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TarkisFlux
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Post by TarkisFlux » Mon Oct 11, 2010 7:05 pm

> FrankTrollman wrote:Answer the fucking question. WHY are you making a D&D hack instead of playing Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay? That's not fucking hyperbole, that is a serious fucking question. Why are you taking a heroic fantasy game in which blasting a Titan out of the universe can be an "easy challenge" and hacking it down, when it is so much easier to start with a mud shoveling game and build up?

He's answered this already actually, just not in a very satisfying way:

> Ghostwheel wrote:Unfortunately, like many people, I'm quite resistant to change and I'm only really familiar with D&D 3.5 (though I've played some PF, 4e, BESM, and WoD). Since I'm comfortable with 3.5, I'll stick with that and change it to fit what I'm going for.

So yeah, what he wants is an arguably inefficient kludge that allows him to retain system familiarity.
Last edited by TarkisFlux on Mon Oct 11, 2010 7:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Kaelik
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Post by Kaelik » Mon Oct 11, 2010 7:30 pm

> Ghostwheel wrote:You don't fight BBEGs every single fight, do you? And furthermore, even if you fought someone with psion or wizard levels it wouldn't mean that they autowin unless they took exactly the right spells.

No one cares if you fight BBEGs every fight if you still TPK every BBEG fight.

> Ghostwheel wrote:(Note: As the DM, I decide what spells they have, and I know which ones are not suitable for the game.)

I assumed that playing the BBEGs like non retards would be important, but sure, if you want to play all BBEGs like retards, I suppose you won't get TPKs, but you know, you also won't have anyone feeling grimdark when they can just go find the main boss and count of him to energy missile himself to death for their convenience, since if he ever attacked them they would insta die.

> Ghostwheel wrote:99.999% of the world consists of "shitty warriors", many of whom are not so shitty.

And people play fantasy games to not be those people, much less to be those people, but regularly die to people who get to not be those people.
Being a shitty warrior is not fun, that's why people don't do that.

> Ghostwheel wrote:Oh, and as I showed above, the game doesn't actually break down to autodeaths regardless of how many times people say it. I thought people used math here?

You are stupid. Your example involves the fighter ignoring armor protection on the Ogre, but apparently the Ogre is too stupid to do the same damn thing to the fighter even though the fighter has better armor. Try again. The Ogre takes a -6 penalty to attack rolls to do 9 more damage on every attack. The Fighter dies.
Not to mention "I'll just assume that all attack rolls are 10s" is the stupidest example of non math I've ever seen.

> Ghostwheel wrote:...Because having a set of basic rules that govern what happens in a game is better than doing everything by DM fiat?

You already said you are doing everything by DM fiat. You DM fiat them to victory every time the face a Psion at all.
Now answer the important question: Why the fuck are you posting your shitty grimdark shit here? Here are some possibilities:
a) You don't know, because you are retarded.
b) You want to know what we think of your shitty grimdark shit. Hint, it's shitty grimdark shit.
c) You want help with something, what do you want help with?

> Ghostwheel wrote:Did you mean the flavor of the crapsack world where players have it tough, or the mechanics?

I mean that your game is shitty, and boring, and robs players of agency, and so what's the goddam point?

> Ghostwheel wrote:If it's the first then you're making a straw man again.

Unless you know, you are wrong and it actually is really easy to kill them.
Seriously, you have no fucking encounter guidelines, so any system is meaningless. It could be true that 100% of all fights are against Paralzed bunnies, it doesn't say anything about what it actually is that you fight. All we are assured of is, "not very often Psions, and I'll always cripple them tremendously to give the PCs a chance in hell."

> Ghostwheel wrote:If it's the second, then you might wanna momentarily let go of the preconception that casters always make everything better. I know, it's a big step, and I've gotten considerable flak for the idea, but it works well to my chagrin and surprise.

Oh, you can be passively aggressive assholish. Making progress, now stop implying your insults and just say them. Then we can work on getting you to actually back them up.

> Ghostwheel wrote:I recommend at least running the math and seeing that the game doesn't completely and irrevocably break down if PCs don't have the ability to end encounters with a single action.

I'm not talking about the game breaking down, I'm talking about the game sucking ass. Nevermind your incredibly stupidity about ending encounters in one action, I'll just assume you are a shitty DM and can't challenge players with complex and effective characters, thus the arbitrary nerfing everyone to pointy stickers, the important part is that it's fucking boring.

