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Snowblind wrote:

A question for you, Ashiel.

Between the time you wrote this review and the release of the final Gunslinger class along with the firearm rules, were there any meaningful changes that fixed some of their many, many problems? As far as I can tell, there wasn't really anything done beyond a few relatively unimportant tweaks.

The reason I ask is that I have seen quite a few posters criticizing Paizo's open playtest as a marketing ploy rather than an actual playtest*. Before I read that thread, I believed that they were overplaying Paizo's tendency to conform to Sturgeon's law as dishonesty rather than a simple inability to capitalize on feedback effectively. However, after reading that review and all of the community feedback and the forum goer designed content and the developers openly acknowledging the feedback, we have appeared to have approximately jack to show for it. As a result, I am reassessing my beliefs (and here we are).

*it has to be said that the vigilante would have probably been f$&*ing terrible if it weren't for the open playtest and members of the design team taking the feedback semi-seriously, so even if this is true, it isn't universally true

>Before I read that thread, I believed...As a result, I am reassessing my beliefs

Wellcome to the Dark Side, Snowblind. We have cookies. Do you want some?

Hands out Dark Cookies


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>What name would you give to a Swashbuckler/Gunslinger hybrid (I'm half-tempted to simply go with "Swashbuckler" because I like the word and it still fits gunslinging heroes). My second choice is "Bravo".

Badass?


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There are some minor errors here and there, some things may need to be reworded, and some clarifications need to be added, but that small glimpse is really exciting! I am personally excited for the magic missile storms that can be unleashed. I mean, up to 23 missiles fired at once? And an Abjurer might be able to turn it into a cantrip? Badass!


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Tels wrote:
There are some minor errors here and there, some things may need to be reworded, and some clarifications need to be added, but that small glimpse is really exciting! I am personally excited for the magic missile storms that can be unleashed. I mean, up to 23 missiles fired at once? And an Abjurer might be able to turn it into a cantrip? Badass!

Yeah still cleaning up stuff. (>//<);

But glad to hear you're excited! :D

The different school specializations will be collections of talents and features (kind of like their own little classes) that allow you to specialize certain features of their school.

Conjurers speccing fire magic for example are planned to have abilities that proc when you do things like set enemies on fire. One planned mechanic is the ability to flare up ongoing burning damage.

For example, say some dudes are already on fire and taking burning damage each turn (let's say 2d6 / round at the moment). You then hit them with a fireball and add another stack of burning. They immediately take their existing burn damage (2d6) when you apply the stack and then 3d6 (from the condition itself) later as normal.


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Ashiel wrote:

Okay so today I've slowly started building a reference document for D20Legends, and will be periodically updating it as progress is made. We've been tinkering with stuff for the past few days I've had off and have ended up doing some more revisions to some crunch under the hood (level 0 spells are kind of gone now for the time being). >_>

Here's a link to the spell list which is far from complete but you can see some examples of projected spells and hopefully get a grasp on the sorts of shenanigans we're getting up to when designing abilities and such.

We currently plan to provide similar materials for martial characters, just deciding on how to package them. We're looking for things that allow martial characters to perform combos and utility functions when they aren't ripping things apart with direct damage. Some stuff we were discussing involves things like spanking enemies around on the battlefield, AoE knockdowns, and other goodies that haven't been written yet.

The [Cantrip] tag indicates that once you expend your spell slot it becomes an at-will ability until you recover your spell slot. Some classes will be able to turn select spells into cantrips given certain conditions (it's currently projected that abjurers will be able to make low level magic missile spells cantrips, for example).

There's a slightly larger emphasis on elemental magics in the D20L (air/earth magics haven't been added yet but I'll get to it soonish) and many of them have their own special themes and ways of focusing on them. The biggest change in their favor is that elemental magic tends to crap all over spell resistance, which was a big problem that blasting type spells had before (since energy resistances were common and such layered protection made them non-options compared to things like black tentacles).

1. Could you make that into a table? Please? I will sacrifice my firstborn batch of cookies to you?

2. It seems to me that there are some almost-duplicate spells-"Ignite", "Chill" and "Acid Arrow" seem just like various elemental variatons of some basic blasting spell, at least as far as their description goes. Maybe turn it into a single spell that has variants, like "Magic Circle Against X"?


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Klara Meison wrote:
1. Could you make that into a table? Please? I will sacrifice my firstborn batch of cookies to you?

Yeah, I'll try to in the near future. I'm currently trying to clean up some of the documents and convert them to pdf files and upload them in a dated zip file on my google drive to save some time.

Quote:
2. It seems to me that there are some almost-duplicate spells-"Ignite", "Chill" and "Acid Arrow" seem just like various elemental variatons of some basic blasting spell, at least as far as their description goes. Maybe turn it into a single spell that has variants, like "Magic Circle Against X"?

There are a few reasons they aren't one spell at the moment.

1. The spells have enough difference in the way they are targeted and the functions (and notes on those functions) that making them into a single spell is a bit awkward (not impossible, they originally were being written as a generic elemental blast).

2. The spells will get more varied in general as levels rise and they become more complex (these 1st level spells are intended to be simple and basic) to the point that keeping them as the same spells would quickly become impractical and I'd like to draw distinctions between the elements as having their own particular styles (see the end of this post).

3. Spell balance is heavily centered around availability of spells (more specifically, how many spells you have to cast from in the moment) and condensing too many spells would actually thwart that paradigm. So while some spells will be getting condensed (like the charm x line of spells, or the summon monster type spells), condensing separate kinds of spells like fireball and cone of cold might be overstepping it.

Especially since I currently intend to tempt players with stylistic choices such as whether or not they want to go for a wider variety of elemental magics and play around with taking advantage of situational opportunities and comboing elements together (such as knocking someone prone with a blast of water, then freezing their soaked asses to the ground, before dropping a giant boulder on them to make a fun shattering sound) or specializing in a particular element to the 'nth degree (such as launching a series of scorching rays at enemies igniting them all on fire, then following it up with a fireball that causes their burning damage to burn harder and turning the terrain around them into hot slag, while spreading thick clouds of smoke around the area that causes breathing and sight impairment).

If I have the elemental spells condensed, there's less of a cost associated with trying to have your cake and eat it too, and I'd like to make players think about how they want to spend their limited resources (such as spells known and talents).

EDIT: Forgot to explain the stylistic differences at the end of this post. I'll do it in the next one.


Lemmy Z wrote:
Vidmaster7 wrote:
I personally could not be more excited about star finder i suppose some people just don't like sci-fi
I love sci-fi. It's just... What Tels and Aratrok said.

I totally agree.

Some have said I'm incapable of agreeing with others. Here is proof to the contrary. :)

(I like making fun myself :)


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Since I forgot to mention what I meant by the elements having specific styles in the previous post... :o

Generally speaking...

Acid spells will generally have a large emphasis on damage over time effects via corrosion but it's less focused on dealing raw damage (like fire spells are) but instead serves as a platform for a variety of toxic kicker effects that causes problems for people afflicted with the acid (such as sickening or nauseating things, causing the broken condition to gear, etc).

