Reducing Options to Increase Fun

[Ariosto]

Other than D&D (either 1e or 2e) how many games lock you into virtually zero choices as your character advances?

The important choices in old D&D are about how your character advances in play. I prefer to have those, because actually playing matters more to me.

At any rate, it is rather the reason to choose D&D that it is what it is instead of something else.

I don't know exactly how many games use the strict class-level system, or something along those lines. It's convenient, when one does not want to worry over whether Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser can "Gather Information" or "Ride" or "Use Rope".

It can also be fun to do something different, until it's the new same old thing. Then what was old may be fresh again.

 

[Ariosto]

However, an RPG has rules for a reason: they get us beyond "Bang! Bang! You're dead!" "No, you missed!" type arguments in play.

Those who don't start there don't need heavy machinery to get beyond it.

Where people are coming from this way might be a pretty important factor.

 

[Hussar]

It appears that the bottom line of what you're saying there is that there should be rigid numbers, leaving no room for GM judgment, and that is worlds away from what I have seen in Chaosium games. That's what the lack of skill-by-skill definition refers to: There are no clear-cut factors determining just how hard that Accounting roll should be or just how long this attempt to Persuade takes or how long the effects last.

There's a bit more motive (for most people anyhow, I think) to get uptight about looking up fine print if it's on tickets for which one has paid some currency. People who have not, because the tickets were never printed up (much less sold) in the first place, are not likely to make such a fuss.

I don't think it would tend to go over very well to go into a CoC game and start demanding itemized written accounts of the particulars of every single roll, and then insisting on poring through them every time anyone wants to do anything. ("Hold on, I know someone tried to grab a cat leaping out a window once about three years ago, and I'm sure it was harder than DEX x 5%. It's not under 'c' for cat, though, so maybe 'g' for grab ... just a few more pages ...")

Um, no? That's not what I said. I said that I want a global (or at least a small number) of general mechanics that cover most eventualities

 

[Ariosto]

Um, no? That's not what I said. I said that I want a global (or at least a small number) of general mechanics that cover most eventualities

Really? That's mighty curious, because you seem to keep arguing that old D&D is horrible, and in favor of new D&D and other games with a larger number of mechanics to cover most eventualities.

Let's see:

I disagree. I think if you strip away the mini-game, you refocus everyone's attention on the Game the DM-game.

Yes, there you go. Maybe it would work better if you bothered to find out just what it is you're claiming to disagree with!

Anyhow, back to your desire for rigid rules and CoC.

The point of that example is that CoC most definitely does not have a very small number of set mechanics if old D&D hasn't! It depends on the GM to do what the GM is there to do in most RPGs I've seen.

That there is a countless variety of possible situations, each with its own "messy" particulars of people and places and phenomena, is for many people the very essence of the RPG's appeal. If they want to play an abstract game such as Go, then they know where to look!

What increases Reynard's fun might decrease Hussar's fun, and vice-versa.

 

[pemerton]

Leaving it -- and all skill things like it -- out entirely, dealing with it in a reasonable way between player and DM, makes the game more fun and improves the quality and value of play.

Or you can have siloing. RM, in effect, has this, because PCs have many development points per level, and are constrained in how many they can spend each level on "core" skills like combat and magic.

Or, like (I think) Ariosto has been saying, you can do it like RQ does and silo every single skill, and determine progression in each skill independently by a "skill gain" roll after each use of a skill.

And interestingly, these different ways of doing it have different effects on the game. RM favours heavy metagaming of PC build, whether for combat/magic optimisation, or flavour "optimisation" (goat herding, fire building and similar peripheral skills purchased out of the siloed development points). Whereas RQ is almost metagame free, because there is nothing that affects skill development except ingame use.

It seems to me that there is another dispute between Hussar and Ariosto, also, namely, whether a richer skill system or a richer action resolution system (and these two can overlap but need not) reduces the need to "game the GM". I feel that even a system like 3E or RM can still lead to a degree of GM-gaming, because there aren't tables or preset DCs to cover every eventuality, and sometimes the GM just has to make a call. I prefer more expressly metagame-y systems, like DMG p 42, for reining this in. (I'm pretty sure from past exchanges that Ariosto doesn't agree with this.) They still depend upon reasonable give-and-take between players and GM, but it's within a pre-established framework. So players can have a greater degree of confidence in the consistency and tenability of the way that declared actions are resolved.

I think you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Why not have an "Outdoor Adventurers" stat? This mechanic gives you your relative skill at doing anything outdoorsey that is within reason. Depending on the level of the stat vs the difficulty of the job, you get a mechanic to distinguish my character from yours. Maybe my fighter is a knight who always had a squire. What do I know about cooking rabbits? I had servants for that.

For me, the issue is "In what way does cooking rabbits matter to the play of the game?" If not at all, then why clutter the character sheet and the rulebooks? On the other hand, if it's a wilderness survival game, maybe those sorts of skills should be front-and-centre. If (as is often suggested in relation to D&D, and especially Craft and Profession in 3E) it's about establishing character background, then in many cases it should be possible just to make a note and move on. Or, in a system like RM in which the skill list purports to be the totality of the character, you buy it out of the relevant siloed character building resources.