> Ghostwheel wrote:Not really, just make it so that magical changes to size don't change the HP of PCs, the same way that Polymorph doesn't. Poof, easy fix. Being large is still good enough that PCs will use it, via Expansion for example. That and I didn't allow Large characters from the start (not that anyone asked for one), so it wasn't much of a problem, and the PsyWar in the group and I discussed it before he went with the class. Also, straw man again--see the above example with actual stats. Neither side auto-died and it's a pretty close fight.

Me: PCs have access to large size too, even non magically.
You: It's okay, I'll just nerf everything that makes PCs better until they only play the characters I've decided in advance, and also nerf magical size gain.

> DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?

The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.
That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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ubernoob
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Post by ubernoob » Mon Oct 11, 2010 7:32 pm

> Ghostwheel wrote:The rules are not a problem because I will only ever use rules that are not a problem.

Why are you even posting this then? Like, seriously. We have identified problems. You have stated that those are not problems because you personally will not interact with those portions of YOUR OWN FUCKING HOUSERULES.
WHAT IS THE POINT OF POSTING THIS FOR ANALYSIS IF YOU DON'T WANT ANALYSIS?
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Username17
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Post by Username17 » Mon Oct 11, 2010 7:32 pm

> TarkisFlux wrote:So yeah, what he wants is an arguably inefficient kludge that allows him to retain system familiarity.

But he does not have system familiarity with his new frankenstein rules set. He does not know how it works and can't explain it satisfactorily to other people. So he's basically writing a new system in the dark because he realized that the systems he has played are not applicable to what he is trying to do. But there are other systems that people have already written that do cover that kind of game.
-Username17
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Maxus
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Post by Maxus » Mon Oct 11, 2010 7:38 pm

> FrankTrollman wrote:

> > TarkisFlux wrote:So yeah, what he wants is an arguably inefficient kludge that allows him to retain system familiarity.

> But he does not have system familiarity with his new frankenstein rules set. He does not know how it works and can't explain it satisfactorily to other people. So he's basically writing a new system in the dark because he realized that the systems he has played are not applicable to what he is trying to do. But there are other systems that people have already written that do cover that kind of game.
> -Username17

The idea sounds like what Elennsar wanted and tried to make ideas for: Arturius.
And we know how that worked out.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.
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Ghostwheel
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Post by Ghostwheel » Mon Oct 11, 2010 10:16 pm

> Kaelik wrote:You are stupid. Your example involves the fighter ignoring armor protection on the Ogre, but apparently the Ogre is too stupid to do the same damn thing to the fighter even though the fighter has better armor. Try again. The Ogre takes a -6 penalty to attack rolls to do 9 more damage on every attack. The Fighter dies.

Actually, I'm not. I did what was fairly the most optimal thing. If you had read the rules you'd know that to ignore heavy armor you need to take a -8 penalty to attack, which means that the ogre would hit 1/4 of the time. 12 (damage) / 4 = 3, which is less than 4. It's a -6 to ignore medium armor (which the ogre is wearing), and -4 to ignore light armor.

> Kaelik wrote:Not to mention "I'll just assume that all attack rolls are 10s" is the stupidest example of non math I've ever seen.

I actually would have prefered to do them by DPR as weighted against AC, but I'm not sure how to do that when taking into account RD (since the DPR stops being linear the higher the attack roll); any idea of a formula I could plug in that takes that into account? I think it would have been much the same result though.

> FrankTrollman wrote:But he does not have system familiarity with his new frankenstein rules set. He does not know how it works and can't explain it satisfactorily to other people. So he's basically writing a new system in the dark because he realized that the systems he has played are not applicable to what he is trying to do. But there are other systems that people have already written that do cover that kind of game.
> -Username17

How do you know? I've done the math and some limited playtesting to confirm that things work for the most part as intended (though I have more faith in the math than the playtesting), and despite the fact that I sometimes have difficulties expressing myself that doesn't mean that I don't know what I'm talking about. And I don't want to use another system.

> ubernoob wrote:WHAT IS THE POINT OF POSTING THIS FOR ANALYSIS IF YOU DON'T WANT ANALYSIS?

