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I try to make my campaign into what my players want to play,
Generally, that's my approach as well. I don't run Evil Campaigns, and I try to make sure that my players put story before optimization, but from those two, I'm only rigid about the first one. And if my homebrew should ever reach a playable state, I don't plan to force it on anybody.
No game can be everything to everybody, but it seems like a game ought to be able to accommodate multiple styles of play. When it can't, it's worth asking whether it's a rules issue or a cultural issue.
I think it does. You can play the APs without too much character optimization and you certainly can play them without having only the best of equipment. In fact, too much of optimization might force the GM to modify any encounter (if the players still wnat to get challenged that is) and thereby cause additional work. So I think that Pathfinder is suited for a more casual style of play without too much of investment in the rules.
On the other hand, you can optimize the hell out of the system and still have fun.
I have actually been forever convinced that that's the main reason for the success D&D has over other systems, that it can be many things for many people and that it's very malleable to suit your specific style of play.
To illustrate how the game has become "unmagical" to me.
OMG! WTH! Let me instead read the practice exams for the bar please, oh please, oh please!
I just want to play a game. With friends. Not memorize great gobs of confounded rules just to be able to turn the right trick for my PC to "win".*
1. Thats' 3.5
2. Many strict RAWers here are insisting on rules that make that look like "Look, Jan, Look!".
Or D&D 5E, with it's simplified ruleset, bounded accuracy, non-reliance on magic items and limited content,...
Magic items are just as important. And trust me, it wont be limited for long.
I've read up a bit on the AD&D rules since this thread started, and they seem to generally be a much more solid framework than 3rd edition ever was. The only caveat seems to be that the AD&D writers really loved their different tables. Any thoughts on the matter?
I think the early editions were solving a different problem.
Personally, I think they're only even peripherally in the same genre - AD&D was inventing a whole new thing, later editions were no longer trying to explain to the customer what the game was but were meeting the demands of a far more educated market.
The only thing I think is objectively poor in AD&D is the organisation of rules subsystems which were often in different rulebooks (some of which were off-limits to players). Snippets of rules here there and everywhere (often with very little cross-referencing) is not helpful.
In terms of being a framework, it seems to me that's very much the paradigm adopted by AD&D. 3.5 makes more of an attempt to provide a complete system of resolving every situation you might encounter in a game (though acknowledges it's an unattainable goal). AD&D doesn't even try to cover everything.
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I've read up a bit on the AD&D rules since this thread started, and they seem to generally be a much more solid framework than 3rd edition ever was. The only caveat seems to be that the AD&D writers really loved their different tables. Any thoughts on the matter?
Try playing it.
I did for nearly 20 years.I would never go back.
3.5 took AD&D and gave it structure and form it desperately needed.
It gave players more options and more control over their characters.*
It removed some of the more egregious 'bad GM' abusable areas and moved others into the player domain. Despite what some would tell you - this is a good thing.*
Taking Steve Geddes point further you would often have multiple subsystems trying to solve the same problem in radically different ways.
*I wonder how much of the issue here is about control? I see a lot of complaining about what boils down to player information/player expectation/player autonomy.
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I've read up a bit on the AD&D rules since this thread started, and they seem to generally be a much more solid framework than 3rd edition ever was. The only caveat seems to be that the AD&D writers really loved their different tables. Any thoughts on the matter?Try playing it.
I did for nearly 20 years.
I would never go back.3.5 took AD&D and gave it structure and form it desperately needed.
It gave players more options and more control over their characters.*
It removed some of the more egregious 'bad GM' abusable areas and moved others into the player domain. Despite what some would tell you - this is a good thing.*
Taking Steve Geddes point further you would often have multiple subsystems trying to solve the same problem in radically different ways.*I wonder how much of the issue here is about control? I see a lot of complaining about what boils down to player information/player expectation/player autonomy.
Exactly right I played it for 13 years and I agree with dragon hunter. AD&D is not an better system.
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Well for what it matters, I still like AD&D (2nd) a lot and would go back to it in the blink of an eye if such an opportunity came to be. In fact I heavily disagree with D&D 3 being the better system. It's basically two totally different things to me.
