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Judging__Eagle
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Post by Judging__Eagle » Fri Jan 11, 2019 1:19 am

I just like to use Frank as a filter on threads (seriously, it's often more efficient to go through a thread for Frank's posts, and only then read posts he's responded to).
Also, it's a bit repetitive and boring to see Yet-An-Other-Shitty-Game-Writer spectacularly fail in their attempts to denigrate Frank by claiming they have a scrap of logic, while Frank is somehow illogical for only examining math; and pointing out that nostalgia is a weak basis for game design.
Finally, it wasn't until Kieth & Frank posted their [Tome] content on the WoTC forums that I had anything resembling a clue as to how to write new content for my own 3.5e D&D games. They have a perspective that few other game writers even imagine; yet despite being unlike other game writers F & K's written content works with a consistency that's not seen anywhere else in the RPG industry, while 'official' content is maybe 10% viable and 90% worthless.
This method that Frank & Kieth endorsed is nearly a panacea for the ills in most game design to the point where people who simply copy Frank & Kieth's ideas can create viable work with little/no professional game writing experience (e.g. Koumei's Dungeon Siege, Kaelik's [Tome] Errata, Red Rob's [Tome] Magic Item System; then the dozens of posters who have made 100's of forms of [Tome] content in the shape of magic items, new feats, classes, or prestige classes).
I think that's why I'm impressed by Frank's work. It's totally against the grain of what the RPG industry as a whole "believes is true"; yet anyone who even badly copies their methods can shit out content that is 90% gold/10% turd. A stunning reversal on the RPG industries standard of 90%turd/10%gold.

> Mord wrote:

> > TheCreatorOfADOM wrote:And naturally the engine needs to flow well with far less experienced people - I 1000% agree.

> > TheCreatorOfADOM wrote:Naturally such a system doesn't work too well with inexperienced Game Masters.

> Unfortunately neither "doublethink" nor "having your cake & eating it too?" are on my card.

That's funny. I was convinced that "having your cake & eating it too" was a fairly common situation in game design. It seems to come up a lot.
The last notable case that I recall this was i Book of Gears; where Kieth & Frank noted that people want two very reasonable things:
-Powerful Artifacts are More Powerful than Regular Magic Items
-Magic Items should scale in their power based on their wielder's degree of power
Yet they concluded that taken together, the results are contradictory to each other.
Of course, they eventually solved this conundrum by making all magic items scale; and powerful ones having a "pre-set" level that they can grow from.
Last edited by Judging__Eagle on Fri Jan 11, 2019 1:30 am, edited 2 times in total.
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souran
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Post by souran » Fri Jan 11, 2019 3:04 pm

> TheCreatorOfADOM wrote:
> ...I never felt the need for game mechanics (at least beyond a very general level) to handle this. For me here the difference starts between "roll-playing" and "roleplaying"... and also somewhat the different playing styles of pre-3e and 3e/4e.
> We always (during our AD&D 1 & 2) days had lots of things like "I pick up sand and throw it into the orc's eyes", "I swing past the bandit raiders from my tree vantage point and jump onto the leader", "I try to disarm the ..." and so on, though there barely were any rules for it. Once you e.g. haven fallen comfortably in with a general system on how to do attribute/skill checks, it's easy to improv that with some GMing experience.
> ADOM RPG being an old-school system at its heart thus doesn't try to provide rules for all that... just encouragement for the GM to be brave and just wing things to keep things fast and furious...

I can't say I played a ton of 1E, but I played a lot of 2E and when 3E provided useable mechanics for throwing sand in peoples eyes it was a freaking godsend.
I too played in lots of 2E games where people narrated cool actions associated with their attacks. I played in games with both inexperienced and experienced DMs and I have been the DM trying to adjudicate these types of things. Here are the outcomes when there is no mechanical basis:
1) It does nothing because doing that stuff is assumed as part of your stats already [fastest but least satifying]
2) it does nothing special but gives you a bonus [this will cause an explosion of exposition {at least the first time around the table} but congradulations you have now made the math of your combat dependant on who at the table is the biggest blowhard.]
3) It does something special so now everybody tries to do it all the time and will get mad if its not adjudicated in the same way each time. [you have entered magical teaparty land with the one part of your game that has mechanical rigor!]
Really not having some sort of "combat trick" rules is mostly pushing the rules design to each table. This means that those tactics will very in effectiveness wildly. Shared expectations are one of the things that makes rpgs go.