I'm really glad someone asked. Going to redefine the purpose of this thread (or define it for the first time, since I don't think I did orginally). How does the flavor look? Are there any glaring inconsistencies? Anything you think could be inserted somewhere? Don't critique the rules, critique the setting and how well the rules support or fight it. Looking mostly for constructive comments, if you write something arbitrary or unhelpful I'm mostly going to ignore you and move on.
tl;dr: Ignore the rules page, concentrate on the setting fluff.
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Zinegata
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Post by Zinegata » Tue Oct 12, 2010 1:11 am

Ghostwheel, you have to understand something.
Kaelik, ubernoob, and Frank couldn't care less about fluff. All they care about are rules. And having a chance to shout at somebody else's rules.
And frankly, I don't think fluff discussions are all that productive because they're ultimately subjective.
Now, from what I've read so far, the system doesn't seem to know what it actually wants to be. You want it grimdark, but you also implemented Healing Surges (which is essentially "Heal yourself with the power of positive thinking).
Now, while I don't agree that switching to Warhammer FRPG is the best idea (largely because I know how switching to D100 can be a pain), you might want to think things through a bit more on whether you want to go with a "Life is cheap" setting, or "Life only seems to be cheap but in reality PCs are special snowflakes who don't end up dying regularly".
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Kaelik
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Post by Kaelik » Tue Oct 12, 2010 1:24 am

> Ghostwheel wrote:I'm really glad someone asked.

Actually, I already asked, you just didn't answer.

> Ghostwheel wrote:Don't critique the rules, critique the setting and how well the rules support or fight it.

The setting is normal grimdark shit, where the PCs are unimportant, can never do anything to create a lasting impression, and are completely powerless riders in the Dick Masters fantasy joy ride about how grim and dark everything is.
It sucks. Find someone who actually likes grimdark to ask about the setting. We do rules here.

> Ghostwheel wrote:Looking mostly for constructive comments, if you write something arbitrary or unhelpful I'm mostly going to ignore you and move on.

Telling you that your setting as shit, and to go find someplace else to post it is the most constructive thing I can say, because then you'll go someplace else where some grimdark fanbois can coo about how awesome your super grimdark setting is.
If you only want to listen to praise, you shouldn't be here in the first place.

> DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?

The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.
That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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Ghostwheel
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Post by Ghostwheel » Tue Oct 12, 2010 1:39 am

> Zinegata wrote:Ghostwheel, you have to understand something.
> Kaelik, ubernoob, and Frank couldn't care less about fluff. All they care about are rules. And having a chance to shout at somebody else's rules.
> And frankly, I don't think fluff discussions are all that productive because they're ultimately subjective.

I'm not sure about--for example, I'm thinking of adding fanatical Islamic-terrorist/neo-nazi dark elves who are brainwashed from birth to believe certain things, what with their forgotten queen having gone silent, rising to the surface at night to commit terrorist acts against a zero-tolerance government shrouded by their darkness abilities. They might even have a loose alliance (or maybe just a non-attack-each-other-word-here agreement) with the Resistance while living deep in the Downbelow beneath the city's sewer systems.
What do you think? Rule of cool or suck? Why? How does one improve on it?

> Zinegata wrote:Now, from what I've read so far, the system doesn't seem to know what it actually wants to be. You want it grimdark, but you also implemented Healing Surges (which is essentially "Heal yourself with the power of positive thinking).

Actually, that's more of a mechanical concession to playability than anything else. Healing surges usually can heal 4 HP--which is barely more than enough to stop a single attack; you're not actually going to waste a standard action in combat to do that, are you?
Nah, instead it's to allow PCs to continue adventuring beyond a single fight in a world without too much healing, rather than saying, "Alright, that was a good fight, time to rest for the next ten days." The mechanical consideration for fun in this case is more important than any realism that might be lost, since it just means that the PCs are ready to be beaten almost to death by the next monster that comes along

> Zinegata wrote:Now, while I don't agree that switching to Warhammer FRPG is the best idea (largely because I know how switching to D100 can be a pain), you might want to think things through a bit more on whether you want to go with a "Life is cheap" setting, or "Life only seems to be cheap but in reality PCs are special snowflakes who don't end up dying regularly".

