The Gaming Den

Frank honestly believes that random chance is better at making sure the outfits of characters are genre-appropriate than player choice.

FrankTrollman wrote:

Ice9 wrote:On the one extreme, we have the clown suit position, and on the other, we have total and instant fungibility.

Again and still: the people advocating that a single player should have full control over the look and feel of everything they wear is advocating clown suits. As in: if a single person gets full fungibility on all their stuff, they are going to end up in brightly multicolored spandex. Eclectic equipment isn't clown suits. Color coordinated uniforms that only one person thinks are cool - that is a clown suit.

-Username17

Fuchs wrote:Frank honestly believes that random chance is better at making sure the outfits of characters are genre-appropriate than player choice.

Assuming we are talking about the genre of fantasy adventure, of course it is. You know what else is better at making sure outfits are genre appropriate? Every other system than player choice. The genre of fantasy adventure has characters change their appearance based on their adventures. If you find a Hydra Trident, you are now holding a Hydra Trident. If you find Crystal Armor, you are wearing Crystal Armor.

Placed items. Random items. Procedurally generated items. Any item system at all other than "player's superhero outfit doesn't change" is more genre appropriate.

The one and only truly genre-inappropriate system for handling items is for the character's equipment to not appear to change as they got equipment upgrades in their adventures. Because that would be like a 16-bit video game, and not at all like a fantasy adventure story.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:

Fuchs wrote:Frank honestly believes that random chance is better at making sure the outfits of characters are genre-appropriate than player choice.

Assuming we are talking about the genre of fantasy adventure, of course it is. You know what else is better at making sure outfits are genre appropriate? Every other system than player choice. The genre of fantasy adventure has characters change their appearance based on their adventures. If you find a Hydra Trident, you are now holding a Hydra Trident. If you find Crystal Armor, you are wearing Crystal Armor.

Placed items. Random items. Procedurally generated items. Any item system at all other than "player's superhero outfit doesn't change" is more genre appropriate.

The one and only truly genre-inappropriate system for handling items is for the character's equipment to not appear to change as they got equipment upgrades in their adventures. Because that would be like a 16-bit video game, and not at all like a fantasy adventure story.

-Username17

You really don't understand that "characters are scavenging hobos wearing mismatched equipment" is a tiny part of the Fantasy genre. Usually, characters find at most a few items, often just one or two, and they don't change them at all over the course of the story. They don't get regular equipment upgrades. Watch Record of Loddoss Wars, for an example.

And you also do not understand that the vast majority of players do not want to play x-men in spandex in Greyhawk. Nor do you understand that the vast majority of groups doesn't need game mechanics to deal with those players who insist on such even if that bothers the rest of the group. Normal, sane, people don't say "the rules say you have to randomly roll your Outfit, so you cannot wear green spandex with pink dots" but instead say "Stop being an asshole, we're playing in the Forgotten Realms, not Gotham".

It's rather pathetic how you try to solve social problems - one player ruining a game for the rest of the group - with game mechanics that ruin the game for many, many more players.

Desdan_Mervolam wrote:Basically, I'm taking Frank's response as either "Yes, I'm incredibly petty, thanks for asking", or that Frank is turning into Walter Sobchack and yelling "This isn't 'Nam! There are Rules!".

OR you can take the non-petty interpretation, where you substitute color with any number of attributes. A trident that calls lightning is a far cry in aesthetics from a broadsword that breathes fire, but roughly perform the same mechanical function; and that's only an example and not intended to be analyzed for precise circumstances where that specific example might or might not work.

While wishlists are largely fine, there is a real concern where if they're given too much power, you end up with a party of Elothars. It doesn't matter whether they toppled the Razor Temples of the sahuagin, conquered the Seven Shaitans, or freed the grippli from the Emerald Copse; they will wear mind flayer penis extensions, wield storm-controlling hammers, and ride a flying nimbus. Their adventures have no ontological inertia, leaving no mark on the character whose final image/destination is made independent of the actual adventures that brought them there.

virgil wrote:
While wishlists are largely fine, there is a real concern where if they're given too much power, you end up with a party of Elothars. It doesn't matter whether they toppled the Razor Temples of the sahuagin, conquered the Seven Shaitans, or freed the grippli from the Emerald Copse; they will wear mind flayer penis extensions, wield storm-controlling hammers, and ride a flying nimbus. Their adventures have no ontological inertia, leaving no mark on the character whose final image/destination is made independent of the actual adventures that brought them there.