> It's a different design approach than 3e and 4e (and maybe even 5e) where people feel the need to spell out so many things in the sake of balance (though balance still doesn't really work AFAIAC and just gets into the way of a great story).

This is the biggest load of bullshit. Here is why balance is the most fucking important part of even a "narativist" system. Balance is the thing that keeps the players at the table!
I have been playing RPGs, and every active edition of D&D, for 30 freaking years. I have never ONCE talked to a player that has played a single character organically to level 20, or even to level 18 to get access to 9th level spells. Because even if the player is not savvy to all the flaws of the various versions of D&D at high level, players who are not playing spellcasters get fucking bored. When half or more of the group stops playing it doesn't matter that the wizard is better or able to single handlely defeat high level encounters alone because you never actually play those encounters. Teir 1 classes end up playing the same part of the game where they can cast 1 fireball a day over and over again because nobody plays the part of the game where they OP. Nobody sits down at the table to be a sidekick.
Seriouly, how many of your marvelous narratives have you actually seen played to the "end." Balance is everything, unless you want half your players to be playing smash bros. in the other room during the climax of your narrative.
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fbmf
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Post by fbmf » Fri Jan 11, 2019 3:24 pm

> I have been playing RPGs, and every active edition of D&D, for 30 freaking years. I have never ONCE talked to a player that has played a single character organically to level 20, or even to level 18 to get access to 9th level spells.

Not true, if you count interacting with me on TGD as "talking".
I've been playing some form of D&D since 1990. In 2E, I played a rogue and a fighter to 20+ levels over the course of 7 years. Full disclosure: the fighter was an Elf with the Archer Kit. I fully acknowledge that my experience is not typical.
3E: I've played a sorcerer and a rogue to 20+ levels. My wife (girlfriend at the time) played a monk and a psychic warrior (true story) out to 20+ levels.
3.5: I've played a sorcerer, a cleric (archer), and a monk (heavily multi-classed) out to 20+ levels. I DMed for a fighter, a druid, a cleric archer, a ranger, and a rogue that went to 20+ levels.
Tome: I've played a cleric (not an archer) and a rogue out to 20+ levels. My wife played a sorcerer that went 20+ levels.
All of the 3.0-Tome was with mostly the same people over the course of eleven years. Now that I'm married and we have kids my wife and I do good to play D&D once a month for about six hours so our current characters (campaign started in 2015) are 12th level. We mostly do board and card games now.
Again, I get that my gaming resume/experience is not typical, but you're now fully allowed to say you "totally know a guy on the internet" who has played AND MC'd for multiple campaigns out to 20th level and beyond.
Game On,
fbmf
Last edited by fbmf on Fri Jan 11, 2019 3:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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erik
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Post by erik » Fri Jan 11, 2019 5:09 pm

Also I object to that boredom is the main problem with non casters at high level. It’s frustration at not being able to do a single damned thing well.
And organic vs. starting a high level campaign distinction doesn’t matter since the problems are the same.
You don’t see a lot of high level organic campaigns because it just takes a long time. I played in a campaign that made it to level 12-14 over the course of a few years, but life prevented continuation, not mechanical or game related issues. And the game does require more houserules and work at general with less support at high levels so not many games start there either.
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souran
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Post by souran » Fri Jan 11, 2019 6:40 pm

> erik wrote:Also I object to that boredom is the main problem with non casters at high level. It’s frustration at not being able to do a single damned thing well.

Not being able to do anything well is the cause, bordem is the result. This is the same thing.

> And organic vs. starting a high level campaign distinction doesn’t matter since the problems are the same.