Air spells are intended to primarily be utility, movement, and control spells with a few exceptions. Air damaging spells are usually about dealing indirect damage via dust and debris (usually in the form of slashing damage), or throwing people into objects to cause falling damage. Spells that call fierce winds like wind wall and gust of wind fall here, but some new wind spells will be able to do things like remove status ailments (such as drying and dousing), and stuff like that.

Cold spells will generally place emphasis on dealing little damage but a heavy emphasis on battlefield control by making large sheets of ice on the ground, coating stuff in snow, countering fire spells (such as dumping a pile of snow on a burning person to douse the flames), forming barriers of ice, slowing movement, freezing people to the ground or to objects, etc. They can occasionally deal piercing damage too by forming ice-spikes.

Earth spells are intended to inflict a lot of bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage, as well as form solid barriers. Smash stuff with rocks or trap people in avalanches. Some transmutation spells have earth elements to them as well for earth spells that do things that twist existing stuff rather than creating rocks out of nowhere (so things like stone shape). Earth magic is less about doing kooky stuff and more about being quite direct. Also the reason I used "drop a boulder on the frozen guy" as an example is the frozen status will make enemies vulnerable to bludgeoning attacks and since earth magic emphasizes physical crushing power...well...it's a good follow through.

Electric spells don't really affect the environment as much as they affect other creatures. They'll emphasis doing goofy things like arcing between targets, turning people into living stage hazards (such as wreathing your party's martial in electricity that arcs towards nearby enemies periodically, or cursing enemies to blast their friends when they get close to them). Some electric spells will be able to daze or stun people. Specializations will probably emphasize the status ailment kickers and dealing extra damage by arcing bolts through multiple targets (so you would deal bonus damage based on the number of goons you run your bolts through).

Fire spells are intended to be the king element in terms of sustained damage. The best description is "meltdown". Virtually all fire spells will deal heavy damage and threaten to ignite creatures with the burning condition, with successive fire spells stacking more and more DoTs onto enemies. Plans for specializations include things like causing burn damage to consolidate vs resistances, causes certain AoE issues like smoke and slag, or causing the DoTs to turn into burst damage.

Water spells rarely deal much in the way of damage but are big in CC, redirection and forced movement. They also tend to soak or dry creatures which can make them more or less vulnerable to different kinds of other effects (being hit with cold or electricity while soaked is bad, but being soaked can protect you from catching on fire). Some of the more offensive water spells will be able to do things like entrap people in water, drown them, or crush them by mimicing oceanic pressure.


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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

Sounds good. Look forward to seeing more :)


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Tels wrote:

I like sci-fi just fine, I just dont know if Paizo can do it justice. They seem to be in a very 'mediocre' mindset right now, in that everything must be average and nothing can excel, as far as designing goes.

I cant help but wonder if this is Marks influence. Hes a smart guy, so I'm wondering if he has been catching alot of the 'strong' options before they see print and reigning them in. At least, for the hardback books anyway.

+ the other two

see you obviously like what pathfinder has done in the past otherwise why would you be on paizo website posting at all <would make no sense>
and if you like sci-fi then i still don't understand the problem the game isn't even half way done so no way really of knowing what we are in for until we get it. I just don't see the logic I like what Paizo does i like sci-fi therefore i'm looking forward to seeing what star-finder is like. oh ye of little faith kind of comes to mind. To each their own I guess still plenty of fantasy stuff lined up for you guys.


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@Vidmaster7, I'll get back to you when I'm done cooking/eating. In the mean time...

Tsundere Shark Compilation.


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that is a very strange thing there.


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So, the thing is, Paizo, as a company, has been approaching the design of the hardback rule books differently than they did in the earlier years. More and more, they've been intentionally designing things that are aimed towards mediocre balance, at the expense of immersion. This is very apparent in the design if the Vigilante, who has multiple rules that are nonsensical, except for balance reasons. Like the talent that lets you add intelligence to damage rolls, but only if you attack with dexterity modifying the roll, and deal damage by adding your strength. This also occurred in Occult Adventures, like with the Kineticist being unable to use Vital Strike, because the combo was just too powerful. Admittedly, it was bonkers broken, but there is no justification in the class itself, other than "because".

So the same people working in and designing Starfinder, are the ones working on Pathfinder. So I suspect that the rules are going to be over engineered to avoid powerful combos, like they have been doing lately in Pathfinder.

This is my fear. They are going to go out of their way to avoid designing things that can be powerful, for fear of making things broken. They've already received enough flak over caster/martial disparity and other thing, so I think they're going to swing the other way and ddesigning for everything being even. Basically, taking the 3.5 > 4E route that Wizards did.

I mean, I wasn't very pleased with their technology rules, and in fact, I threw up enough of a stink over something that they added some clarification to the books because of one of my annoyances. I'm still very annoyed that they felt the inclusion of some sort of "laser sword" doesn't fit their SWORD and sorcery game, because they didn't want to copy the lightsaber. Which is f$@+ing stupid. But I feel that their rules on technology were just dumb and flawed and they did it because they didn't want to make anything seem to powerful. But the way they went about to ng it breaks immersion in the game and that annoys me.

So yeah, I'm not very optimistic about the outcome of Starfinder, because I'm not optimistic about the trend I've been seeing in the design decisions made by Paizo.

If they do an amazing job, I'll be thrilled, but I'm adopting aa very skeptical outlook.


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Frankly, a lot of the interesting stuff Paizo has put out has been a happy accident.

As they get better at preventing accidents, the uninteresting blandness that permeates through most options starts to become painfully obvious.

I honestly find it disgusting that so many options are weak and uninspired. The vast majority of feats should be two or three times more powerful (or characters should get 2-3 times more feats). Many if not most magic items are overpriced by an order of magnitude(on top of being pretty uninspired to start with). All the spell lists are filled with atrocious junk that nobody in their right minds would select over the small handful of "power options". A painfully large number of archetypes actively make characters worse at the thing that is supposed to be the archetype's focus. Base classes are one of the least bad things Paizo puts out in terms of their quality, but even then we get things like the Gunslinger and the Swashbuckler. I am sick of filtering through giant piles of crappy spells, archetypes, feats, deeds, talents and items looking for a handful of gems. I really am. I want to be inspired when reading through options. I want to see all the interesting possibilities, and wonder how I would go about using them. I rarely feel that with most of the stuff Paizo puts out. Instead, I often finding myself needing to look through the lists on d20pfsrd multiple times because, despite reading them a dozen times before, I can't retain any more information than "aside from those power options you know really well, almost everything else is junk".

This phrase really needs to be stuck up somewhere in Paizo HQ:

"If most of your customers respond to some text by mentally filing it under "garbage I won't ever need", that text should not go to print."

On that basis, I am willing to give Starfinder a glance over if I hear good things, but I am expecting nothing short of an utterly uninspired pile of "meh".

On a related note, I am finding it jarring trying to select feats for NPCs using this modern homebrew I have been working on for a while (which I will *eventually* post for others to look at). With how I have it set up, respectable Dex, undumped strength, a decent attack bonus and a semi-automatic rifle is enough to let most characters make a meaningful contribution in combat.