I actually think that I want the illusion of the first while keeping in the middle of the two mechanically. The very low HP and potential for death keeps PCs cautious and such, while the mechanics keep things less than super-swingy, with low HP appearing to make people autodie while DR/AC/called shots actually making a big difference. I could give more examples of this with different (non-suck, semi-optimized) characters of different levels, but I don't think they'd help at this point.
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Zinegata
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Post by Zinegata » Tue Oct 12, 2010 2:07 am

> Ghostwheel wrote:I'm not sure about--for example, I'm thinking of adding fanatical Islamic-terrorist/neo-nazi dark elves who are brainwashed from birth to believe certain things, what with their forgotten queen having gone silent, rising to the surface at night to commit terrorist acts against a zero-tolerance government shrouded by their darkness abilities. They might even have a loose alliance (or maybe just a non-attack-each-other-word-here agreement) with the Resistance while living deep in the Downbelow beneath the city's sewer systems.
> What do you think? Rule of cool or suck? Why? How does one improve on it?

I honestly don't have an opinion on this. I think some people will like it. Others won't.
But as to whether I personally like it or not, I'm more "Meh, do whatever you want". Because to me, setting fluff is what the DM and/or players should want. It shouldn't be based on the opinions of a bunch of strangers (many of whom have an overly high opinion of themselves).

> Actually, that's more of a mechanical concession to playability than anything else. Healing surges usually can heal 4 HP--which is barely more than enough to stop a single attack; you're not actually going to waste a standard action in combat to do that, are you?
> Nah, instead it's to allow PCs to continue adventuring beyond a single fight in a world without too much healing, rather than saying, "Alright, that was a good fight, time to rest for the next ten days." The mechanical consideration for fun in this case is more important than any realism that might be lost, since it just means that the PCs are ready to be beaten almost to death by the next monster that comes along

If you concern is between-battle healing, why not use potions or consumeables instead of "the power of positive thinking"? Bandages are more "realistic" and "gritty".

> I actually think that I want the illusion of the first while keeping in the middle of the two mechanically. The very low HP and potential for death keeps PCs cautious and such, while the mechanics keep things less than super-swingy, with low HP appearing to make people autodie while DR/AC/called shots actually making a big difference. I could give more examples of this with different (non-suck, semi-optimized) characters of different levels, but I don't think they'd help at this point.

So, essentially...
You want to make your players think that they can die very easily by keeping HP counts low.
But in reality, DR/AC make death far less likely.
Is this correct?
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Zinegata
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Post by Zinegata » Tue Oct 12, 2010 2:12 am

> Kaelik wrote:Telling you that your setting as shit, and to go find someplace else to post it is the most constructive thing I can say, because then you'll go someplace else where some grimdark fanbois can coo about how awesome your super grimdark setting is.
> If you only want to listen to praise, you shouldn't be here in the first place.

You know, I'm not seeing him actively fishing for praise. You can point out that asking for a subjective review of fluff may be pretty foolish, but implying that he's only here to get praise is called a "dick move".
Moreover, this board does very often engage in subjective fluff discussions. Like how every thread about nWoD invariably revolves around the fluff surrounding werewolves.
So don't go around claiming "We only do rules here". We do, in fact, do fluff here too.
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Ghostwheel
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Post by Ghostwheel » Tue Oct 12, 2010 2:34 am

> Zinegata wrote:If you concern is between-battle healing, why not use potions or consumeables instead of "the power of positive thinking"? Bandages are more "realistic" and "gritty".

Sure, that works well. Just remove the "taking stock" option and allow only bandages (which players effectively have an infinite number of) to trigger healing surges. I don't want to use potions since I don't want it to be consumable, while still keeping a soft cap for how long a character can go adventuring per day, along with a sort of reward for using good tactics and taking less damage overall on top of the whole "not dying" bit.

> Zinegata wrote:So, essentially...
> You want to make your players think that they can die very easily by keeping HP counts low.
> But in reality, DR/AC make death far less likely.
> Is this correct?