The player of a character creating a high level character will have novelty that an organic character won't have at reaching high level. Also the player can be told "this sucks don't do it" and if they still do then they signed up for it. People give up stuff when they get bored. A player whose character who develops into irrelevance through play is going to board the nope train at the first opportunity.

> You don’t see a lot of high level organic campaigns because it just takes a long time. I played in a campaign that made it to level 12-14 over the course of a few years, but life prevented continuation, not mechanical or game related issues. And the game does require more houserules and work at general with less support at high levels so not many games start there either.

I agree, but people start finding reasons to give up on a game when they feel like they can't contribute. D&D would probably be a better game if they condensed the game to 10-12 levels.
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shinimasu
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Post by shinimasu » Fri Jan 11, 2019 7:10 pm

> souran wrote: Not being able to do anything well is the cause, bordem is the result. This is the same thing.

At the risk of being incredibly pedantic it is possible to be frustrated with your character while not being "bored" with it.
I think most people tend to equate boredom to apathy. Since the impulse with boredom is to get up and go do a not boring thing once the fun has run its course.
But it is entirely possible that the other sum parts of the campaign can be engaging enough to keep a player strung along through to the conclusion. If the DM is witty, the story good, the other players have good chemistry, and the system otherwise workable save for this one egregious issue, then it's perfectly possible to still be getting something out of it. I can and have played through to completion a number of games through sheer camaraderie while internally fed up with what a broken mess the mechanics were. The game was bad, but the game wasn't bad if you catch my meaning.
Now I'm raising this point because the fact that you can still have fun with a broken system is something a lot of hack game designers try and use to hand wave issues with their pet system. And I want to highlight that even if this is true, even if I had fun with bad games because the people I played with were just that good, that's still not something you should consider when you're building your system.
You can't rely on the milk of human kindness to fix bad design for you. When I was five I could play for hours inside of a cardboard box. That didn't make the cardboard box objectively just as good as an actual playhouse, it just meant I was five and had not yet developed a discerning toy palette. Likewise the moment your core broadens their gaming horizons they leave broken systems behind in service of more competently made products.
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DrPraetor
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Post by DrPraetor » Sat Jan 12, 2019 12:57 am

> TheCreatorOfADOM wrote:

> > DrPraetor wrote: Throwing sand in someone's eyes should probably be different from tripping and throwing them, but should throwing sand in the eyes be *mechanically* different from feinting with an offhand weapon?

> ...I never felt the need for game mechanics (at least beyond a very general level) to handle this.

*That* is a perfectly satisfactory answer. You can say - what does it *mean* to be a high-level halfling with a big base attack bonus? Well, presumably, it means the halfling is skilled enough to throw sand in the eyes of enemies, feint, or do other combat tricks such that he connects with his weapon, and that's why he gets +9 or whatever to his roll.

> We always (during our AD&D 1 & 2) days had lots of things like "I pick up sand and throw it into the orc's eyes", "I swing past the bandit raiders from my tree vantage point and jump onto the leader", "I try to disarm the ..." and so on, though there barely were any rules for it. Once you e.g. haven fallen comfortably in with a general system on how to do attribute/skill checks, it's easy to improv that with some GMing experience.
> ADOM RPG being an old-school system at its heart thus doesn't try to provide rules for all that... just encouragement for the GM to be brave and just wing things to keep things fast and furious...

This, on the other hand, is 1) terrible, and 2) lazy.

> It's a different design approach than 3e and 4e (and maybe even 5e) where people feel the need to spell out so many things in the sake of balance ... So my personal design stance is: Old school always has been pretty "narrative". The player makes up a clever maneuver and the GM quickly makes up a simple ruling on how to resolve it (or just allows it to work if it was particularly clever and appropriate).
> The great thing about this kind of style (with a good GM) is that it even works perfectly with new players because they don't need to understand any fiddly rules.
> ...
> So to like ADOM RPG you will somewhat have to feel comfortable and compatible with this kind of style. If it's not yours, it's the wrong game for you