Bear that in mind while I list the "common" ranged feats:

Trigger Warning - List:

Precise Shot - Melee Combat, while not useless, is the exception rather than the norm. Not necessary
Point Blank Shot - combat often exceeds 30ft, highly situational and not worth the feat slot.
Rapid Shot - Useful for bleeding off excess attack bonus with a third shot every turn or two automatic bursts. Most characters are perfectly adequate without it.
Manyshot - Doesn't work with guns
Deadly Aim - Between the high base damage for many weapons and the options for bleeding off excess attack bonus (semi-automatic or fully automatic fire), this is often completely unnecessary, if not actively detrimental.
Snapshot(and similar close range enablers) - Melee combat is the exception rather than the norm, so unnecessary.
Rapid Reload - Unless a character is spamming heavy weapon rounds or using a low capacity shotgun, this isn't really required.
Exotic Proficency(Firearms) - Most firearms are martial at most, so unless a character wants to be able to operate a guided launcher or fire automatic bursts as a class with simple weapon proficiency, this is just flat out unnecessary.
Amateur Gunslinger - Misfires are much rarer, much easier to remove, and characters have significant incentive to golf bag, so Quick Clear is a nice bonus rather than mandatory. Firearms shoot out to 5 increments without any unusual penalties, so Deadeye is unnecessary. Gunslinger's dodge actually gets better, but its still only "sometimes nice" instead of horrid.

Most of the feats previously needed to make ranged attacking style not terrible just aren't necessary. It is really weird looking at the stat sheet for a elite soldier and wondering if I should consider giving them a teamwork feat or Skill Focus(Stealth) or something, because the best DPR boosting option I could give them is weapon focus(Rifles) and it just isn't necessary.


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I would honestly be way happier with Paizo books if they printed roughly a tenth as many options, but were thorough in ensuring they were all at least useful in some context.


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I see what your saying but for me i think at some point options start growing thin for the genre as a whole i mean how many feats can you make to alter armor, weapons, spells, and skills you start making nitch things granted I agree wholeheartedly with some of the archetypes being bad (the vigilante brute still kind of upset me to think about theres a few druid ones that im like im better off to just play a base druid and try to play it X way)
I think honestly that pathfinder is kind of drying up to a point there might be about 3 more good rule books (not counting bestiarys cause you could do those forever) and maybe more for the new classes and new classes in general and then maybe a few more genre expanding books (like horror adventures) then I feel like fantasy is played out but im ok with that ill just use what i got so far i have enough options to last indefinitely

This is why i'm kind of excited to see star finder too though now genre whole new ways to do things you can do general all around good stuff again. I don't get the complaint about star finder options being weak (first i don't think there out yet if they are please direct me to it pretty please i want to see.) but if all the options work are balanced with each other i don't think it counts as weak then.
I see the worry about 4th edition design but its also the fact that everything felt the same in 4th the classes from whats been previewed don't seem like there going that route but to early to tell i suppose.
Also from what i can tell i don't think anyone takes caster/martial disparity serious in the Paizo team except maybe mark and i from what he says its complex issue that not all groups experience (i know mine has never)

I do kind of hope the technology gets redone a bit (which is the impression im getting anyways) but i will say id a laser gun does 1d6 (cause of balance) i would be a bit sad and it would take away from immersion but i don't get that impression from what iv'e seen im also more of an optimist but anyways i don't know anything for sure untill I see the book. I probably will buy the first book on faith and they would have to do a pretty bad job for me to not pick up the line.


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Aratrok wrote:
I would honestly be way happier with Paizo books if they printed roughly a tenth as many options, but were thorough in ensuring they were all at least useful in some context.

I bet that if you told them that, they would respond that everything they put in their books is useful in some context.

Corner cases aside, they would be technically correct.

The problem I have is that the context in which many options are useful is so vanishingly small that I could well believe that only a small (single digit) number of people have ever gotten good use out of them. Even that might be being generous.

I also bet that if you took a handful of those options and asked any of the writers why they couldn't make those options far more broadly useful while still filling the extremely small niche they currently fill, they couldn't give you an answer which was sensical and reflected well on them.


Splitting spell lists into thematic groups could be a great remedial idea. Say, have a core spell list that has all the actually good adventuring options everyone already takes, and supplementary lists that contain thematic spells that have their uses in very specific circumstances, but not often enough to be included in the core spell list.

You could have a list for camping spells(spells that make camps, cook food, ward against predators for a long time, annihilate all mosquitoes within 3 miles, et cetera), one for building spells(spells that build things, dig giant holes, summon fortresses, summon construction daemons, turn piles of stone into bricks at lower spell level than Fabrication, et cetera), one for army stuff (spells that allow you to easilly command large armies by giving you very limited telepathy with long range, make training militia easier, mass enchancement spells, spells that make weaponsmithing significantly faster, spells that slightly improve the accuracy of ranged attacks on a mass scale, and so on)...

Really, ideas are limitless.


I think the entire issue stems from them trying to mix two unmixables. Simulationism is inherently unbalanced. D20 is built on a core of casual simulationism, but they keep trying to balance it. If you want balance, you need something less simulationist. Like oil and water, simulationism and balance don't mix well. It can be done with a metaphorical emulsifier, but I don't see that happening to d20 any time soon.

Personally, I don't really those attempts to bring balance, not only because they don't work well on a simulation core, but also because only certain playstyles benefit from balance and other playstyles are often hindered by balance. My preferred playstyles are in the second category.


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TheAlicornSage wrote:

I think the entire issue stems from them trying to mix two unmixables. Simulationism is inherently unbalanced. D20 is built on a core of casual simulationism, but they keep trying to balance it. If you want balance, you need something less simulationist. Like oil and water, simulationism and balance don't mix well. It can be done with a metaphorical emulsifier, but I don't see that happening to d20 any time soon.

Personally, I don't really those attempts to bring balance, not only because they don't work well on a simulation core, but also because only certain playstyles benefit from balance and other playstyles are often hindered by balance. My preferred playstyles are in the second category.

I cannot possibly see how simulation mandates pieces of crap like this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this.


Klara Meison wrote:

Splitting spell lists into thematic groups could be a great remedial idea. Say, have a core spell list that has all the actually good adventuring options everyone already takes, and supplementary lists that contain thematic spells that have their uses in very specific circumstances, but not often enough to be included in the core spell list.

You could have a list for camping spells(spells that make camps, cook food, ward against predators for a long time, annihilate all mosquitoes within 3 miles, et cetera), one for building spells(spells that build things, dig giant holes, summon fortresses, summon construction daemons, turn piles of stone into bricks at lower spell level than Fabrication, et cetera), one for army stuff (spells that allow you to easilly command large armies by giving you very limited telepathy with long range, make training militia easier, mass enchancement spells, spells that make weaponsmithing significantly faster, spells that slightly improve the accuracy of ranged attacks on a mass scale, and so on)...

Really, ideas are limitless.