*I wonder how much of the issue here is about control? I see a lot of complaining about what boils down to player information/player expectation/player autonomy.
Can't speak for anyone else but to me, it has nothing to do with control. It's just that I very much prefer an more down to earth style where the PCs don't wield any world-shattering powers. If we would discuss a Marvel Super-Heroes game I would very much vote for a game focusing on street-level heroes like Luke Cage, Misty Knight and Daredevil. In the Realms I never felt the urge to play a character that could eventually rival the power of Khelben Arunsun and people like that.
So my perfect Pathfinder would probably expand the first ten levels of the actual game over 20 levels and would move all the gonzo stuff taht comes after in an Epic Level Handbook that I can simply ignore. I know that I'll never get that so I just say that to explain that it has nothing to do with control but a lot with genre expectations. to guote Chris Mortika from a very old thread:
Ryan Dancey put forth that D&D has four quartiles:
Levels 1-5: Gritty fantasy
Levels 6-10: Heroic fantasy
Levels 11-15: Wuxia
Levels 16-20: Superheroes
I mostly agree with Dancey on that and might add that I hold no interest for Wuxia or Superheroes-style games.
It didn't break when striking Sauron, but when Elendil fell on it. And yeah, the broken part was still sharp enough to cut off Sauron's finger. Not clear if magic was needed for that or not.
And KC: In Tolkein's world "really-well made" is "magic". Craft raised to the level of magic. Whether it was an "artifact" or not is a question of definition.
Or it broke because Sauron was the one doing the smiting. Basically what it seems that when a master crafter crafts an item of worth he essentially gives it a true name, and as a result you have an item whose potential can be woken by deeds. Turambar's sword Gurthang, for instance only speaks once..
Túrin: "Hail Gurthang! No lord or loyalty dost thou know, save the hand that wieldeth thee. From no blood wilt thou shrink. Wilt thou therefore take Túrin Turambar, wilt thou slay me swiftly?"
Gurthang: "Yea, I will drink thy blood gladly, that so I may forget the blood of Beleg my master, and the blood of Brandir slain unjustly. I will slay thee swiftly."
that's the only time the blade speaks in it's entire existence, or shows any sign of sentience. Turin had mistakenly slain the sword's owner who was his best friend. Prior to that Beleg had been warned about the sword's curse by Melian when he had chosen the sword as a reward from Thingol.
Frequently swords like Gurthang are reforged weapons. Gurthang being Anglachel and the shards of Narsil being reforged into Anduril.
One could also argue that Túrin was going mad and hallucinated his sword talking to him, though. I mean, he had just learned that his beloved wife was his sister and had just killed herself. And that on top of all the other s**t Morgoth had forced him to endure (and there was a lot).
One could also argue that Túrin was going mad and hallucinated his sword talking to him, though. I mean, he had just learned that his beloved wife was his sister and had just killed herself. And that on top of all the other s**t Morgoth had forced him to endure (and there was a lot).It didn't break when striking Sauron, but when Elendil fell on it. And yeah, the broken part was still sharp enough to cut off Sauron's finger. Not clear if magic was needed for that or not.
And KC: In Tolkein's world "really-well made" is "magic". Craft raised to the level of magic. Whether it was an "artifact" or not is a question of definition.
Or it broke because Sauron was the one doing the smiting. Basically what it seems that when a master crafter crafts an item of worth he essentially gives it a true name, and as a result you have an item whose potential can be woken by deeds. Turambar's sword Gurthang, for instance only speaks once..
Túrin: "Hail Gurthang! No lord or loyalty dost thou know, save the hand that wieldeth thee. From no blood wilt thou shrink. Wilt thou therefore take Túrin Turambar, wilt thou slay me swiftly?"
Gurthang: "Yea, I will drink thy blood gladly, that so I may forget the blood of Beleg my master, and the blood of Brandir slain unjustly. I will slay thee swiftly."
that's the only time the blade speaks in it's entire existence, or shows any sign of sentience. Turin had mistakenly slain the sword's owner who was his best friend. Prior to that Beleg had been warned about the sword's curse by Melian when he had chosen the sword as a reward from Thingol.