So, why is such a design position objectively awful?
First, if you encourage the players to describe non-standard combat maneuvers and then make up mechanical advantages on the fly, players will do it. It will tend to be extremely arbitrary and unfair, as my girlfriend is going to tie ogre's underwear around their heads and you're not. This also slows the game down a lot - if you are claiming this sort of on-the-fly management of tasks outside the rules is fast, I'm calling double bullshit on you - even for an experienced GM, unless that experienced GM has set up a rule for how to resolve these situations.
Now, you can fix any design by making up new rules as a GM.
But, that is absolutely the weakest game design excuse of them all. If you're designing a game, it is your job as a game designer to either come up with such a rule, or specify that such a rule isn't needed. If, as a GM, I'm making up these rules myself...
https://youtu.be/QVVzR8zIvoA?t=68
why am I wasting my time with your fucking rulebook?
Now, as a GM, I am of course free to ignore your rules and make up my own; but, if you can't come up with a good rule, meaning either:
1) A rule by which clever combat tricks involve *INSERT SOME RESOLUTION SYSTEM HERE, IT COULD BE BLUFF OR ATTRIBUTE CHECKS OR WHATEVER BUT SAY WHAT IT IS* and are an interesting tactical decision,
or
2) A rule by which clever combat tricks are purely a "special effect" (to use Champions parlance) that is priced into whatever bonuses you have for your dexterity, level, and fighting skills.
Then you have failed your Craft: Games check.
Chaosium rules are made of unicorn pubic hair and cancer. --AncientH
When you talk, all I can hear is "DunningKruger" over and over again like you were a god damn Pokemon. --Username17
Fuck off with the pony murder shit. --Grek
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pragma
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Post by pragma » Sat Jan 12, 2019 4:00 am

> TheCreatorOfADOM wrote:Just out of curiosity (and in no way meant to be inflammatory): Have you actually played in a campaign with fractional attacks? I'm asking because according to my personal experience (and that of all my groups during the past decades) the mechanic might sound cumbersome in theory but in practice we never ever had any problems with that (which still might just be us, but I'm really wondering).

I have not and I don't need to in order to know that tracking more things takes more brain space. If you can remove a thing that you have to track round-to-round then you should.

> I'm asking because I'm also wondering why you don't find things like spell or abilities durations ("three rounds") at least as cumbersome. You have to account for all that, too.

Combat is usually over before the buffs wear off. Also, what has a three round duration?

> As I mentioned elsewhere I understand and like the thought but I'll have to test the progression more. Moving from one to two attacks effectively doubles your power in one fell swoop and it does not quite feel right for me. Using modifiers might be an alternative for more than one attack but then you are back to subtracting numbers (which never is good as people are even slower at that than when adding numbers).

Two attacks at -2 is easy to calculate as long as it's not the 6th modifier that you need to keep track of. How many bonus types are in your game? If there are multiple types then how are helping players keep track of them? If there aren't, then this seems easy.

> For an old school game where monsters usually don't come with hundreds of hitpoints this should be more than enough to make your fighter a decent foe.

My point is that the enemies need to be designed really carefully for this to work. Let's consider an example:

> And it's obvious how dangerous fighters can get also versus spellcasters... 4d12+4 of potential damage against a 12th level wizard with 9d4+3 HP (plus CON modifier, maybe another +9) is... serious. And it's obvious that wizards shouldn't go into melee

I calculated the probability distribution of the wizards remaining HP after 1 round using this code at http://topps.diku.dk/torbenm/troll.msp

Code: Select all

    hit &#58;= if d20>9 then sum&#40;2d12&#41;+2 else 0;
    sum&#40;9d4&#41; + 12 - hit - hit

The highly optimized damage fighter only has a 20% chance of one-shotting this wizard (assuming a +1 CON mod and a required to-hit of 10), and the variance on the fighter's effectiveness is huge. Does a spell cast by the wizard have a similar save or die potential at that level? Is it intended that a highly optimized damage fighter be able to reliably one-shot a fragile target? I think you should be sure that your numerical outcomes match your intent.
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deaddmwalking
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Post by deaddmwalking » Sat Jan 12, 2019 4:20 am