And that is not a bad thing at all! As long as everyone is ok with that adventures do not have to mark player characters at all.

Crazy, late-night drunken idea:

What if instead of wish-lists and wealth by level, someone made an item/wealth/drop system with Draft Picks, Salary Caps and Restricted Free-Agent magic items? Is there anything actually adaptable from major-league sports team-building to fantasy game item collecting?

Fuchs wrote:You really don't understand that "characters are scavenging hobos wearing mismatched equipment" is a tiny part of the Fantasy genre. Usually, characters find at most a few items, often just one or two, and they don't change them at all over the course of the story. They don't get regular equipment upgrades. Watch Record of Loddoss Wars, for an example.

Wow. Did you just use a show that is cheaply made and reuses animation cells from earlier episodes as an example of how things are supposed to work? News flash: Lodoss Wars doesn't have people change their appearance because they have a limited budget. If they had an unlimited animation budget, characters would change appearance more. Although even in that context, may I remind you: this is Parn:



One of the points of a table top RPG is that your "animation budget" is literally limitless, and you are not constrained in that way.

Now if you're talking about other genres, that's different. In Superhero genre, you don't change equipment. In Cyberpunk genre, you get adventure rewards of "money" and you buy whatever the fuck you want between adventures. But in fantasy adventures, you fucking find stuff and these trophies alter your appearance. That is how it works.

-Username17

One of the points of a table top rpg is that you are not limited to armor and weapon skins like in a video game.

As far as upgrading gear goes: People don't do that in Fantasy literature. They don't start wearing magic armor +1, then wear magic armor +2 etc. etc. They might get one magic armor suit replacing their mundane armor (often after it got destroyed). In Wheel of Time, Mat gets a few nifty items and keeps using them, he doesn't upgrade his Magic weapon a few times, he doesn't replaces his Fox Amulett with an Amulett of bear.

I cannot remember any story where characters upgrade gear as if it was a Video game - Apart from Magic Knight Rayearth, where the characters comment on how like a Video game it is, and even there the gear changed form when getting upgraded, it wasn't replaced.

Fuchs wrote:

virgil wrote:While wishlists are largely fine, there is a real concern where if they're given too much power, you end up with a party of Elothars. It doesn't matter whether they toppled the Razor Temples of the sahuagin, conquered the Seven Shaitans, or freed the grippli from the Emerald Copse; they will wear mind flayer penis extensions, wield storm-controlling hammers, and ride a flying nimbus. Their adventures have no ontological inertia, leaving no mark on the character whose final image/destination is made independent of the actual adventures that brought them there.

And that is not a bad thing at all! As long as everyone is ok with that adventures do not have to mark player characters at all.

And that is when the comparison with 4-color superheroes is apt. The fact is fantasy adventure is a different genre, where the character is at least partially shaped by the events of the story. If you decide adventures don't leave marks, then the entire system is better suited toward episodic adventure, where the character is essentially the same at the start of every story and will not bother adding the more powerful Black Wand to his backpack because everything is reset once the credits roll.

Fuchs wrote:As far as upgrading gear goes: People don't do that in Fantasy literature. They don't start wearing magic armor +1, then wear magic armor +2 etc. etc. They might get one magic armor suit replacing their mundane armor (often after it got destroyed). In Wheel of Time, Mat gets a few nifty items and keeps using them, he doesn't upgrade his Magic weapon a few times, he doesn't replaces his Fox Amulett with an Amulett of bear.

Forest through the trees, mate. The Christmas Tree Effect & level-appropriate race of D&D's equipment is a completely different goalpost from that of wishlists.

tussock wrote:

Wiseman wrote:So basically he views D&D as DM vs. Player.

I'm not Shadzar, but I think that's generally not how the AD&D mentality works.