Yeah I could probably do that at some point. The idea of pointing players outright to combat vs utility vs etc is an interesting one. Thinking about the table thing, at the very least I could probably condense the space using a table by giving each tier of spells a level header and then listing the spells in boxes beneath them (but I like the idea of helping players look at spells and discerning their purpose at a glance so that's cool :D).


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Snowblind wrote:
TheAlicornSage wrote:

I think the entire issue stems from them trying to mix two unmixables. Simulationism is inherently unbalanced. D20 is built on a core of casual simulationism, but they keep trying to balance it. If you want balance, you need something less simulationist. Like oil and water, simulationism and balance don't mix well. It can be done with a metaphorical emulsifier, but I don't see that happening to d20 any time soon.

Personally, I don't really those attempts to bring balance, not only because they don't work well on a simulation core, but also because only certain playstyles benefit from balance and other playstyles are often hindered by balance. My preferred playstyles are in the second category.

I cannot possibly see how simulation mandates pieces of crap like this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and...

The funny thing is I often find that many of the imbalances inherent in D20 come from straying from a more simulationist perspective. For example, bows being the god-weapon of ranged combat is largely the fault of all the other weapons having no strengths when compared to the bow, where as in reality, weapons like slings and crossbows had certain strengths and weaknesses compared tot he bow that made them better for different things.

Or how tons of feats and such get spread out across the game that allow you do completely mundane things that should just be a new use of an existing skill introduced in the sourcebook and it's actually more gamist than simulationist to require some sort of perk to be expended to do that.


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>The idea of pointing players outright to combat vs utility vs etc is an interesting one.

My idea goes a bit further than that-while giving spells headers like "blasting", "movement", "utility", "defence", "healing", "multithreat" and so on is certainly a good idea, I propose to also separate the spells that everyone(or at least the sort of people who write class guides) agrees are good from the spells that are more flavorful or only suited to a specific circumstance/campaign.

That would also, coincidentally, make the game a bit more newbie-friendly.


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There has been some discussion of including flavor-bits in spells that have adventuring purposes. For example, the ignite spell could have a line that allowed you casually light fires, warm food, and other minor RP oriented things.

An alternative would be a feat or talent that had a similar effect, such as granting prestidigitation-like effects as long as you had certain types of spells prepared (so as long as you either know or have prepared a [fire] spell you can perform minor things like lighting campfires, or chilling your tea if you have a [cold] spell, or gaining minor mage hand like telekinesis if you have a [force] spell, etc). EDIT: It could also be a class feature that you gain automatically if you pick up certain classes (such as any of the wizard sub-classes).


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I would put it in the magic chapter itself. It's certainly a better idea than having to prepare a cantrip to heat up your tea, and another cantrip to create a light breeze on your face, another cantrip to be a lazy fucj and pick up dropped items for you and so on. It would really make things far better for immersion if magicians could actually be magical in their everyday life.


Ashiel wrote:
Snowblind wrote:
TheAlicornSage wrote:

I think the entire issue stems from them trying to mix two unmixables. Simulationism is inherently unbalanced. D20 is built on a core of casual simulationism, but they keep trying to balance it. If you want balance, you need something less simulationist. Like oil and water, simulationism and balance don't mix well. It can be done with a metaphorical emulsifier, but I don't see that happening to d20 any time soon.

Personally, I don't really those attempts to bring balance, not only because they don't work well on a simulation core, but also because only certain playstyles benefit from balance and other playstyles are often hindered by balance. My preferred playstyles are in the second category.

I cannot possibly see how simulation mandates pieces of crap like this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and...
The funny thing is I often find...

Truthfully though, combat is the least simulationist thing about d20. For example, a crossbow has better penetration of armor, but that is meaningless on an unarmored target. D20 has no way of modeling that. Simulationist combat isn't nearly as fun as the style of combat on d20.

My Ranting Tangent Read At Own Risk:

Further, I don't many players or designers understood what d20 was all about, and thus they don't follow the same paradigms in their additions/alterations. For example, Gygax said that there was a spirit to the game such that someone could know and play the rules, but without understanding that spirit they would be missing the point of the game.

This means that the spirit of the game as intended to play is not found in the rules alone, amd also that playing by the rules can be done multiple ways.

I personally feel that d20 was built on the same ideas of gaming as Gygax.

However, I also fel that most players and modern designers have an entirely different view. I myself understand this more common view as well as gygax's view. I think they are both viable ways of playing, but as d20 was built on Gygax's view of playing, that view must be understood to adequately adjust/add to the system, but since most don't understand that distinction, their designs for d20 generally fail in some way.

Simulationism is only a small part of that, part quietly set aside for combat.

Personally, I like playing the more modern way sometimes, but I see a design like 4e as being better for that playstyle, while the attempts to bring d20 to that style seem to do more damage than help in my opinion.

I rather simply have two systems, a better 4e for modern style, and more original 3e style for playing the gygax way. Trying to mix the two I think will never be a great game. Of course, I think understanding your own expectations, and adjusting them to what the core game designer is actually going for, would improve enjoyment by orders of magnitude.

This is why I am feeling so disappointed with my pfs experiences so far. If I wanted to play modern style, I'd be playing 4e (assuming I could find a group of course).

Ok. Now I got that out.

I think the current designers are having trouble because their goals are for a more modern playstyle which is very much in conflict with design goals for the core d20. Metaphorically, current designers are trying to turn an aircraft into a submarine. Sure, they both are round and long, but that doesn't mean aircraft make for good submarines.


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Given that I actually rather despise Gygax D&D and I likewise don't like 4E or 5E either, I guess I'm sitting on a really strange bump in the road.


I wouldn't consider the spectrum to be linear between only two extremes, but rather a complicated mess of several spectrums.

However, I don't think very many players actually know what gygax's style is.

In fact, finding a group that even comes close is extremely difficult. Most players like the way I run games (in person. I suck at the written medium) and I run gygax style mostly.

So honestly, I'm not sure that whato you consider to be gygax's style is anywhere near what I see as gygax's style.

Heck, most of the distinctions I see players make about playstyle have no bearing on gygax style vs modern style.


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What is the fabled "Gygax's Style".

It doesn't have anything to do with jockeys, does it?


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(oopa?) Gygax style: you walk into a room you see a kitten with a hurt paw what do you do? PC: i pick it up? EVIL GYGAXIAN DM: It explodes in level draining firey acidy disruptiony doom you all die no save....


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Vidmaster7 wrote:
(oopa?) Gygax style: you walk into a room you see a kitten with a hurt paw what do you do? PC: i pick it up? EVIL GYGAXIAN DM: It explodes in level draining firey acidy disruptiony doom you all die no save....

I was originally going to post some Tomb of Horrorsesque snarkiness, but I figured I would give @TheAlicornSage a chance to legitimately respond before passing off a sadistic parody dungeon as the norm.


Ever hear the phrase "it isn't the destination, it is the journey?"

More modern styles focus primarily on the rules and then fill the gaps with rp. Some groups may actually describe the rule results with a little bit of fluff, but they still focus primarily on the rules.

Older style like how I've seen gygax describe and be described, fpcused primarily on the story, and the rules were merely support and far less important. You also had to earn your dice rolls by rp.