> pragma wrote:

> > TheCreatorOfADOM wrote: And it's obvious how dangerous fighters can get also versus spellcasters... 4d12+4 of potential damage against a 12th level wizard with 9d4+3 HP (plus CON modifier, maybe another +9) is... serious. And it's obvious that wizards shouldn't go into melee

> I calculated the probability distribution of the wizards remaining HP after 1 round using this code at http://topps.diku.dk/torbenm/troll.msp

> Code: Select all

>     hit &#58;= if d20>9 then sum&#40;2d12&#41;+2 else 0;
>     sum&#40;9d4&#41; + 12 - hit - hit

> The highly optimized damage fighter only has a 20% chance of one-shotting this wizard (assuming a +1 CON mod and a required to-hit of 10), and the variance on the fighter's effectiveness is huge. Does a spell cast by the wizard have a similar save or die potential at that level? Is it intended that a highly optimized damage fighter be able to reliably one-shot a fragile target? I think you should be sure that your numerical outcomes match your intent.

It looks like your code uses 2d12, while he lists 4d12 as the base damage. Obviously, changing the to-hit number for the fighter also has a major impact on conditions. Most old-school games have 'fuck off' abilities for Wizards (like Mirror Image) where the fighter has only a 1/8 chance of targeting the 'right' wizard - those types of defenses are typically ablative. In a 3.x game, I remember using my two-weapon warrior and after determining which one was the real wizard, specifically targeting the ones that were not... Dealing any damage eliminated them making my future attacks more likely to hit...
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pragma
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Post by pragma » Sat Jan 12, 2019 4:53 am

> TheCreatorofADOM wrote:In ADOM RPG you can customize a fighter that (s)he e.g. could specialize on wielding a two-handed weapon for 2d12 points of damage per hit (which takes a while to get to, but you can get there). With two attacks per round and decent Strength (say 16 for +2) you might cause as much as 4d12+4 points of damage (not considering criticals, magical items and other bonuses) per round. For an old school game where monsters usually don't come with hundreds of hitpoints this should be more than enough to make your fighter a decent foe.

Emphasis mine for where I got the 2d12 per hit.
There's still only a 30% chance of a 1-shot with an auto-hit (code: sum(9d4) + 12 - sum(4d12) -4 ), somewhat surprisingly. I guess 4d12 just isn't that much and the variance is really big.
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Dean
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Post by Dean » Sun Jan 13, 2019 12:54 am

People are bringing a lot of 3E assumptions to a game about a 2E clone. 2E was a different game, many of those assumptions don't hold. A fighter doesn't necessarily need equal 1 shot potential because doing any damage to a wizard in 2E means he can't cast spells that round. All the fighter needs to do is deal any damage and he'll win.
Round buffs are also common in 2E because one "round" was 1 minute long then. Most buffs last a few rounds actually. Wizards also get less spells a day because bonus spells from attributes aren't a thing then. Combine that with 2E having wandering monsters and ambush monsters as standard play and parts of every single module ever written means that having your buffs up is a much less reliable assumption. Finally it should be noted that in 2E Warriors d10 hit die is a HUGE deal. Dying at 0 instead of -10 means a 1st through 3rd level wizard almost certainly died in one hit while Warriors actually had a shot at making it to a level where you'd name them and fill out character sheets. 3E giving everyone constitution bonuses to hp instead of only allowing Warriors good Con bonuses, giving everyone 10 extra hp before death, and maxing hp at first level means that, rightly, people don't care about Fighters average +3hp per level. But in 2E that mattered a lot more. Both mechanically and because of the meta of how monster encounters worked.

> DSMatticus wrote:Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. I am filled with an unfathomable hatred.

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TheCreatorOfADOM
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Post by TheCreatorOfADOM » Sat Jan 19, 2019 2:09 pm

> souran wrote:

> > It's a different design approach than 3e and 4e (and maybe even 5e) where people feel the need to spell out so many things in the sake of balance (though balance still doesn't really work AFAIAC and just gets into the way of a great story).

