How Much Do You Care About Novelty?

[Alzrius]

Ethan Hunt and Jason Bourne would like a word.

To say nothing of John Wick (yeah I know he's an assassin rather than a spy, but have you seen the amount of punishment he soaks up in John Wick 4?)

 

[Thomas Shey]

Ethan Hunt and Jason Bourne would like a word.

Neither of those are typical spies. They're waaay up near the edge of certain types of cop characters. Notice how much time they spend outside the purview of their organization, which means everyone, everywhere is out to get them. More typical spies can operate around even enemy authorities for a good part of their operating procedure without getting into a fight.

 

[Thomas Shey]

To say nothing of John Wick (yeah I know he's an assassin rather than a spy, but have you seen the amount of punishment he soaks up in John Wick 4?)

John's even less like a typical spy character than those two.

 

[Bae'zel]

Hmm I've been let down a few times by games that promised "novelty". Either because the rules didn't really support that (ie, they were far too light to be taken as more than fluff) or it was mostly show (eg artwork that amped up the weird and dynamic, but the actual setting was surprisingly mundane and uninspired).

Numenera 1e was a good example of this to me. I was REALLY sold on the concept; the art, the cyphers, the possibility of truly strange places to explore. But I was really disappointed by the surprisingly mediocre treatment. It felt like "standard" D&D with lots of one-use items that were mostly exotic grenades. I think my expectations were too high: I was hoping for Jodorowsky sci fi spirituality and Moebius crazyness. The Incal or Metabarons?

That's just me though.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I'm not sure I understand the complaint. Action adventure spies are not meaningfully different than sword and sorcery heroes in this regard. In fiction, characters succumb to their Wounds only when dramatically appropriate. In games, they lose HP. What's the problem?

What don't you understand?

The point seems incredibly clear.

D&D doesn't have characters "only succumb to their wounds when it's dramatically appropriate". That's now how HP work at all. It can be in fact completely dramatically inappropriate, and the ever-increasing amount of HP from levels is really, really bad for this, too.

Three key tropes that no version of actual TSR/WotC D&D supports, and that, as I recall, neither Spycraft nor d20 Modern supported (correct me if I'm wrong), but which are ever-present in the spy genre, appearing in almost every spy movie:

1) Sneaking up on enemies and instantly or quickly and silently incapacitating them. This needs to even be able to happen to enemies, who, in combat, are fairly tough.

2) Picking people off with sniper rifles or the like. Again, this is basically similar 1, but implemented differently. It probably can be asymmetrical in that maybe it can't happen to PCs, but there needs to be a system where you can snipe people, but if you're in actual combat with them, they're much harder to take down.

3) Shooting a badguy in the head and killing them instantly in a situation that isn't the above, but is perhaps "holding them gunpoint". This is complicated by the fact that there needs to some potential counterplay.

4) PCs need to be possible to KO without grinding them down in the right circumstance - and again, as John pointed out, in spy media, you can be KO'd, and if you're uninjured, you come around on basically "full health", whereas if you're injured, you'll still be injured.

Infinitely increasing HP, the WotC edition approach to HP is very, very incompatible with this sort of thing. As John said, games with a small, fixed pool of HP can basically naturally handle this, or handle it with small rules additions.

With WotC HP approaches, you need multiple special subsystems to handle things like this, which again, no TSR or WotC edition has, and which d20 Modern and Spycraft didn't have IIRC (again, correct me if I'm wrong).

In fact the only d20-based RPG I'm away of which even has a subsystem anything like this is the "X Without Number" series.

Also, as an aside, D&D is pretty bad as a system for Sword and Sorcery - a bunch of S&S common tropes are not really doable in D&D - hell that's why Worlds Without Number added a bunch of subsystems, so that a D&D-ish OSR chassis could actually do more Sword and Sorcery staples.

This is the tip of the iceberg too. Skills starting extremely low and going extremely high as you level up is another huge, huge problem for this genre. A better model would be where you barely even made skill checks if it was something you were supposed to be specialized in, and instead gained "abilities" related to skills as you levelled up (i.e. a hacker might gain the ability to nigh-instantly hack a camera system).

(This avoids the question of whether level elevating hit points are a good model even for the former, but that's a separate discussion).

For Sword & Sorcery? They're not. Much higher starting HP with limited or no HP gain (perhaps only from actual choices/options) would be a much closer model for most Sword & Sorcery stuff, as would some kind of "injury test" system. BRP fantasy games are better at this than D&D is.

D&D has effectively been "grandfathered" in for Sword & Sorcery, but other genres don't have that grandfather factor.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Numenera 1e was a good example of this to me. I was REALLY sold on the concept; the art, the cyphers, the possibility of truly strange places to explore. But I was really disappointed by the surprisingly mediocre treatment. It felt like "standard" D&D with lots of one-use items that were mostly exotic grenades. I think my expectations were too hight: I was hoping for Jodorowsky sci fi spirituality and Moebius crazyness. The Incal or Metabarons?