Importantly, even if it's just a note written on a character sheet it can still matter to play. For example, in resolving a wilderness survival skill challenge in 4e, I would expect the knight without his squire to approach the scenario, and to deploy his skills, in quite a different way from a ranger trained in Nature. So it would still matter to the unfolding story. (My feeling is that in a more strongly simulationist action resolution system its harder to make mere notes written on character sheets actually matter in this way.)

 

[Doug McCrae]

Writing one's own rules, particularly the creation of new magic items, classes and spells, could be seen as old school's equivalent of the char build sub-game. Or one could look up magazines, splats, etc. Instead of poring thru Complete X in search of an unbalanced feat, you'd be looking thru Dragon #X in search of an unbalanced class.

There's also plenty of textual evidence that system mastery was rewarded in 1970s D&D, tho the quotes there are all about knowing the monsters and magic items.

I also remember, as an 11-year old, rolling up lots of D&D PCs on my own that were never played. Also a sub-game there, merely one of dice rolling.

On the whole tho, I agree, that in systems like HERO and D&D 3e the char build sub-game is a big part of it. It's a lot less true of 4e, which in many ways is a return to winning at the table.

 

[pemerton]

Pemerton - I would argue that build was hugely important in 1e D&D. However, since the player had almost zero control over the "build" he couldn't play the game.

Sorry, but I have to agree with Ariosto on this one - what you're describing is the absence of build.

It appears that the bottom line of what you're saying there is that there should be rigid numbers, leaving no room for GM judgment, and that is worlds away from what I have seen in Chaosium games.

<snip>

There's a bit more motive (for most people anyhow, I think) to get uptight about looking up fine print if it's on tickets for which one has paid some currency. People who have not, because the tickets were never printed up (much less sold) in the first place, are not likely to make such a fuss.

Ariosto, I agree with you about both these points - that Chaosium games rely heavily on the GM to mediate action resolution despite the presence of a reasonably extensive skill list, and that the fact that there is no metagaming of the character build in those games makes it a comparative non-issue compared to games like HERO or RM or 3E or 4e where there is a metagame-rich character build aspect to the game.

I think that Classic Traveller also fits your description of the Chaosium games.

Personally I prefer an RPG with a character-build metagame (and I say this as someone who mostly GMs, not plays) which is why I favour RM over RQ for my traditional ultra-simulationist fantasy RPG, even though RQ is in many respects more elegant.

Items were not "provided by the DM", unless he was Monty Haul. You chose what you would try to get, and the game was in whether you succeeded or not.

<snip>

Hussar, I don't know where you get this balderdash, but it sure as shooting ain't out of the blamed Dungeon Masters Guide!

This, on the other hand, I disagree with. The 1st ed DMG stresses very strongly that the GM is responsible for the magic items that make it into his/her gameworld, and hence are available for PCs to obtain. It's true that it is up to the players to actually play through the game in order to obtain the items, but at that level of general description the same is true of 4e - even if the GM is placing items based entirely on play wish-lists, the game still has to actually be played for those items to be obtained.

Furthermore, even in hardcore AD&D play, I think for many groups there is a default assumption that the players - or at least some of them - will succeed - at least to some extent - in raiding the dungeon and making off with its treasures. And as I've said, it is the GM who places those treasures.

Now, there are other features of AD&D play that produce marked differences from the 4e experience - that I don't deny for a minute - but I don't think the best way to draw these distinctions is by reference to who "provides the items".

 

[pemerton]

Writing one's own rules, particularly the creation of new magic items, classes and spells, could be seen as old school's equivalent of the char build sub-game.

Agreed - I was almost going to mention spell research in my post. On the other hand, it's so constrained by ingame considerations (money, laboratories, etc) as well as GM fiat (especially setting the ingredients list for items) that I'm tempted to see it as a different beast of its own.

An alternative hypothesis, for which I have no evidence other than the texts of the AD&D PHB and DMG, is that Gygax was himself quite liberal in allowing new spells and new items, but that - as expressed in the rules of the DMG in particular - he couldn't bring himself to trust that other GMs could do this stuff without unbalancing the game.

If this reading is correct, then the rules texts would be "abashed", to use Forge terminology, that is, failing to express the actual play experience that motivated the writers to put together the ruleset in the first place.

 

[Ariosto]

I loved The Fantasy Trip/In the Labyrinth. Dead simple, Cha Gen takes 3-5 minutes, max. No options about AoOs, grappling, etc., and there are only a handful of spells for the mages. It's possibly the best beer & pretzels RPG ever made.

And love it though I do, I'd still rather play a "full featured" RPG in most circumstances.

That said, I'd also rather play games with clear rules rather than ones where wording is arcane or awkward, or the mechanics are clunky.