It's D&D as World vs Character.

not entirely, it is her is your character, there is the world. go forth and multiply or something like that. WYSIWYG. the world exists to make sense, not to be a series of rooms for people to just collect the treasure they dream of.

gnolls are with the bandits because they chose to be for some reason. the reason you must find out through paly if you want to know, or just kill em all and not find out, but possibly miss other plot hooks they might have been able to give. maybe someone later will have the same plot hook, but from a different angle.

Character IN world is what it is. this is what i like on BOTH sides of the screen. to let the players make what they can of the game that is there. if you cant get to Bumblefuckia yet, then its probably because i haven't designed it, so stay close to where you are or take a bit of time to travel there and dont expect the travel to be handwaved or when you get there you will find a vast empty plain, cause maps and dungeons and people take time to create.

why do the gnolls and bandits have the treasure they have? cause they stole it from other people. why else would that have a wagon full of oil lamps? probably shouldn't eat the roast they are serving tonight either, cause it was selling oil lamps earlier today.

virgil wrote:

Fuchs wrote:

virgil wrote:While wishlists are largely fine, there is a real concern where if they're given too much power, you end up with a party of Elothars. It doesn't matter whether they toppled the Razor Temples of the sahuagin, conquered the Seven Shaitans, or freed the grippli from the Emerald Copse; they will wear mind flayer penis extensions, wield storm-controlling hammers, and ride a flying nimbus. Their adventures have no ontological inertia, leaving no mark on the character whose final image/destination is made independent of the actual adventures that brought them there.

And that is not a bad thing at all! As long as everyone is ok with that adventures do not have to mark player characters at all.

And that is when the comparison with 4-color superheroes is apt. The fact is fantasy adventure is a different genre, where the character is at least partially shaped by the events of the story. If you decide adventures don't leave marks, then the entire system is better suited toward episodic adventure, where the character is essentially the same at the start of every story and will not bother adding the more powerful Black Wand to his backpack because everything is reset once the credits roll.

No, that's not true. You can have adventures, even campaigns, and yet don't have the characters get marked by it and nothing is reset since the consequences from the adventures linger. They simply don't result in visual changes. In my current campaign the players helped put the true sultan on the throne in the City of Brass. That means they visit often, have a grateful Sultan as an ally, who recently opened an embassy in their home town, and often speak about their heroic deeds in the battle for the palace of the Sultan, yet the characters were not visually changed, nor does their gear have a particular "Fire Plane" note or theme.

It's entirely possible to have a character who changes internally, not externally, in response to adventures. Or a character who changes not all, instead changing the world around him through his deeds.

FrankTrollman wrote:

Fuchs wrote:You really don't understand that "characters are scavenging hobos wearing mismatched equipment" is a tiny part of the Fantasy genre. Usually, characters find at most a few items, often just one or two, and they don't change them at all over the course of the story. They don't get regular equipment upgrades. Watch Record of Loddoss Wars, for an example.

Wow. Did you just use a show that is cheaply made and reuses animation cells from earlier episodes as an example of how things are supposed to work? News flash: Lodoss Wars doesn't have people change their appearance because they have a limited budget. If they had an unlimited animation budget, characters would change appearance more.

-Username17

Yet Goku always wears the same damn thing, so does Naruto, Ichigo Kurosaki, Ash Ketchum, etc...

Lodoss Wars is based on D&D was the point. the money they had had nothing to do with the story written. they had PLENTY of movie then for anime just as they do now. Lodoss Wars was pretty much the D&D cartoon, done right.

Fuchs wrote:No, that's not true. You can have adventures, even campaigns, and yet don't have the characters get marked by it and nothing is reset since the consequences from the adventures linger. They simply don't result in visual changes. In my current campaign the players helped put the true sultan on the throne in the City of Brass. That means they visit often, have a grateful Sultan as an ally, who recently opened an embassy in their home town, and often speak about their heroic deeds in the battle for the palace of the Sultan, yet the characters were not visually changed, nor does their gear have a particular "Fire Plane" note or theme.

