "people" are doing are almost never true for most things.

Not stopped. Using less. That was in reference to this:

Their choices helped make each game unique. I believe it gave DMs in particular a sense of ownership and license that seems to be missing lately. Honestly, sometimes I think that D&D would do well to revisit that "sloppy" era.

Do you disagree with this?

I don't believe I said it did. Offering you modules of rules you want in your game is "limiting [your] full range of possibilities" how, exactly?

Then what did you mean by "Personally, I prefer my RPGs to be 0-to-infinity (and BEYOND!"

That sounded to me like a point of contrast to the "1" or "0" approach you were ascribing to me.

If your game/group says we're using this module or that module, that requires DM fiat how exactly?

It doesn't

Now, if you adopt XYZ rules and your DM makes an ad-hoc ruling against the module's rules anyway...that's on the DM and to be handled with your group. That's not on the system. Nor do I see any way you could hard-code it into the game without, again, pissing/turning a LOT of people off.

I'm not talking about fiat against the module's rules. I'm talking about fiat required because the module wasn't sufficiently well designed to integrate into the rest of the game.

Again, this is the post I originally replied to:

I understand what you are talking about, and you are correct, for software. However, D&D is not software running on a computer, it is played at the table. The humans "running" it are much more fault-tolerant and, in fact, capable of responding to faults by fixing it on their own initiative. In the old days (AD&D) the rules had plenty of holes that individual DMs/groups had to fix.

I'm not talking about whether or not modules are good or bad. I'm talking about how important it is to use solid design techniques to avoid faults, and whether borrowing techniques from a related field is a good idea. I'm talking about how we shouldn't just rely on the DM to fix things.

But, again...not the point of the thread...and I am as much at fault as others in keeping up this discussion. Feel free to respond to what I have asked or pointed out here...but other than that, could we move on please?

Another thread to debate this further would be more than welcome. But not in this thread.

I don't think this is off topic. I think it's quite important to the topic to understand what modules really mean, and to understand how hard they can be to get right.

 

[Boarstorm]

I'm primarily hoping for alternate magic modules -- and I don't mean spell points, I mean complete, fleshed out magic systems.

Love it or hate it, the Wheel of Time novels present a complex and internally consistent magic system with a lot of depth.

Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn novels present another (in fact, THREE).

And even though magic isn't really the focus of the novels, Brent Weeks' Night Angel trilogy presents yet another intriguing system.

I could list many more (Janny Wurts offers at least two different systems as well), but for the sake of brevity I'll stop now.

I'd like modules that either present their own deep alternate magic systems, or provide guidelines for building some of your own.

I love my pointy hat and grimoire wizards, but I think it would be fun to explore other options on occasion.

 

[Ratskinner]

"Monster races as PCs" should not be a module, because if you do not build that possibility into the core it simply will not work. Monster races weren't considered at the outset of 3.0, and that's how we got the massive, clunky mess that was the LA/ECL system. If you want monsters to be playable as PCs, you have to build a "hook" for it into the core, at which point you may be cutting off other possible modules and you may impact the design of the rest of the core system by doing so.

So, something that's been a part of the game since at least 2e shouldn't be handled?

How much is a feat worth in 3e? How much is a power worth in 4e? Feats, powers, and other aspects of characters vary wildly in power and value across the system. You cannot possibly try to retrofit a point system to an existing slot system and expect for it to be balanced. If the designers are using a point-based system behind the scenes to balance things and simply release that publicly, that's different...but in that case, the mere fact that a point system has been incorporated from the beginning affects the system design.

And yet D&D has done it twice, 2e's Options, and Mutants and Masterminds (if you'll allow the stretch.) Some of 2e's Players Option were pretty kludgey, but Mutants and Masterminds seems to be rolling along on all cylinders.

Likewise for simultaneous multiclassing. 3e didn't implement it at the start, so its incarnation in 3e was the gestalt system, a vague, unbalanced (albeit very popular these days) variant in the back of UA. Using gestalt, you have to throw CR out the window--well, more so than you already do, anyway--because the designers didn't build things with the assumption of its existence, nor did they sit down to figure out relative level equivalences between gestalt and non-gestalt or the like.

So its popular...but wrong? I'm not making any implications about how they go about achieving anything in any of the modules I mentioned. Nonetheless, if Gestalt characters can be a mess and still popular, I think that goes to my point. In fact, I was holding them in reserve as an example.

All of these are quite simple to implement, but have major cascading effects throughout the system. Implementing V/W the standard way drastically changes the value of crits and therefore crit-related effects, since crits go straight to wounds. Implementing crit locations means implementing implementing systems to deal with this, such as called shots, piecemeal armor, more common regeneration effects, and more. Implementing a condition track changes the flow of combat, introducing a dangerous death spiral that can lead to lots of dead PCs unless mechanics are introduced to lessen or manipulate the track's effects, in which case you run into the same problem as in SWSE where you can manipulate the condition track and bypass HP entirely.

And someone looking to implement a track wouldn't be looking for that? Couldn't be warned of that? Wouldn't want that? Jeez, you read like Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men: "You want hit locations? YOU CAN'T HANDLE HIT LOCATIONS!"