Frequently swords like Gurthang are reforged weapons. Gurthang being Anglachel and the shards of Narsil being reforged into Anduril.
While Turn was definitely mad, Middle Earth is the kind of place where magic happens a lot in the form of one-time events that are never repeated. It also feeds into the trope of the bond between quality swords and their wielders. Tolkien writes in the form of the objective omniscient viewer, so if he writes that something happens... it does.
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It makes things worse in at least two ways.
More selection without a clear industry leaser is confusing for potential n00bs.
With a low bar to entry and a corresponding increase in gaming options there will be a concomitant increase in the death of games. So you find something you're into and then... you never see another product in that line ever again. When does that get fun?
I think there is a clear industry leader, as far as true newcomers goes. There's definitely a few clear industry leaders - namely those that are in the shops. I think it is extraordinarily unlikely that someone who wants to get into D&D is going to get thrown off by the handful of current RPG games on kickstarter and not know how to get involved.
In terms of the latter way you think it makes things worse, the alternative is that those games don't exist at all. I can't really see how that's better. My recommendation is not to approach a kickstarted game you like with the same expectation as you would a game released by more traditional publishing houses. It's best not to expect anything beyond what you're being offered.
The main reason I disagree with the argument that kickstarter has made things worse for the TTRPG market is that I don't think lack of kickstarter projects would mean people will automatically switch to spending those dollars on other TTRPGs. I think they're just as likely to buy a computer game instead (or a novel, or movie tickets or...) so I can't see the sales in TTRPGs as necessarily worse.
I think there are some fans who have a limited budget they have already decided to spend on TTRPGs and who have diverted money from traditionally published games to kickstarter. However, there are also others who can now buy the game they want who wouldn't otherwise have spent anything. They can then introduce new people to the hobby and some of those will probably go on to buy from more mainstream outlets. The upshot being more choice and the ability to make books which would otherwise never get made (and yet for which there is demand).
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I don't see the problem with Kickstarter. If 10k people back a game that only those 10k people will ever play, but it's absolutely the game they want and they love it; then that's great. It's better those 10k people get the niche RPG that's their favorite thing than they have to play something they enjoy much less, just because that's the only game in town.
Back in the 80s, 90s, and early 00s there was no way we could have ever gotten a game like Monsterhearts (which is, bar none, among the best RPGs I have ever played) and the industry is better for more things out of the mainstream getting made. If people are buying those out of the way sorts of games instead of the games from the big publishers, it's not because the big publisher games lack for stature or awareness, it's because something else is offering people a thing they want more.
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Wormys... why do you need more levels of play within your desired tier? Isn't it good enough to have 20 levels to select from, and then play for however long you desire at the levels you like?
Oh it's not that I need them, but for some reason I like the thought of 20 level play (or even 30 level play like in 4E). I guess I simply like to level up, it's just that by standard PF, I get too powerful while doing so. Depending on the class I play, I'll hasten to add.
I've participated in year-long campaigns that didn't have leveling at all. The GM simply picked the level of the story, we all signed off on it, and off the game went.
Sounds great. Unluckily, most players I know like levelling up as much as I do, so this has basically never been an option for my table.
Would you stretch the spell levels out to a larger number of levels [such that your 20th level mages cast no higher than 5th level spells]? Or would you leave the magic as is and screw over the martials even worse than they already are?
No way I leave magic as is. The magic system is one of the main things I plan to change for my homebrew. I'm still considering options, but nerfing magic-users of all kinds very hard is a definite goal. It's not that I hate magic users per se, but that I'd rather have them at a tier 3 or even tier 4 level, so that's where I'm targeting at.
I just re-read The Hobbit and yeah, there no clearly magic items aside from that one, occasionally they mention wands but its not too interesting. SPOULER: Smauggy is killed by a single mundane arrow from a very mundane dude whos power is to talk to birds.