> This is the biggest load of bullshit. Here is why balance is the most fucking important part of even a "narativist" system. Balance is the thing that keeps the players at the table!
> I have been playing RPGs, and every active edition of D&D, for 30 freaking years. I have never ONCE talked to a player that has played a single character organically to level 20, or even to level 18 to get access to 9th level spells. Because even if the player is not savvy to all the flaws of the various versions of D&D at high level, players who are not playing spellcasters get fucking bored. When half or more of the group stops playing it doesn't matter that the wizard is better or able to single handlely defeat high level encounters alone because you never actually play those encounters. Teir 1 classes end up playing the same part of the game where they can cast 1 fireball a day over and over again because nobody plays the part of the game where they OP. Nobody sits down at the table to be a sidekick.
> Seriouly, how many of your marvelous narratives have you actually seen played to the "end." Balance is everything, unless you want half your players to be playing smash bros. in the other room during the climax of your narrative.

I'm sorry for your bad Game Master and all the time you lost. We played a lot of characters into the level range of 10-20 (for AD&D 1e and 2e) and a very few into the range up to level 30. Spellcasters where among them but by no means dominated the games. And interesting narratives definitely were the reason for playing that long.
But by now I have understood that many people here play very differently from what our groups do which is fine by me.
Bu absolute statements always are shit (think about that one )
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Mistborn
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Post by Mistborn » Sat Jan 19, 2019 3:04 pm

> TheCreatorOfADOM wrote:I'm sorry for your bad Game Master and all the time you lost.

Not this shit again. The rules both set the expectations for both the players and the Game Master and provide a baseline case to work off of. When a player at the table has a bad time because the class you wrote can't pull it's weight that's on you for writing bad classes. Same if players feel they can't make effective decisions because the rules are spares or unclear and thus break down into mother may I with the GM. If you just fob off any negative feedback by blaming "bad GMs" not only will your game be bad but you will also be a bad person for making it.
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JigokuBosatsu
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Post by JigokuBosatsu » Sat Jan 19, 2019 10:06 pm

TheCreatorOfADOM, serious question. Why did you come to the Den? I just ask because it's a fairly regular thing on this forum that a new game or supplement is mentioned, and then the creator shows up. It never turns out well, but back to that in a second.
What specifically brought you to the Den? Was it just a google alert, or did someone refer you here from another forum? If it's the latter, then that person should have warned you about how things work here. We're all veteran roleplayers and almost all of us are on the spectrum between homebrewers and published RPG writers. So we have some serious business to take care of as we attempt to crack the unsolvable problems of game design (and secondarily, insert our weird fetishes into homebrew as inconspicously as possible).
That's why this process doesn't end well. It seems like the only games that stumble over the threshold are D&D heartbreakers, closely followed by their developers who seem to want to hit the same old beats and get huffy when we aren't shy about our displeasure. I'm guessing the Bingo joke I made doesn't make sense if they don't have Bingo in Germany.
The point is, share your stuff and take your lumps. The best insights in this place have come from the most brutal vivsections. Sophistry and vague OSR buzzwords are just a waste of everyone's time.

> Omegonthesane wrote:a glass armonica which causes a target city to have horrific nightmares that prevent sleep

> JigokuBosatsu wrote:so a regular glass armonica?

You can buy my books, yes you can. Out of print and retired, sorry.
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DrPraetor
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Post by DrPraetor » Sat Jan 19, 2019 10:34 pm

The Germans are a blunt people; I'm sure he'll be fine. Also, his kickstarter has been fully funded anyway so he's going to produce his game either way.
https://www.dw.com/en/why-germans-dont- ... a-37757770
Chaosium rules are made of unicorn pubic hair and cancer. --AncientH
When you talk, all I can hear is "DunningKruger" over and over again like you were a god damn Pokemon. --Username17
Fuck off with the pony murder shit. --Grek
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deaddmwalking
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Post by deaddmwalking » Sun Jan 20, 2019 1:39 am

> DrPraetor wrote:The Germans are a blunt people; I'm sure he'll be fine. Also, his kickstarter has been fully funded anyway so he's going to produce his game either way.
> https://www.dw.com/en/why-germans-dont- ... a-37757770

Funding doesn't always mean the game gets produced, but hopefully he's not that kind of asshole.
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Post by Whipstitch » Sun Jan 20, 2019 1:51 am

> TheCreatorOfADOM wrote:I'm sorry for your bad Game Master and all the time you lost.