Absolutely, exactly. That's how the system works out. If the players see a Huge creature they're going to know it's a big bad an can squish them easily while taking massive punishment. Whether that's true or not depends on the actual monster and how much damage they deal out, but monsters, even low-level ones, have the potential to threaten a character which keeps them on their toes. In this way you keep a grittier feel, since a lair full of dozens of goblins who may attack characters at level 6 all at once can be very deadly, though may or may not actually damage characters--but again, they have the potential to, and that's what I'm going for.
An example from my old campaign was (as I've said) that players tried to punch Cthulu in the kisser while charging in without a second thought. I'd rather have people go "oh crap, we're all dead" and know that it's a big problem if the creature is gargantuan rather than charging in blindly. And while this isn't really possible under regular D&D so much, I think that using the combination of rules allows for that without the swinginess of, "Roll a save. Failed? You die," that a lot of the MM monsters bring to the table, especially in a low-magic setting. (In fact, I'd argue that D&D using monsters like beholders, mind flayers, incorps, and the like is a lot more swingy than this set of rules.)
(As an aside, I feel like a lot of my Internet conversations go this way--I can't express myself properly until someone rehashes my argument, takes the basics of it, and rewords it into something understandable when they understand what I'm going for, lol)
Last edited by Ghostwheel on Tue Oct 12, 2010 2:37 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Dr_Noface
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Post by Dr_Noface » Tue Oct 12, 2010 3:11 am

Could you elaborate on your old campaign a bit? Are you referencing the trope "Punch Out Cthulhu" or did your old players actually roll up to R'yleh to put the hurt on Ol Squidhead?
Pretty sweet if they did. That dude's a bitch.
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Ghostwheel
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Post by Ghostwheel » Tue Oct 12, 2010 3:30 am

More the trope. In short an artifact teleported them to a Zeltukal demiplane where this thing fucked with their minds, followed by this one being summoned and them having to fight it. Instead of being freaked out, despite bleeding from their ears and noses from the first on and the second one being huge or gargantuan (can't remember which one it was) they just charged it lol'ing without batting an eye. It just really made me feel disheartened that I had set the whole scene in great detail and the characters, who had rarely/never encountered magic before were all, "lol, let's charge it," since they knew that I run balanced encounters that generally don't autokill people.
Because of the illusion/threat of death with the revision to the system, I expect something like that not only to get the proper response, but perhaps to actually kill a PC or two due to the changes to monsters from large size unless they're actually careful about it or find some other way to hurt it. But the players didn't even really try or ask question, just charged in gung-ho
I hadn't actually realized until that point how much of an impact a system of rules can have on a game's flavor, so lesson learned, if the hard way.
Last edited by Ghostwheel on Tue Oct 12, 2010 3:31 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Sashi
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Post by Sashi » Tue Oct 12, 2010 3:59 am

I guarantee you will not accomplish what you're looking to accomplish.
The only way to make players fear for their character's lives truly and honestly is to constantly murderate them.
It doesn't matter the system, but if PC's generally survive encounters, then players will assume they'll survive the next encounter. If every combat one PC gets flat out killed with one hit, then the players will be more paranoid.
So, really, you're just trying to use game rules to solve a problem that should be addressed through the social contract that says "Yes, you're mechanically able to kill the entire town guard. No, that doesn't mean I can't have the town guard arrest your ass."
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Ghostwheel
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Post by Ghostwheel » Tue Oct 12, 2010 4:33 am

There's a difference there though; if the town guard is no threat to you (level 1 warriors vs. optimized level 6+ PCs? pfft) then the threat is going to be meaningless and characters are going to have virtually no in-character reason not to kill the town guard or half the town if they feel like it.
The difference here is that even if they kill the first town guard, they can't take on all the town guards without potentially dying, especially if they don't have minutes between fights to bandage up or if the guards attack en masse with ranged weapons. Regardless of one's protection rating under GnG, fifty+ arrows each potentially doing anything from 1d8+1 to 1d8+5 or so is going to kill a character each round. This gives not only an out-of-game reason to be careful, but also an in-character reason, and allows low-level enemies to actually matter if there are enough of them rather than just being fireball fodder.
Another example from my old game is that the characters were surrounded completely while in the Wasteland by wild elves who wanted to take them in for questioning. I wasn't actually expecting a fight here, and thought that the PCs would come along, and that it would give me a way to get them out of the Wasteland instead of having them die for their inability to get out on their own. So what do the players do? They slaughter more than a dozen or so elves without a problem rather than being scared of actually dying. I can virtually guarantee you that under GnG the same thing wouldn't happen--but not because I'd have to tell the players, "No, don't do that..." but because the elves, regardless of their level, are a potential threat to the PCs.
Rather than constantly murderating characters to make them fear death, instead I think that you need the threat of death to constantly be looming out of the corner of their eyes. Actual player death disrupts the game and forces player creation from scratch as well as needing to find a way to get a new character into the game as well as a myriad of other problems. Instead, the threat needs to be real that at any moment if they do something really stupid like angering a giant or killing town guards or gang-members indiscriminately, they will die. That's the illusion of death, even if it's not there in the system--though it's not too hard to make characters die if you really want to in GnG. Heck, at level 6 you can drop them down a 50' drop and they're dead. And they know it. That's the beauty of having the illusion/threat of death and not carrying through.
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ubernoob
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Post by ubernoob » Tue Oct 12, 2010 4:49 am