I felt exactly the same way.

And I don't think your expectations were too high - everything we were hearing about Numenera was spot-on for proper decayed super-future stuff like Moebius or Gene Wolf. Even within the book, the way the setting as a whole is described is pretty cool.

The classes and powers weren't completely terrible either, they could have worked.

But for whatever reason, it seemed like there was a sudden and massive imagination failure when they came to do the example bit of the world and the example items. I feel like maybe Cook just didn't like vibe with the genre to the degree he'd need to or something, but it was weird.

 

[Reynard]

Neither of those are typical spies. They're waaay up near the edge of certain types of cop characters. Notice how much time they spend outside the purview of their organization, which means everyone, everywhere is out to get them. More typical spies can operate around even enemy authorities for a good part of their operating procedure without getting into a fight.

I very specifically said "action adventure spies" -- of which both Hunt and Bourne are iconic examples.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Neither of those are typical spies. They're waaay up near the edge of certain types of cop characters. Notice how much time they spend outside the purview of their organization, which means everyone, everywhere is out to get them. More typical spies can operate around even enemy authorities for a good part of their operating procedure without getting into a fight.

There's nothing about a hit point system that demands you regularly get into fights.

 

[Micah Sweet]

What don't you understand?

The point seems incredibly clear.

D&D doesn't have characters "only succumb to their wounds when it's dramatically appropriate". That's now how HP work at all. It can be in fact completely dramatically inappropriate, and the ever-increasing amount of HP from levels is really, really bad for this, too.

Three key tropes that no version of actual TSR/WotC D&D supports, and that, as I recall, neither Spycraft nor d20 Modern supported (correct me if I'm wrong), but which are ever-present in the spy genre, appearing in almost every spy movie:

1) Sneaking up on enemies and instantly or quickly and silently incapacitating them. This needs to even be able to happen to enemies, who, in combat, are fairly tough.

2) Picking people off with sniper rifles or the like. Again, this is basically similar 1, but implemented differently. It probably can be asymmetrical in that maybe it can't happen to PCs, but there needs to be a system where you can snipe people, but if you're in actual combat with them, they're much harder to take down.

3) Shooting a badguy in the head and killing them instantly in a situation that isn't the above, but is perhaps "holding them gunpoint". This is complicated by the fact that there needs to some potential counterplay.

4) PCs need to be possible to KO without grinding them down in the right circumstance - and again, as John pointed out, in spy media, you can be KO'd, and if you're uninjured, you come around on basically "full health", whereas if you're injured, you'll still be injured.

Infinitely increasing HP, the WotC edition approach to HP is very, very incompatible with this sort of thing. As John said, games with a small, fixed pool of HP can basically naturally handle this, or handle it with small rules additions.

With WotC HP approaches, you need multiple special subsystems to handle things like this, which again, no TSR or WotC edition has, and which d20 Modern and Spycraft didn't have IIRC (again, correct me if I'm wrong).

In fact the only d20-based RPG I'm away of which even has a subsystem anything like this is the "X Without Number" series.

Also, as an aside, D&D is pretty bad as a system for Sword and Sorcery - a bunch of S&S common tropes are not really doable in D&D - hell that's why Worlds Without Number added a bunch of subsystems, so that a D&D-ish OSR chassis could actually do more Sword and Sorcery staples.

This is the tip of the iceberg too. Skills starting extremely low and going extremely high as you level up is another huge, huge problem for this genre. A better model would be where you barely even made skill checks if it was something you were supposed to be specialized in, and instead gained "abilities" related to skills as you levelled up (i.e. a hacker might gain the ability to nigh-instantly hack a camera system).


For Sword & Sorcery? They're not. Much higher starting HP with limited or no HP gain (perhaps only from actual choices/options) would be a much closer model for most Sword & Sorcery stuff, as would some kind of "injury test" system. BRP fantasy games are better at this than D&D is.

D&D has effectively been "grandfathered" in for Sword & Sorcery, but other genres don't have that grandfather factor.

As I've said, I don't want mechanics for cinematic. To me all that's important is that we have rules widgets that allow things that can happen in a given genre to happen; I don't need the rules to push for those things happening, just allow for them, because the rest is the job of the GM and the players IMO. You can have rules for spy gear and things that happen in spy stories without cinematic rules that try to force the narrative.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

To me all that's important is that we have rules widgets that allow things that can happen in a given genre to happen

And as I've pointed out, Spycraft and d20 Modern were missing some of those.

You can design a "rules widget" to allow silent takedowns of full-HP enemies in a spy movie/show/book style, as Worlds Without Number (which I believe you are familiar with, no?) shows. You could modify their takedown rules.

But that "rules widget" and many others are absent from both of the games.

cinematic rules that try to force the narrative

By that logic, D&D's HP, levels, etc. are rules that "try to force the narrative". So that doesn't mean much.