Some of the most interesting parts of the book involve them losing their horses, food and having no place to sleep. In Pathfinder that is a non-issue.
There a lot of singing. The Dwarfs sing, the elves sing, the goblins sing- the spiders sing?? Trolls sing too and I'm pretty sure wolves or eagles sing at one point.
Quibble on Bard's Black Arrow not being magic.
Sting, Glamdring and Orcrist are magic. At the very least they glow when goblins are present.
That it is difficult, and possibly pointless, to define a (outside origined) story driven item/being/event into this rules-driven Wargame is inevitable. Pathfinder, at least how it is played by "The Companions of the Rule" is non-inclusive. It's "Reality" is highly limited to what is written in the Rulebook on what can exist and be defined within it.
Everything in Middle Earth is magic if you go by the Author, who also believed that, to one degree or another, about the world we live in.
BTW, I Think the "Magic" cited in the thread title is more about the Feel of magic items being lost due to the focus and playstyle of the game.
It's hard for me to see Kickstarter really doing impacting gaming that much. Noobs (whatever that actually means in this instance) are not going to stumble upon a kickstarted game and invest in it. The people who do invest in kickstarters are already super into RPG's and probably already have heavily invested in the hobby.
About all Kickstarters really do is raise the production quality of 3pp folks, which I think is good in general for the system since it allows expansion of rule sets in new ways.
Quibble on Bard's Black Arrow not being magic.
Sting, Glamdring and Orcrist are magic. At the very least they glow when goblins are present.
Find me the hint in the original book that Blargs arrow was in some way supernatural. Bingo must of gave him like +30 attack with DR piercing and dragon slaying just by delivering the message "uh, its like, soft on the belly there" because nothing was working until then.
A faint glow was probably magic, or glow in the dark face paint. I dunno this magic stuff sure is difficult to grasp.
Back in those days I guess just imagining a "dwarf" was head crushingly magical beyond all comprehension.
Well, there's This Article Here that says Kickstarter has taken a bite out of the "Hobby Board Game" market. That is, growing the market but without necessarily growing interest outside of the various particular Kickstarter events.
So at least in that area Kickstarter is certainly doing more than raising production quality but less than expanding the market as seen by retail (brick and mortar or otherwise).
I don't know what you mean buy "taking a bite out of a market" - I would think that meant taking some market share at the expense of other suppliers. That's not what that article says has happened - ICv2 make no comment as to kickstarter's impact on FLGS and other distribution streams sales.
They included kickstarter into their sales (and went back a couple of years) but the number they had previously reported had already shown an increase (and this wasn't adjusted down by including the kickstarter figures, they just wanted to ensure reasonable period-by-period comparison figures).
It's definitely true that kickstarter now has a larger share of the sales of TTRPG products than it used to. That doesn't imply that sales in other channels would have been higher if it didn't exist though.
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Quibble on Bard's Black Arrow not being magic.
Sting, Glamdring and Orcrist are magic. At the very least they glow when goblins are present.
Find me the hint in the original book that Blargs arrow was in some way supernatural. Bingo must of gave him like +30 attack with DR piercing and dragon slaying just by delivering the message "uh, its like, soft on the belly there" because nothing was working until then.
A faint glow was probably magic, or glow in the dark face paint. I dunno this magic stuff sure is difficult to grasp.
Back in those days I guess just imagining a "dwarf" was head crushingly magical beyond all comprehension.
"Arrow!" said [Bard]. "Black arrow! I have saved you to the last. You have never failed me and always I have recovered you. I had you from my father and from he of old. If ever you came from the forges of the true king under the Mountain, go now and speed well!"
Arrow that has been passed down in his family as an heirloom, has never missed a target he's shot it at, has always been recovered whenever he's shot it, and may very well have been created during a now-mythical golden age by dwarves at the height of their crafting prowess?
No way to interpret that as supernatural or magic at all, I guess.
Everything in Middle Earth is magic if you go by the Author, who also believed that, to one degree or another, about the world we live in.BTW, I Think the "Magic" cited in the thread title is more about the Feel of magic items being lost due to the focus and playstyle of the game.