Look, someone looking at the "Advanced" modules, as I've dubbed them, is really looking to mess with the system, or bend it out of its comfort zone to begin with. The fact that something might else work rather wonkily or not at all once they've done that shouldn't surprise them.

That said. It also shouldn't become an excuse for terrible design, writing, or editing. Frex, the critical hit location module should have explicit warnings and advice on how it affects the game: "You might want to add Regeneration [Regen stats] to your standard healing magic." etc. Additionally, I would fully expect all the core/basic modules, and the "expert" modules (where I suspect al lot of the edition-specific flavor will live) to all be pretty cross-compatible.

All three of these would take so much space and effort to implement properly, with due thought given to all the consequences and lists of changes provided for existing mechanics, that you'd almost be better served writing a whole variant PHB by that point.

enh...maybe. I think they call that Unearthed Arcana. That list was off the top of my head. Personally, I hope they drastically reduce the Core pagecount of things like spells to increase the space available for options. Of course, they might not need to, depending on how they handle it.

<snippage> All I wanted to point out was that you need to think about how something would be made into a module, not just "Gee, it would be cool to have a variant for X," and that many things just aren't an option without a major overhaul.

And when WOTC is paying me, I will. To be sure, my list was rather long, but they're trying to be able to emulate the playstyles of everything from BECMI to 4e to 3e.

However, I'm perfectly fine with modules that say "This may break your game. Use with caution." I just don't see why this is a big deal. I haven't heard of anyone's head exploding when they discovered that some rules module/variant wasn't as balanced or well thought-out as it could have been, let alone perfectly seamlessly melded with the core rules and assumptions. The fact that Module X might break a spell, rule, module, or assumption is just the risk you take. There is no inherent value in having a perfectly "unbroken" rules system.

 

[the Jester]

I would love a module for domain management and wargaming, including sieges and naval combat.

 

[dkyle]

So, something that's been a part of the game since at least 2e shouldn't be handled?

And yet D&D has done it twice, 2e's Options, and Mutants and Masterminds (if you'll allow the stretch.) Some of 2e's Players Option were pretty kludgey, but Mutants and Masterminds seems to be rolling along on all cylinders.

So its popular...but wrong? I'm not making any implications about how they go about achieving anything in any of the modules I mentioned. Nonetheless, if Gestalt characters can be a mess and still popular, I think that goes to my point. In fact, I was holding them in reserve as an example.

I think you're misunderstanding him. He's not saying that they shouldn't be included. But rather, that the core must be designed to at least anticipate those modules, for them to work. Or, the simpler design answer, just include those things in core.

I think the central point here is that modularity makes a game much harder to design. It is not a way to make things easier on themselves. They are undertaking a hugely ambitions task by structuring their game like this.

However, I'm perfectly fine with modules that say "This may break your game. Use with caution."

Then "just put it in a module" isn't a satisfactory answer to "I want this in 5E". I don't want some half-assed houserules that I could have easily invented myself. I want a well-designed, well-balanced system that supports what I want from it. Balance is the hard part of game design. I'm not going to pay for something that simply pawns that off on me.

Now, if 5E will not provide that, fair enough. I have no particular claim to being the customer WotC must win over. But if modules are just the same-old broken rules variants, then to me, "just put it in a module" means "no, 5E should not have that".

I just don't see why this is a big deal. I haven't heard of anyone's head exploding when they discovered that some rules module/variant wasn't as balanced or well thought-out as it could have been, let alone perfectly seamlessly melded with the core rules and assumptions. The fact that Module X might break a spell, rule, module, or assumption is just the risk you take. There is no inherent value in having a perfectly "unbroken" rules system.

And I think there's tremendous value in that.

The rules are the physics of the world. Broken rules are a broken world.

If modules are just going to be another "unearthed arcana" of risky "variants", then as far as I'm concerned, it's a stillborn system. They need to be more than that. I need to feel like, when I choose a set of modules with the features I want, that I'm getting a game that was designed with those features, with at least as much coherent design and balance as 4E.

 

[steeldragons]

I don't believe, anywhere in this thread, did I say...or even insinuate...that the modules that should be offered should or could or would "break the game."

Of COURSE the modules are presented for inclusion with the existing rules.

Show me, where I said, "I want modules that break the game! That don't work and/or create difficulties later? Or create problems for X or Y or Z mode of play?!"

Who said that?!

Stuff and filthy nonsense.

Branch this off. Again, not the thread for it!
--SD

 

[Salamandyr]

I don't really want them in a core game, but some things I'd like to see

Wuxia: No, I don't want monk as a core class. I'd rather see a ruleset that reimagines all the core classes in a wuxia fashion. Want to be a kick butt, flying through the air shao lin warrior? Play a fighter in a wuxia rules game! A wall crawling, balance on bamboo assassin? Play a rogue in a wuxia game. Play a white bearded oldster who transforms into a dragon? Play a wizard!

Psionics: I don't like them as a core assumption, but I really dig them as an alternative way to do magic, and a lead into...

Science Fantasy: Basically rayguns, rocketships, swords, and sorcery. Why not!?

 

[Guest 85555]

I would like to see a historical "naturalistic" D&D campaign module line. Something akin to the old green books where I can run a anything from Ancient Greece to Elizabethan England.