FWIW, when designers say balance just gets in the way and are dismissive of poor performing GMs that really kinda makes me wonder what exactly it is they think they are offering with their products. I say this because I would think that by all rights "bad" GMs should be your target audience! After all, if your definition of a great GM is someone who can create settings whole cloth and seamlessly adjudicate things on the fly in a way that slides right past any bullshit detectors present then virtually by definition you're describing the sort of gamer who doesn't particularly need you to begin with.
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Post by Judging__Eagle » Sun Jan 20, 2019 9:15 am

> Whipstitch wrote:

> > TheCreatorOfADOM wrote:I'm sorry for your bad Game Master and all the time you lost.

> FWIW, when designers say balance just gets in the way and are dismissive of poor performing GMs that really kinda makes me wonder what exactly it is they think they are offering with their products. I say this because I would think that by all rights "bad" GMs should be your target audience! After all, if your definition of a great GM is someone who can create settings whole cloth and seamlessly adjudicate things on the fly in a way that slides right past any bullshit detectors present then virtually by definition you're describing the sort of gamer who doesn't particularly need you to begin with.

I think that the real irony about "this game is for 'good' GMs who can run entire campaigns on the fly without consulting a rulebook ever at all (or hell, even DICE, or Character Sheets, Monster manuals, or rulebooks)" is that I wasn't able to reach that point of game refereeing until after I had digested a very solid & balanced version of D&D in the form of Kieth & Frank's [Tome] D&D.
The truth of the "totally on the fly" gaming experience where the entirety of gameplay is managed by players describing their intent; and the game referee doing a combination of narration/production-editorializing; can really only be achieved when the game referee not only knows the game rules inside & out, but can figure out the likeliest possible results from any dice rolls in their head.
That's what I'd call a "great" DM, a DM who knows the rules well enough that they can do away with rolling dice for trivial RNG checks like low-threat combat, combat encounters that are heavily reliant upon deeply layered PC tactics that don't require dice rolls, or low-pressure NPC interactions.
Granted, sometimes there's a situation where a Randomized Number Generator is necessary; but modified Rock-Paper-Scissors can help if something is truly an unknown to the referee.
Thus, the only way a GM can really improve their ability to referee a game, is for them to become adept at using a very well designed game system in the first place. A well balanced game that's well designed will give a game referee sufficient context of game mechanics that are intellectually appealing; as well as provide a frame of reference from which they can create wholly new rules that are consistent with the rest of the game played thus far.
e.g.
In my "crazier characters" group of PCs who were running through the 3.5e D&D MEATGRINDER campaign, Red Hand of Doom; one of the players wanted to be an elf wizard (fine, the campaign had an other such character, so I can just use that character sheet if anything needs to be looked up in a session).
However an other had these specific descriptions of their character:
"They're a wizard (sorcerer), who's turned into a sweater; and the sweater is always too big for whoever wears it"
Now, for the typical 2e DM; that's basically a non-starter b/c most 2e DMs are boring pseudo-grognards with no imagination who think D&D is supposed to be Lord of the Rings fantasy and not Barsoom Chronicles sword & planet fantasy.
However, I hadby thie point put in a lot of time dealing with the results of encouraging players to challenge me with their character concepts ever since I started using [Tome] in & around 2006-2007. In [Tome] there is a solution: spellcasting, xor intelligent, magic items are best treated as Sorcerors. So the sweater was a magic item, who was also a PC. Now, the next matter: how to accomplish this players ridiculous aesthetic requirements?
Fortunately, the mechanics of magic items in 3e; as well as the PC's (uh...) creature type; provided a solution.
1. Magic Items resize to fit a wearer of the same size category as they were originally designed for.
2. The spell Enlarge Person, also makes all of their equipment grow larger
Which combine with a lesson that's be used several times in 3e/3.Xe D&D games:
3. So long as mechanics are unaltered; one can make the aesthetics of anything in a game different, no one will have a ground for complaints of unbalanced gameplay
So the solution was: the 'sorcerer sweater' will always resize to fit its wearer; but the sorcerer in the sweater is a massive troll, and expends one of its uses of Enlarge Person on the wearer. However, this only aesthetically affects the sweater, and the character wearing the sweater seems to be lost in a larger sized pile of sweater (increasing their size & lowering their AC as per the spell's effects), and find that their weapons are statically-clung to their sleeves (granting them the appropriate amount of reach & damage boost to weapon attacks).
Originally the player wanted to have their character be a bit funny, but with careful understanding of the rules I was able to make it ridiculously absurd. While not breaking any part of the game balance at all.
If your game engine isn't able to handle deliberately* difficult to create characters on the fly; why even bother learning it when there's game systems that can handle crazy fantasy kitchensink concepts like [Tome] D&D which not only can; but provide sufficient rules which act as a framework to make more homebrew content at the table, and is free to boot?
*:Werecockroach Lancer-Bard Bloodmage Triple-General? Shoggoths that change into any monster (of the same or lesser power) in the monster manual? Evil jewelery that steals the bodies of creatures it can draw Line-of-Sight to? A human fighter who pretents to be a wizard/cleric?
Last edited by Judging__Eagle on Sun Jan 20, 2019 9:19 am, edited 1 time in total.
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OgreBattle
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Post by OgreBattle » Sun Jan 20, 2019 7:16 pm