1. He also believed that the Industrial Age was removing the magic from the world. Saurman is diminished in his magic at the end because he poured it all into making terror machines.
2. Like I said before, what most people think of as evoking the magic and wonder of fantasy roleplaying pretty much relies on the player remaining fairly ignorant on how things go. The Internet has pretty much eliminates that period of naivete one would have taken as normal 40 years ago. Now we have newbie players asking not how to play a fighter or wizard, but how to get loaded up on on all the power options from the latest books. Because they hop on boards like this, and KNOW.
There's no stuffing the genie back in the bottle at this point. If you GMs want to put "magic" in your games, it's going to have be in the story elements, and roleplaying, not the mechanics.
IMO they say the game is flexible enough but (as explained by thejeff and Jiggy and others up thread), it really isn't without way, way, way, too much other fiddling. And while it could be argued that I like fiddling with game mechanics as much as the average gamer, it is certainly true that this isn't the way I like to fiddle.
In my experience, the fiddling is a lot less with game mechanics than with appropriate challenges for the low-magic party of adventurers. And, ultimately, when it comes to campaign and adventure design, it's all fiddling. I just be fiddling with a less magical mix of opponents, more humanoids and humans, more animals, and shambling styles of undead with fewer demons, incorporeal entities, and aberrations.
I've read up a bit on the AD&D rules since this thread started, and they seem to generally be a much more solid framework than 3rd edition ever was. The only caveat seems to be that the AD&D writers really loved their different tables. Any thoughts on the matter?
The use of tables is a dead giveaway that the system is less... systematic... than more recent editions. That said, AD&D had some brilliant bits of rules that are now no longer quite as much part of the game. Random generation of magic items kind of drives this home. PF's tables are built to facilitate distribution of magic items by wealth guidelines - not so the AD&D ones. Those ones are heavily weighted around consumables and martial gear compared to durable wizard-oriented magic. How common are bracers of armor or wands in the AD&D tables? They're extremely rare. The equipment-dependent classes of fighters and thieves are given much more favor with those tables - an important balancing element in AD&D that 3e and by extension PF lacks.
Arrow that has been passed down in his family as an heirloom, has never missed a target he's shot it at, has always been recovered whenever he's shot it, and may very well have been created during a now-mythical golden age by dwarves at the height of their crafting prowess?No way to interpret that as supernatural or magic at all, I guess.
The "magic", in many ways, goes deeper as well. Bard isn't just a random guardsman either. That too is significant in Tolkien's writing. It's far more subtle, but that doesn't mean it can't be interpreted as present were one to translate the stories into some kind of game mechanics.
I just re-read The Hobbit and yeah, there no clearly magic items aside from that one, occasionally they mention wands but its not too interesting. SPOULER: Smauggy is killed by a single mundane arrow from a very mundane dude whos power is to talk to birds.
Three swords, a staff, a ring, and perhaps the Black Arrow is not so mundane.
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Quibble on Bard's Black Arrow not being magic.
Sting, Glamdring and Orcrist are magic. At the very least they glow when goblins are present.
Find me the hint in the original book that Blargs arrow was in some way supernatural. Bingo must of gave him like +30 attack with DR piercing and dragon slaying just by delivering the message "uh, its like, soft on the belly there" because nothing was working until then.
A faint glow was probably magic, or glow in the dark face paint. I dunno this magic stuff sure is difficult to grasp.
Back in those days I guess just imagining a "dwarf" was head crushingly magical beyond all comprehension.
"Arrow!" said [Bard]. "Black arrow! I have saved you to the last. You have never failed me and always I have recovered you. I had you from my father and from he of old. If ever you came from the forges of the true king under the Mountain, go now and speed well!"Arrow that has been passed down in his family as an heirloom, has never missed a target he's shot it at, has always been recovered whenever he's shot it, and may very well have been created during a now-mythical golden age by dwarves at the height of their crafting prowess?
No way to interpret that as supernatural or magic at all, I guess.
