How Epic is Your RPG?

[Tony Vargas]

A little irony here: the video that Bethesda Softworks uses to depict the heroes you can play in its MMORPG, Elder Scrolls Online, contains lots of activities that you can't actually do in-game.

But our TRPGs can.

I've seen a lot of disconnects between the illos and mechanics of RPGs.

The questions: what is your favorite RPG,

D&D. It must be my favorite, I play it more than any other right now....

and does it enable you to do some of these crazy stunts like:

dodging arrows while hanging from a sliding bridge

Yes (most eds, not 3 "lose your DEX bonus when climbing" e, but aside from that).

chopping the dire blades from a huge demon's gauntlet

Not so much. 3e sunder (rarely worth it) or 4e attacks that 'weaken' (not that lasting).

taking two daggers in the gut, just to ignore the pain

Yes, yay hps!

and slam your opponent into a wall

Not so much. 4e Brawling fighter, for instance, had two tricks that did exactly that.

grab and break massive chains with your telekinesis spell

Oddly enough, no. TK didn't work that way, that I recall. Of course, DM call can always change that.

turn undead

of course,

and lead an army of zombies?

Not so much. Little bit in 5e, though. Not an 'army,' but enough to seriously hurt something much higher level than said zombies (go Bounded Accuracy). 3e it'd just be very expensive (more expensive than raising an army). Prior to that: 'evil act.'

 

[pemerton]

This post gives a reasonable sense of the sort of "epic" I enjoy in my game, which is achievable using 4e D&D: both allies and enemies tumbling over ledges and continuing the fight when they land at the bottom; being swallowed by serpents and fighting one's way out; leaping onto the back of an attacking dragon and driving it to the ground; blasting enemies with lightning bolts fired from a magical Thundercloud Tower; etc.

what is your favorite RPG, and does it enable you to do some of these crazy stunts like:

• dodging arrows while hanging from a sliding bridge
• chopping the dire blades from a huge demon's gauntlet
• taking two daggers in the gut, just to ignore the pain and slam your opponent into a wall
• grab and break massive chains with your telekinesis spell
• turn undead and lead an army of zombies?

Of these things in the list, 1, 3 and 4 are eminently feasible in 4e (though 4 has never come up, as the last time the PCs had access to Telekinesis they weren't using it to break massive chains).

I don't know about 5 - there is probably a lich epic destiny somewhere (maybe Book of Vile Darkness). But the structure of 4e certainly supports this sort of thing.

On 2, 4e provides only limited support to disarm attempts, but it is possible to inflict debuffs on enemies which might include weaking their gauntlets. I should add, of the things on the list 2 and 3 strike me as the least epic.

 

[steenan]

I've always understood ""epic" as being more about big stakes and far-reaching consequences than about shows of personal power and badassery.


The most epic campaign I've taken part in used Mistborn Adventure Game. It definitely had some badass moments, but they weren't what made it great. It was epic because we changed the world in a big way, socially and magically.


On the other hand, Exalted and Fate Core games had more cinematic, high-powered stunts like these listed in the OP. Nobilis out-powered them by degrees of magnitude with stunts like hitting somebody with a knife thrown around the globe, catching a tsunami into a bottle or kicking an opponent into the orbit.

 

[GMMichael]

I've always understood ""epic" as being more about big stakes and far-reaching consequences than about shows of personal power and badassery.

Nobilis out-powered them by degrees of magnitude with stunts like hitting somebody with a knife thrown around the globe, catching a tsunami into a bottle or kicking an opponent into the orbit.

Whaaaa? Now that is epic.

Yes, you're right. Epic got itself a bad name. Maybe it started with the Epic Level Handbook?