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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bill Zebub" data-source="post: 9545923" data-attributes="member: 7031982">After bagging on TOR's lack of decision-making, let me cite an example of where I think TOR does things better than D&D does: armor.In D&D the best armor you can get is...the best armor you can get.  Magic items aside, everybody would wear plate armor if they could.  The only actual trade-off is Disadvantage on a very narrow range of skills.  So unless you care about your stealth ability, you want plate armor if you can get it.  Since the choice is easy, the rules throw up barriers by making it expensive, and outright preventing some classes from using it (without investing heavily in Feats.).  But when you do have a choice, there's no real choice: take the plate.  (You are free to make an alternate choice based on roleplaying, but you are negatively impacting your character mechanically to do so.)In TOR, as part of character creation you can pick whatever normal gear you want, at no cost, including armor.  Yup, that's right: you can pick the most protective armor in the game from the get-go.  No cost involved.  But the trade-offs are pretty serious, for the most part relating to encumbrance and fatigue.  I've written a bunch of software combat simulators of the TOR rules, and I can attest that there is no best answer because in some situations, against some adversaries, one armor type might be better, but in another situation another is better.Personally I think that's brilliant.It does two (related) things:<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">It makes the choice an actual decision, not a false decision.  Real agency, not illusory agency.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">That, in turn, means that you can more easily factor roleplaying into your choice (which might just mean it's how you want to picture your character)</li> </ol>I would say Dungeon World's weapon system (you do damage based on your class, not your weapon choice) only gets part of this right: you are free to choose whatever weapon you want for roleplaying reasons, but that choice won't actually have any impact on the game.  TOR's armor does have an impact on the game...the choice matters, in ways you can predict...it's just that it's impossible to optimize that decision ahead of time.Again, games are...or should be...about making real decisions with trade-offs that matter.  If the answers are obvious, it's not really a game.</blockquote>

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