For example, in modern styles, when you encounter a trap, you told what kind of trap and what the dc is. Then you roll your anti-trap skill. Then you get immediate and usually apparent results.

In the gygaxian style, you would find a trap trigger, and whether you could actually discern what the rest of the trap was depended on other things. For example a pressure plate rarely was obvious what it triggered. Beyond that, you would have to describe what you were trying to do to disable it, only then could you actually roll your anti-trap roll, usually with bonuses or penalties according to your method (you might try to shim the pressure plate to prevent it from triggering). Additionally, you sometimes wouldn't know the result immediately. For example, if you failed at disarming the pressure plate, you might think you succeeded, only to have your shims break when the third party member walked on the plate, thus activating the trap after you thought it was safe.

Basically, any time there is a dice roll, it is a point of rp interaction with the world, not a mere bump to be defeated by a dice roll before anyone can even describe their characters responses.

Furthermore, with the primary focus on rp, there is no win/lose, so the pressure for all your rolls to succeed is greatly diminished, and in fact, when failure is properly handled, failure can lead to great moments just as much as success. Though this aspect depends greatly on the ability of the gm.

Modern styles on the other hand focus more on the gamist aspect of winning encounters and feeling challenged. Hence the requirement of balance. When you are competing against others for success, with success as your goal, it feels very unfair to be stuck using an unbalanced system, because it feels very much like you lost or won because of the system rather than because of yourself.

In the gygaxian style, the characters may be out to win, but the players are out for laughs and discovery. When the goal is to be part of a story and affect it's outcome, balance isn't as important. Failure is just a part of the story, a chance to have a laugh, discover something, change your course, have a silly moment of the tall beefy fighter cowering under the halfling wizard as she smacks him with a rolled up newspaper for getting her involved in the barfight.

Just look at how pfs is being run. We get rushed from one encounter to the next. Very little happens except facing and defeating the encounters. No exploration of why your characters are there or why they care so much about victory. Creative use of your abilities or the environment are minimized. You and the encounter are all that exist. Recently, I played a "session" where dozens of zombies came in the hall, but since the hall is filled with npcs, we only the ones near us and the rest were ignored like they didn't exist outside the little blurb written in the book.

If you watch The Gamers: Dorkness Rising, you have one player so focused on the rules and winning, that he actually makes a big deal out of little things, metagames ruthlessly, and ignores anything not directly related to winning encounters, further he sees no point in trying to roleplay through an encounter much less roleplaying to avoid a fight. The player who joins in and actually play her character and talks to npcs she doesn't need to is constant annoyance to him because she insists on doing things that are pointless as far as he is concerned. Very modern of him, very gygaxian of her.

I once joined a group for an ap, and they got angry at me for not playing the metagame. We were all strangers, but yet they expected me to just trust them, and they expected me to ignore my character for the sake of my metagame role. One foumd potions, and while we were walking he asked me to identify them, because it was my job as the arcane caster to do so (would have been nice to know that before hand), then got angry when I said to wait till the group took a break from walking as she was watching the ceiling for dangers, and felt it was bad timing. They also got frustrated when they told me to use a flask of acid to give my acid spells +1 to damage. My character didn't feel the need to trust and pay some second rate alchemist for what was, in game, an unnoticable increase to damage. I as a player didn't see the need either, but the other players felt I wasn't being a team player because I wasn't being optimized enough. The fact that our characters were strangers and thus unlikely to see each other as a team didn't matter to them. The fact I was trying to portray a character and not simply a game piece resulted in lots of negativity. They were modern style to the extreme.

So gygaxian style, we are interacting with a story.
Modern style, we are playing a game with the intent to win.

Modern style, the rules are the game.

Gygaxian style, the rules are not the game. RP is the game, the rules simply support the game by aiding in communication and description (how do you describe how strong your character is? A system gives you an easy way to be on the same page with everyone about how strong your character is.), adding unbiased task resolution (so your success isn't entirely dependent on the whim of the gm), keeps everyone on the same page in terms of expectations about scope, tier, and genre (I noticed that freeform players often complain about mary sues and god characters. The realms of kearwyn even has a test for how strong a character is and sets a limit such that your character can't score higher than 30. A system makes this unnecessary. This differs from balance in that if everyone is a contemporary human, but one player is a supersaiyan werebear archmage master ninja, is more an issue of scale and game focus, both handled quite well by a system, even a poorly balanced one in general.).

In gygaxian style, if a player wants paladin but without a mount, it doesn't matter if the gm swaps abilities to make that work, it won't make the game les enjoyable for the other players. Modern style finds such a thing anathema to their world view of ideal gaming.

I hope I made that clear enough, but I'm not sure.


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What you are describing as being "modern style" has little to nothing to do with the mechanics of the game. The only difference between old D&D and new D&D is that new D&D has mechanics and old D&D had lots of holes in it, and a lot of the mechanics that did exist were basically crap or counter intuitive or "ask your GM".

For example, I'd like to point out that in the very movie you referenced, the "gygaxian" lady was in fact the most highly optimized mechanically minded player at the game. She build mechanically solid characters to the point everyone else at the table was slack-jawed as she rips apart an entire encounter before Mr. Crunch-guy got to take his first turn.

She is probably the most iconic person anyone could reference to demonstrate both stormwind fallacy and some new fallacy about "story interested vs mechanics interested". I don't know what sort of fallacy fits that, so in the vein of my hero, I'm going to call it the Ashiel Fallacy.

That fallacy being that there is no conflict with the game being robust and well built mechanically while still having the wonder and emphasis on roleplaying, character development, and just generally good times as any other roleplaying game without them. As demonstrated by my own games that are as mechanically tight as I can keep them, yet entire sessions go by without checks outside of things like basic interaction skills (such as listening at doors) and player interests have nothing to do with the mechanics of the game. What is often described as "old" and "new" gaming paradigms are not connected to the robustness of the rules but the general interests of the people playing the game.

People just interested in rolling dice and beating trolls over the head have existed from the start. There is a section in the 2E Player's Handbook that basically tries to convince people to play characters that aren't mechanically sound because they wouldn't want to and basically is like "please, it could be fun".

What you are describing has nothing to do with the mechanics of the game. It has to do with the attitudes and interests of the players. I've had players who joined my games who were more or less interested in crunch and couldn't roleplay a paper bag if you put one over their heads, but they changed over time as they were playing my games because I try to create situations that can let them bloom rather than bashing the roleplay over their heads or chastising them for not playing the way I want them to.

I believe this illusion is propagated by two things.

1. If you aren't particularly interested in deep roleplay, the game is still fun if you just want to bash some goblins. If the game isn't fun for you mechanically and it isn't fun for you otherwise you just won't play it.

2. Because 90% of the game isn't "f*** if we know, just ask your GM" means people can talk about the game and its mechanics with other people who are interested, and since our games tend to be personal things and character development likewise personal, you tend to get more conversations and threads that read like "Help me be good at healing" or "Is this too much damage?" or "How fast can my barbarian run?" rather than "Help me be good at angst" or "Is this too much sexy?" or "How much wood could a wood elf chuck if a wood elf could chuck wood?".