Yeah, not really. It's his lucky arrow. When you assign that superstition to something, you use it less and are more careful to retrieve it, meaning it's not that remarkable he's always recovered for it. And Bard is just a really good shot, so it's not that remarkable that he has an arrow he's never missed with.
There is no indication the arrow is magic. It does nothing a normal arrow couldn't do.
And as Bard readied to fire, the common folk of the village looked on. One wore a pair of gaudy, bright red socks. "Socks!" said he. "Lucky socks! I have saved you to the last. Our football team, the Dale Dragons, has always won since I began wearing you to the games, except for that one year I forgot and wore a normal pair instead. I had you from my father and from he of old. If you truly did come from the wool looms of Mirkwood, let that arrow fly true!"
Every time I see this thread title I check to see if my wife started it. Every. Single. Time.
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He was also clearly breaking the rules about ammunition recovery, particularly a slaying arrow.
But I digress, P.J Toucan was writing to make things 'seem' magical as opposed to nitty gritty magi-science people try to enforce these days. Whether Bards arrow was magical or not is really just people trying to quantify what is a fun, musical romp into a slightly weirder North Europe.
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Quibble on Bard's Black Arrow not being magic.
Sting, Glamdring and Orcrist are magic. At the very least they glow when goblins are present.
Find me the hint in the original book that Blargs arrow was in some way supernatural. Bingo must of gave him like +30 attack with DR piercing and dragon slaying just by delivering the message "uh, its like, soft on the belly there" because nothing was working until then.
A faint glow was probably magic, or glow in the dark face paint. I dunno this magic stuff sure is difficult to grasp.
Back in those days I guess just imagining a "dwarf" was head crushingly magical beyond all comprehension.
"Arrow!" said [Bard]. "Black arrow! I have saved you to the last. You have never failed me and always I have recovered you. I had you from my father and from he of old. If ever you came from the forges of the true king under the Mountain, go now and speed well!"Arrow that has been passed down in his family as an heirloom, has never missed a target he's shot it at, has always been recovered whenever he's shot it, and may very well have been created during a now-mythical golden age by dwarves at the height of their crafting prowess?
No way to interpret that as supernatural or magic at all, I guess.
Yeah, not really. It's his lucky arrow. When you assign that superstition to something, you use it less and are more careful to retrieve it, meaning it's not that remarkable he's always recovered for it. And Bard is just a really good shot, so it's not that remarkable that he has an arrow he's never missed with.
There is no indication the arrow is magic. It does nothing a normal arrow couldn't do.
And as Bard readied to fire, the common folk of the village looked on. One wore a pair of gaudy, bright red socks. "Socks!" said he. "Lucky socks! I have saved you to the last. Our football team, the Dale Dragons, has always won since I began wearing...
I always thought of the Black Arrow as magic, but not in the same way the Ring or the palantir were. This is a more subtle, more intrinsic magic, born of pure mastery of craft. "The dwarves of yor made mighty spells while hammers fell like ringing bells"
I always thought of the Black Arrow as magic, but not in the same way the Ring or the palantir were. This is a more subtle, more intrinsic magic, born of pure mastery of craft. "The dwarves of yor made mighty spells while hammers fell like ringing bells"
This is the magic of Middle Earth in general. When asked about magic, the elves pretty much shrugged not knowing what Pippin meant when he was given the a cloak leaving Lothlorien. Magic was all about them and their craft, as natural as weaving the cloth in the first place. Functional yet subtle... but also fairly common if these are cloaks that other elves of the wood routinely wear.
Ultimately, this is also easily handled by the ol' boring +1 weapons, rings, armor, and so on as well. Stuff that's well crafted, magical, useful, and subtle.
We are conditioned by the game system to look at magic as either boosts to a d20 roll, bonus magic, and utility.
MERP on the other hand looked at things in quite a different paradigm as did it's parent game, Rolemaster.
Tolkien of course, looked at magic as purely a story element.
There is no indication the arrow is magic. It does nothing a normal arrow couldn't do.
And in the movie of course the Black Arrow is the last of it's kind, a specially made greater master craft long arrow specifically designed to kill dragons.