Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
Pathfinder Beginner Box Review
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="The-Magic-Sword" data-source="post: 8197184" data-attributes="member: 6801252"><p>Basically, as Kenada said, it has a number of qualities that are reminiscent of and supportive of an OSR style of game. My primary touchstone for that culture is '<a href="https://thealexandrian.net/" target="_blank">The Alexandrian</a>' so that colors my viewpoint, but the game really has a lot of the 'procedures' being discussed on that blog deliberately built into them, ranging from exploration and downtime modes, to the victory point subsystems for tracking infiltration and such.</p><p></p><p>The way the encounter guidelines work, you can break them into pieces, or combine those pieces to move between difficulty categories, and those fights on the higher end will be meaningful enough to facilitate a 'combat as war' framework where the party is looking for ways to make the encounters easier through their exploration-- e.g. you want to cut off enemies from being joined by other enemies because the resulting encounter would potentially bring it to severe or extreme. </p><p></p><p>The only trick to this is deliberately not loading encounters up to heavily to leave room for combination, I use adversary rosters and 'enemy groups' that I treat like lego bricks depending on the situation to build out the encounters the players actually face, e.g. this low encounter group, and a moderate encounter group might combine if not handled carefully into a severe encounter- which is risky, but not unwinnable by any means.</p><p></p><p>Treasure can easily be made flexible, while still being very desirable, which rewards a material motivation to adventure and complex environments to adventure through. I'm reminded of the dungeon complexes of yesteryear, or of the concept of <a href="https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/13085/roleplaying-games/jaquaying-the-dungeon" target="_blank">Jaquaying the Dungeon</a>.</p><p></p><p>In fact, the game almost demands it-- like it works just fine with the more plotted modern campaign scheme, but its notable that a lot of options in character building fall to the wayside if you do so, feats that help navigation, that help you with traversal, that help you with environmental effects, that help you with crafting, that help you with self-determined approaches to social problems (influence rumor anyone?) and so forth that you really only reach the full potential of the rules in a somewhat sandboxy experience of the kind you can see Campbell discussing above.</p><p></p><p>But the 'new' part lies with the third and fourth edition character building sensibility, where you have a great deal of power to customize your characters abilities, players are empowered to get a-hold of Magic Items they would like, and combats are primarily 'combat as sport' in their execution, your actual moment to moment tactics are still very influential. The game treats rolling as a variant rule, and players are still quite powerful relative to encounters, especially if they know what they're doing.</p><p></p><p>Pathfinder 2e combines these ideas to create a game where I believe its full potential, is predicated on full use of its procedures to explore a world (rather than a plotted sequence of scenes) with interesting dungeon complexes and other environments, where the players determine their own approach with differing consequences for those approaches, while retaining the tactical mentality, character customization, and player empowerment of more modern systems. It even seems to best retain exp based leveling, utilizing a mixture of combat and accomplishments to level within an internally coherent, if somewhat gamist, simulation.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="The-Magic-Sword, post: 8197184, member: 6801252"] Basically, as Kenada said, it has a number of qualities that are reminiscent of and supportive of an OSR style of game. My primary touchstone for that culture is '[URL='https://thealexandrian.net/']The Alexandrian[/URL]' so that colors my viewpoint, but the game really has a lot of the 'procedures' being discussed on that blog deliberately built into them, ranging from exploration and downtime modes, to the victory point subsystems for tracking infiltration and such. The way the encounter guidelines work, you can break them into pieces, or combine those pieces to move between difficulty categories, and those fights on the higher end will be meaningful enough to facilitate a 'combat as war' framework where the party is looking for ways to make the encounters easier through their exploration-- e.g. you want to cut off enemies from being joined by other enemies because the resulting encounter would potentially bring it to severe or extreme. The only trick to this is deliberately not loading encounters up to heavily to leave room for combination, I use adversary rosters and 'enemy groups' that I treat like lego bricks depending on the situation to build out the encounters the players actually face, e.g. this low encounter group, and a moderate encounter group might combine if not handled carefully into a severe encounter- which is risky, but not unwinnable by any means. Treasure can easily be made flexible, while still being very desirable, which rewards a material motivation to adventure and complex environments to adventure through. I'm reminded of the dungeon complexes of yesteryear, or of the concept of [URL='https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/13085/roleplaying-games/jaquaying-the-dungeon']Jaquaying the Dungeon[/URL]. In fact, the game almost demands it-- like it works just fine with the more plotted modern campaign scheme, but its notable that a lot of options in character building fall to the wayside if you do so, feats that help navigation, that help you with traversal, that help you with environmental effects, that help you with crafting, that help you with self-determined approaches to social problems (influence rumor anyone?) and so forth that you really only reach the full potential of the rules in a somewhat sandboxy experience of the kind you can see Campbell discussing above. But the 'new' part lies with the third and fourth edition character building sensibility, where you have a great deal of power to customize your characters abilities, players are empowered to get a-hold of Magic Items they would like, and combats are primarily 'combat as sport' in their execution, your actual moment to moment tactics are still very influential. The game treats rolling as a variant rule, and players are still quite powerful relative to encounters, especially if they know what they're doing. Pathfinder 2e combines these ideas to create a game where I believe its full potential, is predicated on full use of its procedures to explore a world (rather than a plotted sequence of scenes) with interesting dungeon complexes and other environments, where the players determine their own approach with differing consequences for those approaches, while retaining the tactical mentality, character customization, and player empowerment of more modern systems. It even seems to best retain exp based leveling, utilizing a mixture of combat and accomplishments to level within an internally coherent, if somewhat gamist, simulation. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
Pathfinder Beginner Box Review
Top