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well i had made a post I'm glad i refreshed and looked before i submitted it cause Ashiel covered everything i was gonna say and more eloquently

Also gygaxian may now be the term you want to use it will cause confusion a lot of people might assume when you say gygaxian your talking about a Dice heavy Min/Maxing sort of game he was after all known for running and creating VERY hard if not impossible dungeons. he wrote a book literally about system mastery <guy talking about it here>
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2nmqv?Gary-Gygax-Role-Playing-Mastery

sounds more like roll-playing vrs role-playing which as Ashiel said they don't have to be on a opposing negatively correlated with each other.


Yeah... A "Gygaxian game" has more to do with poorly defined, merciless and often unfair rules than anything else. Of course, you can use the term however you want, but people will misunderstand or have no idea what you mean... Much like I can write in Portuguese, mas a maioria das pessoas não vai entender o que eu disse.

Words matter. And while you're under no obligation to link the same meaning to the same words, if you don't do it, you'll have difficulty communicating with others.


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So how much wood could a wood elf chuck if a wood elf could chuck wood?


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Klara Meison wrote:
So how much wood could a wood elf chuck if a wood elf could chuck wood?

Not half as much as Wood Chuck Norris.

Grand Lodge

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Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Pathfinder Accessories, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Aratrok wrote:
I would honestly be way happier with Paizo books if they printed roughly a tenth as many options, but were thorough in ensuring they were all at least useful in some context.

So, 5E? :)

I found it fascinating when I realized that it has been two years and 5E only has maybe 12 books published.


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TriOmegaZero wrote:
Aratrok wrote:
I would honestly be way happier with Paizo books if they printed roughly a tenth as many options, but were thorough in ensuring they were all at least useful in some context.

So, 5E? :)

I found it fascinating when I realized that it has been two years and 5E only has maybe 12 books published.

Heh. Well, not exactly. I would wager that 5E's publishing schedule produces less than a tenth of the content Pathfinder's does- and it's still full of the same kind of chaff options.

As much as I'd like it if they condensed their releases down, it would probably be financial suicide with Paizo's current business model. Alas.


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Right. Ashiel, do you know of any business model that would allow an RPG-publishing company to survive without forcing them to release more and more splatbooks?


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Paizo could release the same amount of books... Just cut the amount of feats/spells/archetype/other crap by at least 50%, reduce the price accordingly and make sure whatever is published is of decent quality, rather than page filler that will never be used by anyone. -.-'

I'd much rather pay 15 or even 20 bucks for a book with 100 pages of good, well-designed content than pay 30 bucks for a book with 200 pages, but only 50 of them worth actually reading.


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Klara Meison wrote:
Right. Ashiel, do you know of any business model that would allow an RPG-publishing company to survive without forcing them to release more and more splatbooks?
Lemmy Z wrote:

Paizo could release the same amount of books... Just cut the amount of feats/spells/archetype/other crap by at least 50%, reduce the price accordingly and make sure whatever is published is of decent quality, rather than page filler that will never be used by anyone. -.-'

I'd much rather pay 15 or even 20 bucks for a book with 100 pages of good, well-designed content than pay 30 bucks for a book with 200 pages, but only 50 of them worth actually reading.

Well, I have some theories but I won't be able to put them into practice until d20 Legends is done, but I can tell you what I personally plan to do with d20 Legends.

1. Poor material is wasteful on both sides. The standard for paying writers is to pay them 1-3 cents per word. Keeping books light and tight means less cost per book while also producing a higher quality product for your consumer. Assuming you were paying a very fair rate of 2-cent / word (last I checked WotC did about 3-cent/word in 3.5 and they were considered high), if you have roughly 1,500 words that would cost you about $30 for the content. But if 90% of that was rejected because it wasn't up to standards, your cost is $3 and the customer gets a better product.

By keeping costs low by not wasting word count on trash mechanics, you could probably even afford to make the demanding requirements more worthwhile for your writers. For example, if you're only accepting the cream of the crop and producing thinner manuals with higher quality material, you could afford to pay your writers more than the going rate (such as 4 or maybe even a whopping 5 cents per word) at much the same cost (since if you're budgeted for a 12,000 word document at $240, but you ended up rejecting 75% of stuff because it was Vow of Poverty or Prone Shooter, you're only paying $60 of your expected budget and producing a higher quality product, so you could afford to pay the writers who got accepted double or even triple the normal amount and not go over budget). This of course encourages would-be contributors to produce high quality material as often as possible since poor material will be rejected outright while good material is bought at a premium.

Of course, assuming you were budgeted for a 400 page book, ended up with a 100 page book, even paying the writers double for such great material you're still budgeted for twice as much, so you could either try to get more material before publication or go with a 100-page book and spend the extra money saved on art commissions to fill the book with more epic inspirational bits for your customers, or devote it to marketing and other promotional / charitable things.

2. Keeping books slim and cheap also reduces printing costs. Which means that a book that's 25% the size of your typical Paizo hardcover but filled with good mechanics would be a lot cheaper to run to print and thus a lot less costly to the consumer. This low cost likewise reduces the "cost of entry" into the hobby as it's a lot easier for people to consider picking up a new book (hardcover or otherwise).

For example, Paizo's recent horror book costs $44.99 on their own webstore, or $9.99 for a PDF. The book has something like 256 pages. According to this site (which was randomly selected and I haven't even looked for competitive printing services), a 256 page hardcover color book with nice large paper would cost $14.12 at the worst rate and cost less as more were printed.

However, a 64 page, 8.5 x 11, soft-cover, color page book with the nice paper $3.33 at the worst rates and be more manageable for players and GMs (because we have all felt the pains of trying to lug around a collection of giant hardbacks. When I was a teenager, I had a special bag that I carried "the essentials" around in to different houses, and the thing weighed like 30-50 lbs.).

Likewise, since pdf files do not have the issues of printing costs, using the same pricing model would set the new book at about $2.50. Even if I decided to milk the PDFs and double the price to $5.00 / pdf, it's still a very palatable pricemark for buying your new book. Lower pricemarks also discourage piracy because many pirates would have bought your books if they felt like they could afford what you were asking and most people can afford $5.00. And if you wouldn't buy them at that price, you weren't going to buy them before either.

I think this is why many indie RPG companies are going with pdf-primary with print-on-demand book options.

3. Sustainable publishing. I think Paizo's original business model of producing products to go with their RPG line is more sustainable just not as profitable in the short term. What I mean by sustainable is that WotC buried itself under rulebooks and Paizo seems quite intent on doing much the same as we've reached a point where it feels like each new book is of comparatively lesser quality and it feels more like some sort of crunch-assembly line producing a lot of rules bloat.

However, publishing things like adventures, modules, lore books, and campaign highlights I feel are a significantly better model for sustainability. Because of this, once d20 legends is ready for business, a lot of the material that will be published for it will be things like premade adventures /modules and campaign setting information, short stories, etc.