That isn't a counter! They explicitly have equipment/traits from a previous adventure as decided by the events of that adventure; an sultan contact and an efreeti embassy that can be used as a safehouse. It's using an aspect of the rules w/little in the way of support, so they must rely solely on the DM's benevolence for it to be a feature, but it is absolutely something in other systems that would be added to a character sheet with game mechanics attached. This is why Frank originally used the color adjective, because you get into petty gotcha fights with specific examples.

virgil wrote:

Fuchs wrote:No, that's not true. You can have adventures, even campaigns, and yet don't have the characters get marked by it and nothing is reset since the consequences from the adventures linger. They simply don't result in visual changes. In my current campaign the players helped put the true sultan on the throne in the City of Brass. That means they visit often, have a grateful Sultan as an ally, who recently opened an embassy in their home town, and often speak about their heroic deeds in the battle for the palace of the Sultan, yet the characters were not visually changed, nor does their gear have a particular "Fire Plane" note or theme.

That isn't a counter! They explicitly have equipment/traits from a previous adventure as decided by the events of that adventure; an sultan contact and an efreeti embassy that can be used as a safehouse. It's using an aspect of the rules w/little in the way of support, so they must rely solely on the DM's benevolence for it to be a feature, but it is absolutely something in other systems that would be added to a character sheet with game mechanics attached. This is why Frank originally used the color adjective, because you get into petty gotcha fights with specific examples.

Avoiding unwanted visual changes to a character is one point in favor of wish lists, or more limited "pick the style of the item you find" player agency. Like it or not, but a number of people considers getting to pick their style as one of the most important aspects of any gear system.

I'm going to take a break from responding to Fuchs' never ending diatribe about how he refuses to accept that replacing the genre conventions of medieval fantasy adventure with the genre conventions of future or modern storytelling is something which is less "in genre" for medieval fantasy adventure storytelling than not doing that. Because Josh had an actually interesting idea.

Josh_Kablack wrote:Crazy, late-night drunken idea:

What if instead of wish-lists and wealth by level, someone made an item/wealth/drop system with Draft Picks, Salary Caps and Restricted Free-Agent magic items? Is there anything actually adaptable from major-league sports team-building to fantasy game item collecting?

Really, that seems like something more applicable for a "market" scenario. It could be a souls market, a magic swords market, or an alien artifacts market. Such systems are reasonably fair feeling and interesting minigames in and of themselves, but they take a fair amount of time and you'd only want to do them at infrequent intervals.

And I don't see it working for Dragon treasure piles unless you routinely teamed up with other groups to go on "raids".

-Username17

virgil wrote:

Desdan_Mervolam wrote:Basically, I'm taking Frank's response as either "Yes, I'm incredibly petty, thanks for asking", or that Frank is turning into Walter Sobchack and yelling "This isn't 'Nam! There are Rules!".

OR you can take the non-petty interpretation, where you substitute color with any number of attributes.

Or you could take the interpretation that Frank has a history of talking about color specifically as a specific example attribute that HE wants control of and has "Clown Suit" related opinions of, from the last time this was talked about, and he was referring to that and has even on this thread continued to talk about and re-affirm his "fuck you anything but a mish mash of differently sized, styled and coloured items IS A CLOWN SUIT... why are people laughing at my not clown suits?" on THIS THREAD NOW.

His "fuck you its a variable I never really meant I want to control the item drops players get right down to not letting them pick colours, that would be insanely petty! It was just a place holder!" Only ACTUALLY would work if he ACTUALLY didn't want to control the colours of item drops. Which he does. And has re-affirmed he does. Since he has re-affirmed that you would have to be very very stupid to pretend that what Frank is saying and what the topic of the discussion is about is anything OTHER than his petty desired for petty control right up to that very petty level.

FrankTrollman wrote:I'm going to take a break from responding to Fuchs' never ending diatribe about how he refuses to accept that replacing the genre conventions of medieval fantasy adventure with the genre conventions of future or modern storytelling is something which is less "in genre" for medieval fantasy adventure storytelling than not doing that.

Because you can't actually name those dozens of novels and movies where characters continually replace their gear randomly. Where they end up wearing patchwork armor.