> TheCreatorOfADOM wrote:
> I'm sorry for your bad Game Master and all the time you lost. We played a lot of characters into the level range of 10-20 (for AD&D 1e and 2e) and a very few into the range up to level 30. Spellcasters where among them but by no means dominated the games. And interesting narratives definitely were the reason for playing that long.

Could you give an example of a lvl 20 situation in AD&D, how a good DM runs it, and how a bad DM ruins it?
Last edited by OgreBattle on Sun Jan 20, 2019 7:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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phlapjackage
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Post by phlapjackage » Mon Jan 21, 2019 11:40 am

> TheCreatorOfADOM wrote: So to like ADOM RPG you will somewhat have to feel comfortable and compatible with this kind of style. If it's not yours, it's the wrong game for you
> ...
> But by now I have understood that many people here play very differently from what our groups do which is fine by me.

And that's a bingo
Koumei: and if I wanted that, I'd take some mescaline and run into the park after watching a documentary about wasps.
PhoneLobster: DM : Mr Monkey doesn't like it. Eldritch : Mr Monkey can do what he is god damn told.
MGuy: The point is to normalize 'my' point of view. How the fuck do you think civil rights occurred? You think things got this way because people sat down and fucking waited for public opinion to change?
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Whipstitch
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Post by Whipstitch » Mon Jan 21, 2019 8:07 pm

> Judging__Eagle wrote: I think that the real irony about "this game is for 'good' GMs who can run entire campaigns on the fly without consulting a rulebook ever at all (or hell, even DICE, or Character Sheets, Monster manuals, or rulebooks)" is that I wasn't able to reach that point of game refereeing until after I had digested a very solid & balanced version of D&D in the form of Kieth & Frank's [Tome] D&D.

Yeah, I feel that in many cases what Denners want is better described as transparency and consistency rather than some goofy semblance of competitive balance. For example, I don't have some sort of first premises objection to a wizard roflstomping a fighter or vice versa; you can find characters of wildly different levels of competence populating either archetype. What does bug me is when rules are sufficiently shitty that it's clear they're outputting something that wasn't intended. That's bad because the last thing you want is newbro DMs feeling like they constantly have to walk back their decisions as they run their first games.
bears fall, everyone dies
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