4. Campaign settings and how I intend to handle them. A world is a big thing and I've thought long and hard about how I'd like to go about presenting my campaign (or other campaigns) to the world in a published format. My current projection would flow like this:

I would write a campaign setting primer that introduced the basics of the campaign setting, such as an overview of the world history, some simple world maps, deities, and a brief description of the places in the world and the core races that inhabit them. This book would be slim and cheap, likely even making the PDF version free for download so that you could see if the campaign setting was interesting to you at all.

Then each region of the campaign setting would get a sourcebook planned for release, which would be a free-standing product that gives as much in the way of details and information about the people, powers, hooks, and NPCs that exist in the region to the point that each region could be used as its own mini-campaign setting.

This means that you could purchase portions of the campaign that interested you or pertained to the campaign you were running. Using Golarion as an example, if you wanted to run your game in Cheliax, you could get the Primer to learn the basics of the campaign (likely this was your first purchase or download) and then pick up the Cheliax book that gives vivid details on that portion of the setting.


I never said mechanics were an issue, in fact nothing in my post counters your point at all, unless you consider perfectly balanced rules to be the only way to have good rules. I personally think you can have good rules without them being perfectly balanced, but that is aside from my point.

The important part,
The entire post was about how the rules are used, not what rules are used.

Sure some systems might be specifically designed for one way or the other, and the first few editions were not well designed (it didn't really matter to the enjoyment of the game though now did it?), but honestly it doesn't really matter which system.

My post doesn't fall into your fallacy because I never said the mechanics mattered, in fact my only comment on mechanics at all was that one style finds balance important while the other style often (not always) finds it hindering (because balance is usually achieved by saying you can't do something that it otherwise makes sense for you to be able to do, i.e. saying you can't learn both martial arts and magic).


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You know what is funny.

You could have swapped the supposed "modern" and "older" styles around, and I wouldn't have even blinked. In fact, I have seen more than one old timer claim roughly the opposite, that older RPGs (and DnD in particular) are mechanically rigid, mostly about stabbing orcs and looting treasure, placed a higher emphasis on balance (while failing miserably), and are a place where roleplaying goes to die. And not without basis, either. Contrast any edition of DnD with something like Dungeon World, which is modern gaming, probably more so than Pathfinder is*.

If there is one thing I have learned reading posts by people who started playing DnD with basic or AD&D, it is that anyone who makes grand proclamations about stylistic differences between early RPGs and later RPGs probably doesn't know what they are talking about.

*how old is the 3.x chassis now, 15 years?


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TheAlicornSage wrote:

I never said mechanics were an issue, in fact nothing in my post counters your point at all, unless you consider perfectly balanced rules to be the only way to have good rules. I personally think you can have good rules without them being perfectly balanced, but that is aside from my point.

The important part,
The entire post was about how the rules are used, not what rules are used.

If you're not talking about mechanics when discussing simulationism vs other aspects, then you're not talking about the game system itself, you're talking about a specific interest / playstyle / preference. And if those interests or whatever are being pushed by the developers, then we end up talking about the mechanics again because the system must conform to the intended goals (even if that conformation ends up bending and breaking it).

Quote:
Sure some systems might be specifically designed for one way or the other, and the first few editions were not well designed (it didn't really matter to the enjoyment of the game though now did it?), but honestly it doesn't really matter which system.

Actually it mattered a ton to the enjoyment of the game, because so many holes existed in the systems that your experiences with that system could vary wildly from game to game. Many of the mechanics that did exist stifled enjoyment of the game because of things that they either restricted or promoted (such as the idiotic dual classing mechanics) or were just cumbersome (like THAC0, which was so much of a hassle that many GM screens had charts printed on them so you could see the number you needed to hit an AC), or were overly frustrating (like having 1d4 hit points and 1 useful action per day, you die at 0 HP, and need more XP than anyone else in the party to level up, on the promise that one day if the campaign lasted for a long time, you would be the second coming).

The mechanics matter a whole lot in determining the enjoyment of an RPG. The social aspect and a good GM can mask a lot of those problems, but I'd rather run a good game with great friends and a better system than play a system that doesn't work well and hope that we can power through it.

Even the example you gave of "Gygaxian" D&D involving the disarming of traps and stuff. In old D&D, disarming traps was a flat % check, and it was largely irrelevant as to what sort of trap it was (whereas in modern D&D, it varies), and if your game is about having the player explain how they are going to do something, you have utterly left the simulation of the game and have broken the 4th wall.

Tina decided she wants to play a fast-talking, wise-cracking, trap-springing adventurer. This is a character that isn't a lot like her because she's a bit shy, get's tongue-tied easily, and she's tried plenty of times to put a VHS tape in a VCR upside down without immediately realizing what she's doing wrong (or some modern equivalent).

With the described trap scenario, you have put a barrier of entry or at least a system that punishes a player for playing something outside of their own areas of expertise. If the player has no idea how the mechanics of a trap would work, their character is suddenly less likely to handle the traps too, even though their character is the one disarming the trap and is supposed to be an expert on traps. You have denied Tina her chance to engage in some fantasy roleplay or at least punished her for not playing a character that isn't like herself.

Meanwhile, such systems never seem to have problems with Alice's playing a 300 lbs. musclebound amazonian barbarian who can can deadlift and ox, even though she herself weighs like 105 lbs. and has trouble carrying a 30 lb. bag of dog food.

Which is neither fair, nor does it promote simulation. Simulation would have been Tina saying "Uh, well Rodger the Sneak attempts to use his cunning knowledge to disarm the trap!" and rolling her check, and seeing if Rodger had enough expertise to succeed.

Quote:
My post doesn't fall into your fallacy because I never said the mechanics mattered, in fact my only comment on mechanics at all was that one style finds balance important while the other style often (not always) finds it hindering (because balance is usually achieved by saying you can't do something that it otherwise makes sense for you to be able to do, i.e. saying you can't learn both martial arts and magic).

But the "styles" you mention are completely irrelevant to each other. For example, you said:

Quote:

Modern styles on the other hand focus more on the gamist aspect of winning encounters and feeling challenged. Hence the requirement of balance. When you are competing against others for success, with success as your goal, it feels very unfair to be stuck using an unbalanced system, because it feels very much like you lost or won because of the system rather than because of yourself.

In the gygaxian style, the characters may be out to win, but the players are out for laughs and discovery. When the goal is to be part of a story and affect it's outcome, balance isn't as important. Failure is just a part of the story, a chance to have a laugh, discover something, change your course, have a silly moment of the tall beefy fighter cowering under the halfling wizard as she smacks him with a rolled up newspaper for getting her involved in the barfight.

Just look at how pfs is being run. We get rushed from one encounter to the next. Very little happens except facing and defeating the encounters. No exploration of why your characters are there or why they care so much about victory. Creative use of your abilities or the environment are minimized. You and the encounter are all that exist. Recently, I played a "session" where dozens of zombies came in the hall, but since the hall is filled with npcs, we only the ones near us and the rest were ignored like they didn't exist outside the little blurb written in the book.