No, you are wrong. GnG actually makes 50 arrows LESS of a threat because of the DR that everyone that didn't die in the first encounter has.
Plus, under E6 fifty arrows is a threat anyways. You've only got like 60 hit points tops, and DR in meaningful amounts is hard to come by.
Your problem is 100% that you are afraid to kill off PCs and 0% that the system is not dangerous enough.
Your rules are stupid and you should feel stupid.
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Leress
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Post by Leress » Tue Oct 12, 2010 4:54 am

> Ghostwheel wrote:
> Another example from my old game is that the characters were surrounded completely while in the Wasteland by wild elves who wanted to take them in for questioning. I wasn't actually expecting a fight here, and thought that the PCs would come along, and that it would give me a way to get them out of the Wasteland instead of having them die for their inability to get out on their own. So what do the players do? They slaughter more than a dozen or so elves without a problem rather than being scared of actually dying. I can virtually guarantee you that under GnG the same thing wouldn't happen--but not because I'd have to tell the players, "No, don't do that..." but because the elves, regardless of their level, are a potential threat to the PCs.

That's not really system problem, it's more like you got mad that they didn't follow your story. Maybe instead of taking them in for questioning you should have made a passing caravan offer aid.

> Koumei wrote:I'm just glad that Jill Stein stayed true to her homeopathic principles by trying to win with .2% of the vote. She just hasn't diluted it enough!

> Koumei wrote:I am disappointed in Santorum: he should carry his dead election campaign to term!

> Just a heads up... Your post is pregnant... When you miss that many periods it's just a given.

> I want him to tongue-punch my box.

]

> The divine in me says the divine in you should go fuck itself.

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Sashi
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Post by Sashi » Tue Oct 12, 2010 4:58 am

That seriously doesn't work. GnG is seriously designed to murderate people at the drop of a hat. If you don't want GnG to murder people at the drop of a hat then you're going to have to pull your punches all the time or they will die at the drop of a hat.
Let's take the real world as an example: people seriously die because you push them and they hit their head. There's a reason a dude with a knife can mug me, and it's not because I'm a pacifist. It's because that 1d4+2 knife can totally murder me and the guy doesn't even have to be particularly lucky to do it. It's seriously worth my wallet to not risk a single blow from a knife.
If every single enemy is a serious and significant threat to the PC's ... then PC death will happen at least as often as heads on a coin flip. If the system makes it so that PC's will die as often as heads on a coin flip, then you have to pull your punches if you don't want that to happen.
If you're always pulling your punches, then the status quo is the "pulled punches" encounters, and you have the exact same problem you do now of having to hold up a little "hey this is a fight where you can't win so please don't try that" flag.
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Username17
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Post by Username17 » Tue Oct 12, 2010 5:06 am

> Maxus wrote:
> The idea sounds like what Elennsar wanted and tried to make ideas for: Arturius.
> And we know how that worked out.

