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Legend Lore says 'story not rules' (3/4)
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<blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 6095750" data-attributes="member: 54877"><p>Part of it is the content, but the "ultimate" reason, if you will, that the content ends up being substandard is that the lists are too long. Even if a list doesn't start too long, it ends up too long before they are done. And then when someone realizes this and tries to keep the list reasonably short, that gets all mixed up with over simplification--and makes people want to make the list larger again. </p><p></p><p>For example, one of the key things that will make a BECMI-style game work if you stick to the traditional Vancian casting is keeping the spell lists reasonably short. Breaking them up into levels helps, but there is still a limit. If you have 30 1st level wizard spells, some of them will be flavorless and some of them will be overpowered, merely from sure size of the list. So if you want to make the wizards more interesting, do it some other way besides adding to the spell lists.</p><p></p><p>Meanwhile, we've got 4 or 5 classes (or a few more with race as class). So the moment someone wants a variant, that instinct to add another class sets in--and it's exactly the wrong thing to do if you want a rich, well-designed game. You might end up with 8 or so in that well-designed game, if you carefully pick each one--perhaps with some branching options at later levels. But that suggests the need for some other element to give the variety.</p><p></p><p>It's exactly the same parallel with 4E roles, power sources, classes, and power lists. The power sources are made essentially meaningless, the roles collapse into nothing but a category, given that each class belongs to a role, the classes grow and grow--limited only by the needs of out of control lists of powers. Whereas a shorter list of powers coupled with 8-10 carefully considered classes--and then roles and power sources that are orthogonal and carry real weight--would have worked better while covering more conceptual ground.</p><p></p><p>Or to bring it back to the article, if the way to make an "archer" is to add something called "archer" to a list of other things, then your design is probably botched. Archer is defined primarily by weapon use--with some slight implications for armor and skill and abilities to go with the concept. Make the abilities and weapons and skills rich and meaningful enough, then a "fighter" or similar class that picks a bow and those skills and abilities <strong>will</strong> be an archer--both mechanically and in concept.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Crazy Jerome, post: 6095750, member: 54877"] Part of it is the content, but the "ultimate" reason, if you will, that the content ends up being substandard is that the lists are too long. Even if a list doesn't start too long, it ends up too long before they are done. And then when someone realizes this and tries to keep the list reasonably short, that gets all mixed up with over simplification--and makes people want to make the list larger again. For example, one of the key things that will make a BECMI-style game work if you stick to the traditional Vancian casting is keeping the spell lists reasonably short. Breaking them up into levels helps, but there is still a limit. If you have 30 1st level wizard spells, some of them will be flavorless and some of them will be overpowered, merely from sure size of the list. So if you want to make the wizards more interesting, do it some other way besides adding to the spell lists. Meanwhile, we've got 4 or 5 classes (or a few more with race as class). So the moment someone wants a variant, that instinct to add another class sets in--and it's exactly the wrong thing to do if you want a rich, well-designed game. You might end up with 8 or so in that well-designed game, if you carefully pick each one--perhaps with some branching options at later levels. But that suggests the need for some other element to give the variety. It's exactly the same parallel with 4E roles, power sources, classes, and power lists. The power sources are made essentially meaningless, the roles collapse into nothing but a category, given that each class belongs to a role, the classes grow and grow--limited only by the needs of out of control lists of powers. Whereas a shorter list of powers coupled with 8-10 carefully considered classes--and then roles and power sources that are orthogonal and carry real weight--would have worked better while covering more conceptual ground. Or to bring it back to the article, if the way to make an "archer" is to add something called "archer" to a list of other things, then your design is probably botched. Archer is defined primarily by weapon use--with some slight implications for armor and skill and abilities to go with the concept. Make the abilities and weapons and skills rich and meaningful enough, then a "fighter" or similar class that picks a bow and those skills and abilities [B]will[/B] be an archer--both mechanically and in concept. [/QUOTE]
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