Except these things aren't related. My games are full of characters "out to win" when they are challenged, and they enjoy their successes where they get them, but they are also out for laughs and discovery. I was up until 9am this morning because Aratrok and I were talking about events of the last long campaign we had going with some friends on Discord. We talked at length about histories of NPCs, the party's failings, the parties successes, where the stories branched off because something happened, what sorts of things were going on behind the scenes, and barely scratched the surface.

(Aratrok did comment that he missed the encounters and stuff I made 'cause he still finds himself preparing for all kinds of hazards and such, and how it never means anything because he's been playing in APs lately with other GMs and he never had to face an invisible foe over 17 levels. It made me smile. :>)

Speaking of tall beefy fighters, in a different game way back, we had a half-giant barbarian hide behind the kobold sorcerer and wanted him to go first because the ominous looking stairwell going down into the dungeon was really scary. The kobold looked up at him like, "...Seriously?"

Also, there's a reason I don't play in Pathfinder Society. Aside from the often impersonal nature of things, I just don't like I lot of the mechanical aspects of Pathfinder society and don't care to waste my time on it just for sake of saying I did. You also have to understand that when dealing with public games like Pathfinder society, making a number of sacrifices in terms of intimacy and limits is the nature of the beast.

Going back to the mechanics thing, having better mechanics has actually encouraged players in my games to do more exploration. They explicitly understand that they can do things so rather than playing mother-may-I with everything they are more proactive. They will decide to do things like climb trees and look around from a better vantage, and they know they can climb the tree because they know how climbing works, and they know having a better vantage will help them spot things better because they know that having a clear view of something means no cover/concealment (something might be concealed horizontally but not vertically, such as a field with tall grass).

It means the characters often seek information about stuff proactively as ideas hit them and base their actions on those things. "Are there any windows?" they might ask. "I want to peek inside and see if I can see anything" they continue. "Is this window able to be opened? I think I can wiggle inside and open the door for everyone else".

Perhaps we are simply misunderstanding each other, but at some level there seems to be a failure to communicate or we're talking about apples and oranges.


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Snowblind wrote:

You know what is funny.

You could have swapped the supposed "modern" and "older" styles around, and I wouldn't have even blinked. In fact, I have seen more than one old timer claim roughly the opposite, that older RPGs (and DnD in particular) are mechanically rigid, mostly about stabbing orcs and looting treasure, placed a higher emphasis on balance (while failing miserably), and are a place where roleplaying goes to die. And not without basis, either. Contrast any edition of DnD with something like Dungeon World, which is modern gaming, probably more so than Pathfinder is*.

If there is one thing I have learned reading posts by people who started playing DnD with basic or AD&D, it is that anyone who makes grand proclamations about stylistic differences between early RPGs and later RPGs probably doesn't know what they are talking about.

*how old is the 3.x chassis now, 15 years?

I started 3.x in 2000 when it just came out so it's pushing 17 now.


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I have never heard anyone claim that 1e, AD&D, or 2e were more rules rigid. One of the major complaints I know of from the time, is that it had so little rules governing so many things that there was a massive amount of table variation. One of the design goals of 3e was to lessen variation so players could take a character from one game and plop it down in the other without much issue.


I don't believe stylistic differences are about mechanics. And honestly I do agree the "modern" style is nothing new. I don't have better word for it though, and I generally think of it as modern because when I got into gaming, only a few players were like that (so far as I discovered anyway) while most were the gygaxian style, but in the last ten years or so, I haven't really seen many gygaxian style players, and not one new player for the gygaxian (not including those I taught the game to.).

For a while I thought it was just that most players didn't like gygaxian style, but then I noticed a pattern in my conversations and running games. I noticed that players would play with me and find the experience unlike anything they ever played (not amazing just different) like it was an entirely different game. Others I'd talk with would talk like it was WoW, always talking about the rules and rules combos, rarely characters or stories. I got in a few discussions about character creation, but no one talked about characters, they talked about builds, as though character meant nothing more than the mechanical build.

There were even times I'd be asked about my character, I'd respond with who the character was and they'd look at me funny and say something "We don't care about that, we meant what class and abilities you picked."

It seems to me like very few can see beyond the rules to the . It is very difficult to describe.

I agree with gygax that you can play the rules without playing the game.

Though I don't think gygax saw much value in playing the rules without playing the game, but I think each gives it's own experience and form of fun.

Now if only I could find more who actually play the game and not just play the rules.

edit, triple ninja, wow


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That's because, when it comes down to it, flavor is meaningless without GM fiat. The greatest actor I the world can put on the best performance ever, but all the roleplaying doesn't mean squat if his mechanical character is Jesse Eissenberg vs. Dwayne Johnson. You can roleplay your character however you want, but if you don't have the mechanics to back it up, you're just grandstanding.

I mean, take a look at Ashiel's moralistic warrior (easily one of my favorite stories of yours, by the way) whose principals would get her killed one day. She f*#!ed one night stands, cussed and b#%!*ed people out, but she also healed whores and beat enemies unconscious, instead of to death, in order to give them a second chance. Because that's what Paladin's do. But if she didn't have the mechanic ability to do that, then her character wouldn't really be what she claimed to be.

For me, mechanical choices influence the concept just as much as conceptual design influences the mechanics. If my character is a charismatic rogue, known for his speed and grace with daggers, I sure as hell am not going to be choosing to 2-hand a great sword with my 18 strength to build the character. But I might choose traits or feats to make myself better in combat or in diplomacy and let those feats adjust the narrative of the character. Like taking Fate's Favored and playing him as lucky in games of chance.


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TheAlicornSage wrote:

I don't believe stylistic differences are about mechanics. And honestly I do agree the "modern" style is nothing new. I don't have better word for it though, and I generally think of it as modern because when I got into gaming, only a few players were like that (so far as I discovered anyway) while most were the gygaxian style, but in the last ten years or so, I haven't really seen many gygaxian style players, and not one new player for the gygaxian (not including those I taught the game to.).

For a while I thought it was just that most players didn't like gygaxian style, but then I noticed a pattern in my conversations and running games. I noticed that players would play with me and find the experience unlike anything they ever played (not amazing just different) like it was an entirely different game. Others I'd talk with would talk like it was WoW, always talking about the rules and rules combos, rarely characters or stories. I got in a few discussions about character creation, but no one talked about characters, they talked about builds, as though character meant nothing more than the mechanical build.

I would propose a hypothesis.

1. The games today have less of a social stigma than they once did.
2. The rules are easier to deal with and easier to learn.
3. The internet allows certain ideas to thrive and flourish very quickly, or give you a wider perspective.

So my hypothesis is that there are many more of the type of players who actually enjoy the game portion of the role-playing-game than there once were because the game portion is better and has far less in the way barring entry (from the basic rules being available to everyone, to the rules not being so troublesome to learn).

Likewise, as I noted before, there is more to discuss on the internet concerning the mechanics and such of a game than character stuff. At least, people do more of the former than the latter, because trying to judge, critique, or offer support for mechanics is easier than doing that for things like backstories when they don't know where you are coming from in terms of campaign / setting history and details and it requires a lot of information to provide anything detailed.

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