Yeah, I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt early on that he just wanted to play/run a grimdark game and wanted help figuring out how to do that. But no, he's Elennsar mark II, and there is no helping him.
His basic idea is that he wants players to be likely to die, but not actually die. And that is the one thing that a fair game cannot deliver. Whatever is likely to happen will in fact probably actually happen. So if the players are in "real danger" they will really lose their fucking characters. That's just how reality works.
RPGs are not like a piece of single author fiction. You don't get to "defy the odds", because the odds are actually rolled right in front of you with real dice. If you need to roll a 19+ on a d20, then 9 times out of 10 you will not get what you need. Not "someone will say that 9 times out of 10 your plan will fail, thereby adding tension for the audience" but that in actuality the game ends 90% of the time, right there.
The type of tension that he is looking for basically can't be delivered by an RPG's mechanics at all. If the player characters don't die they will not feel particularly mortal and if they do die then the characters themselves will be expendable and the players won't care when they die. If you want to generate the titillation of fear in the players, you're better off with low lights, spooky noises, and sudden changes in tone. Plain old ghost stories work even though there is never any actual chance of the audience suffering any kind of permanent loss at all. Seriously, if you want the feelings of fear, it's all about your personal skills as a storyteller. You could be playing Bunnies and Burroughs or Champions. Or regular vanilla, unmodified D&D. Fucking with the rules is completely orthogonal to that goal. If you can't get people to shiver a bit with your description of the bone yard, it's because you personally suck as a storyteller.
So yeah, I am done responding to this clown. The only thing we can help him with is the rules, but the rules can't give him what he wants and he refuses to listen to reason or math about how they actually work. Fuck, he claims to have done all the math already, but he can't even tell us what an average damage value is for an attack with criticals, apparently because he doesn't realize that when you roll a d20 it can be modeled as 20 different events that each have a 5% chance of occurring. Which would actually be acceptable if he didn't lash out like a cornered ocelot against those people who actually understand that shit.
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Sashi
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Post by Sashi » Tue Oct 12, 2010 5:21 am

> FrankTrollman wrote:You could be playing Bunnies and Burroughs or Champions. Or regular vanilla, unmodified D&D. Fucking with the rules is completely orthogonal to that goal. If you can't get people to shiver a bit with your description of the bone yard, it's because you personally suck as a storyteller.

Easily the scariest RPG session I ever had was Bunnies & Burrows where the burrow was in the lawn of Miskatonic U.
Bunnies & Burroughs sounds like a beat poet RPG: Roll "Trawl" to pick up a bunny at the playboy club. Make your save vs. alcoholism.
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Zinegata
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Post by Zinegata » Tue Oct 12, 2010 6:21 am

Gee. I spend a couple hours thinking of a nice way to say "Those are contradictory goals" and I come back and find people dogpiling on the guy and calling him names, and claiming he's the next coming of Elennsar.
Thanks Denners for being a bunch of paranoid gits. Real classy. Especially when the guy hasn't exactly been calling any of you names.
Still, Ghostwheel, ultimately - your goals are indeed contradictory. You'll eventually have to go one way or another (High Risk of Death, or Special Snowflake), and going the middle route will involve tight-rope DMing to the point that the result is not a system, but a particular DM style.
That doesn't make you a bad person, despite that these idiots here may believe. But it is kinda bad for a published game because your DM style can't exactly be reflected in every other DM.
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Post by Ghostwheel » Tue Oct 12, 2010 9:36 am

First let me say that I respect that everyone has their own opinion, and I'll take the vast overwhelming opinion thus far into consideration. I want to talk to a few people who I find a little less biased than many of the regulars on TGD, and after collecting data I'll decide what I want to do with it--I'm actually considering scrapping the whole thing and not touching it again if it proves to be stupid and not a good idea overall.
However, a rather large thorn is evident in the paw of the argument that characters are going to constantly die in GnG; after doing both the math and playtesting, auto-deaths aren't that common and actual deaths occur fastest usually on the 2nd or 3rd round, and 4-5 is much more common for 1v1 encounters. Can anyone show, with math and numbers from the actual system, that deaths are horribly common?
I gave one example which I think was a fair one where an optimized, if fighter-level, character went 50/50 against an equal-CR creature--right where he should be if it was a sample encounter on the SGT. Could anyone provide a few examples with actual numbers and probabilities and damage outputs why they assume that people autodie? NOT using monsters with the [Awesome] descriptor, of course. No points if you beat a level 3 fighter with an allip or shadow. Generally monsters that rely on save-or-sucks/dies won't land you too many points either.
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cthulhu
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Post by cthulhu » Tue Oct 12, 2010 9:49 am

Edited for being retarded.
Last edited by cthulhu on Tue Oct 12, 2010 10:20 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Kaelik
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Post by Kaelik » Tue Oct 12, 2010 9:51 am

Once again, anything is completely meaningless if you don't have a structure for what encounters are actually present.
If you just say "Blaragaga Show real math." that'snot helpful. What real math? What is a real encounter.
So far you've declared null and void any encounter that can use Color Spray, I assume the same is true of Glitterdust, also anything that's incorporeal, also anything large size or larger, also. What is allowed.

> DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?

The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.
That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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