Because your claims about genre conventions are lies or delusions. Fantasy literature doesn't have their protagonists change gear often. They may acquire one or two signature items, and that is it. Even in D&D novels they don't replace chain mail with a Magic leather armor, followed by a Magic mithril shirt and then magic hide armor with better stats. The knights of the round table don't replace sword and lance with scythe and lucerne hammer.

In the Fantasy genre, by and large characters do not change as you claim.

You can't treat magic items as both technology AND magic. Can't be both.

As tech, they won't match up to character themes and will instead match up with circumstance (Thayan magic robes are all red), are bought and sold as physical objects in markets or auctions or private sales, can be broken or repaired or cannibalized for parts, and otherwise conform to the expectations of objects of technology as we know them.

If handled as magic, then you can insert any kind of rules and still be plausible. You can just say that "Fate brings the object of power to it's destined owner" and have a character's wishlist of items that fit his theme show up at predictable intervals. You can have armor resize to specific character or for the Sword of Kas to turn pink with white polka dots when the Jester picks it up and writes it into his character sheet. You can have items only work for the character that is meant to have them, thus rendering all magic items worthless as fungible goods.

As magic, you can address game balance issues or storytelling issues with your rules for items; as tech, magic items will always be unbalanced because technology is always unbalancing.

Trying to do magic items as both gives you the problems of both and none of the benefits of either.

Thing is, while magic items that transform to fit their owners is totally a thing, that transformation almost invariably goes both ways. When Sailor Moon gets the Silver Crystal, it transforms into a heart locket thing, but her outfit also changes and she gets wings and hair crystals and stuff. The Soul Edge becomes a cutlass for Cervantes and a zweihander for Siegfried, but when those people pick it up they turn into ghost pirates and demon knights and their skin turns purple and stuff. The One Ring will size-adjust to your finger, but it will gradually turn you into a Nazgul.

The thing Fuchs keeps talking about, where you acquire items and then your numbers go up but your character's sprite doesn't change - that doesn't really happen except in mediums that have limited animation budgets.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:Thing is, while magic items that transform to fit their owners is totally a thing, that transformation almost invariably goes both ways. When Sailor Moon gets the Silver Crystal, it transforms into a heart locket thing, but her outfit also changes and she gets wings and hair crystals and stuff. The Soul Edge becomes a cutlass for Cervantes and a zweihander for Siegfried, but when those people pick it up they turn into ghost pirates and demon knights and their skin turns purple and stuff. The One Ring will size-adjust to your finger, but it will gradually turn you into a Nazgul.

The thing Fuchs keeps talking about, where you acquire items and then your numbers go up but your character's sprite doesn't change - that doesn't really happen except in mediums that have limited animation budgets.

-Username17

No, what doesn't happen in Fantasy is that characters pick up a magic sword, and then discard it for a magic axe next adventure, and replace the magic mithril chainshirt with a gleaming Magic bronze breastplate in the quest after that. Characters in Fantasy generally don't are scavengers whose outfits and gear change every adventure.

And many players don't want to play "guy uses whatever gives the most plusses". They don't want a dice roll to determine if they are wearing a black breastplate or a shinting silver chainmail shirt. They do not want to let random chance set what weapon their character uses.

And they don't give a damn about "the mystery of magic items only random drops can give" if that means their characters will end up looking stupid and wiedling weapons they don't like.

You still cannot those dozens of books where people discard their magic sword for a better magic axe, and upgrade their shining magic chain Shirt to a blood-red magic breastplate "because it has more plusses". That's because by and large, in Fantasy, you don't do that.

Ok what I'm getting from Fuchs seems to hold true in fantasy novels. He's saying not that a character can't be shaped by an adventure but that most of the time in fantasy literature characters only get 'a few items' and stick with those through most of the adventure.

I do not believe that it directly conflicts with what Frank is saying on any more than a petty level though. Fuchs essentially admits that characters can be changed by what they pick up but is thinking that Frank is saying that characters MUST be reshaped by EVERY item they encounter.

What I believe Frank means to say is that a character should be shaped by the adventure and it is better if they are shaped in an 'organic' way then by plotting out their character before they even start.