I guess "3-5 minutes max." might be right if one were just rehashing familiar "builds", but in my experience people tend to take more time considering the character. There's a list of about 90 Talents, not counting Languages and Mundane Talents.

(There's also shopping for equipment, which I have not found especially speedy, and which tends to take up most of the time spent on starting characters in old D&D, T&T, and other such games.)
​

Advanced Melee is very comprehensive. Grappling is most definitely covered! It is one of the most detailed, and yet fast-playing, man-on-man combat games ever published.

Advanced Wizard has about 70 spells just through IQ 13 (on par with the total number of magic-user spells in the original D&D set), and another 60 or so beyond that (not counting individual Words of Command or the like). It also includes a pretty systematic set of rules for making magic items.

The micro-games Melee and Wizard are shorter on options (especially Wizard, which as a stand-alone game must repeat a fair bit of the Melee rules).

ITL covers dungeon adventures in considerable detail, but also includes material on such subjects as getting and holding a job, joining a guild, going to trial, getting lost in the wilderness, and getting your money out of the bank when emigrating on short notice.

The idea of it as less than a "full featured" RPG is strange to me. Not many people were into the heavier games such as C&S, and hardly anything mixed such a motley of subjects as Gygax's DMG. Back in the day (1980), it was about on par with RuneQuest.

TFT was the first RPG I recall in which characters were "built" of components bought with points. I also don't recall one previously built around a combat board game (although SPI's Dragonquest came along shortly).

The balance between Hero (cheap Talents, costly Spells) and Wizard (cheap Spells, costly Talents) is brilliant.

 

[IronWolf]

I think we're simply arguing a difference in scale. Of course one DM's game will feel different than another. It should. It would be a very poor world if it didn't. Heck, I would hope that each of my own campaigns, even featuring the same players, still have their own distinct feel.

I think this is likely. I think if we were having a face to face conversation over beer and pretzels that we'd likely be closer to the same page than we think. Maybe not to the point we'd come to total agreement, but at least in the same ballpark!

However, that being said, while you cannot have everyone playing exactly the same game, nor do we want that, I maintain that trying to use one system to run completely different style games is a bad idea.

Quite possibly. I am rather narrow in scope of systems I am familiar with and to this point I haven't had a difficult time getting the feel of a world I want from the D&D system. It may be that what I call grim and gritty isn't really all that grim and gritty compared to other people's ideas of the same. For the most part I am past that phase though and run a more traditional D&D game.

I also maintain that if you have large areas of the game where common actions are adjudicated solely through DM fiat, two things happen: One, DM's fiat simply becomes an add on to the rules as the DM makes his way through common events.

.... save vs. paralysis snipped ....

I guess I don't see things as coming down to purely to arbitrary DM's fiat and it is simply the DM adjudicating the difficultly of a task and then using the D&D rules to set the DC (per the Difficulty Class Examples table in the SRD or PHB).

The subjectiveness I believe comes in on how just how heroic he sees the characters. As a normal person might see the ditch (going back to our ditch example) as Challenging, DC20, but our hero might only see the ditch as Tough, DC15.

This is the point I see different DMs possibly coming up with different DCs for the same skill challenge, but I am not sure how to avoid that as setting the DC relies on a subjective determination of difficulty. But that simple table in the SRD or PHB can be applied to nearly any skill challenge one is apt to come across.

Essentially, I no longer have a wide open system any more. Instead of the rules telling me what the best choice is, it's the DM. From the player's perspective, it doesn't really matter. In both cases, I'm being told how to create my character from a mechanical standpoint.

I think the DM's style is going to influence the type of character in a lot of situations from multiple perspectives. Someone has mentioned if a DM hates undead that is likely to impact the type of character created. Or maybe the DM loves undead and that too will impact the type of character created. Or any other number of creature dislike or preference that the players know could impact character creation.

Mechanically I think I run a pretty close to rules as written game. So if a high dex helps with the skills you want your character to excel at then it will do so in a campaign I run, whether we're running grim and gritty or high fantasy swashbuckling.

The second issue comes into play if you have newer players who haven't seen the rulings that the GM will make. If I don't know how Bob will adjudicate jump, I've found that most players simply won't risk it. You can't possibly go through an exhaustive list before character generation, mostly because it's too long and partially because the DM might not know himself. So, everyone makes generic characters based entirely on the known rules of the game.

I think new players to a game being run by a new GM always face some difficulty. I do try to avoid house rules for this reason alone. But different DMs can interpret the RAW written in different ways, the rules forums on these boards are evident of that. It's just part of the learning curve for a new player to a new to them DM.

There's no mystery factor. Other than the GM setting difficulty, I know exactly how well I can do something. If I have a very high non-combat score, I'm going to succeed more often at non-combat actions.

To me though this GM setting the difficulty is the most subjective portion of how well your character is going to be able to jump over our alligator filled ditch. So I am not sure how even bringing things down to combat score and a non-combat score help resolve this subjective decision of the DM as to wha the actual difficulty should be.