So this whole argument seems to be missing the part where players can 'elect' to use what they find or not and in no way is Fuchs actually countering Franks point except maybe on the frequency that changes happen.

At least this is my take on it.

Fuchs wrote:No, what doesn't happen in Fantasy is that characters pick up a magic sword, and then discard it for a magic axe next adventure, and replace the magic mithril chainshirt with a gleaming Magic bronze breastplate in the quest after that. Characters in Fantasy generally don't are scavengers whose outfits and gear change every adventure.

That only "doesn't happen" in games and stories that don't last long enough. In stories that drag on long enough, characters do in fact get series of magic weapons that they trade up to. In Wheel of Time, Rand uses Tam's special sword, the glass sword, Lam's special sword, the Buddha of power, the dragon scepter/spear, and the Dragon sword. In Sailor Moon, the titular character uses the Moon Wand, the Holy Chalice, the Moon Rod, the Spiral Heart, the Kaleidoscope, the Moon Tiara, the Princess Sword, and the Hair Feather.

The question is not whether you will eventually see characters upgrade and change their equipment. The question is merely what rate they will acquire new equipment, and whether the story will go on long enough for the character's equipment to upgrade and change more than once or twice.

At the limit of infinite chapters, all characters in fantasy will get a weapon rack looking like this:



It's not even possible for you to produce a counterexample, because by definition any character who hasn't had their equipment change due to finding upgrades taking them in a different direction merely hasn't had that happen yet.

-Username17

Fuchs wrote:Because you can't actually name those dozens of novels and movies where characters continually replace their gear randomly. Where they end up wearing patchwork armor.

Those characters do wear what they find in their adventures. How many fantasy adventure novels and movies can you name where the protagonist thinks the Black Knight's sword should be melted down into a nice set of knives? How many times is the Robe of Eyes traded w/the neighboring wizard for a mithral breastplate during a short cutscene? I know Frank hasn't mentioned this, but I am; revolving door gear is a symptom of D&D's completely separate problems of gear not scaling with level and being a part of a fifteen-piece ensemble. It's also related to the fact that D&D posits a level of advancement VERY rare in fantasy adventure stories.

MGuy wrote:So this whole argument seems to be missing the part where players can 'elect' to use what they find or not and in no way is Fuchs actually countering Franks point except maybe on the frequency that changes happen.

The point that is missing is the reason why letting players decide (at least) the look of what items they find is a bad thing. Frank's frothing at the mouth at the idea that players can decide what their characters will wear and wield, but all he can name is "genre convention" and other lies.

Hint: He-man may have other weapons in his golf bag/weapon rack, but his main and defining weapon is his sword. Same for Lionel from Thundercats. Rand is, when he fights in melee, a swordsman, and uses a sword. Matrim has his staff/glaive. Wolfboy has his axe and bow.

Since he brought up Computer games as counter examples: Almost all MMOGs offer an appearance tab or ways to change the look of a piece of gear. That's because they realize that players want to decide how their characters look. A System that Forces players to let random dice rolls decide how their gear Looks is shitty and needs to be changed. A wishlist without any mechanics is better than randomly assigned outfits and weapons.

virgil wrote:

Fuchs wrote:Because you can't actually name those dozens of novels and movies where characters continually replace their gear randomly. Where they end up wearing patchwork armor.

Those characters do where what they find in their adventures. How many fantasy adventure novels and movies can you name where the protagonist thinks the Black Knight's sword should be melted down into a nice set of knives? How many times is the Robe of Eyes traded w/the neighboring wizard for a mithral breastplate during a short cutscene? I know Frank hasn't mentioned this, but I am; revolving door gear is a symptom of D&D's completely separate problems of gear not scaling with level and being a part of a fifteen-piece ensemble. It's also related to the fact that D&D posits a level of advancement VERY rare in fantasy adventure stories.

Yeah, the characters do. But the authors don't randomly roll as far as I know. They decide what the characters find, and how they look. And in that aspect, a player is like a co-author - they create their character, and shape them.

If you don't even give a player the right to define their own character's looks and style then you have control issues.

And that's a Point in wish list's favor: It allows players to emulate the Fantasy genre and play what they want, not what the dice say they should play.