zanshin
Legendary Pubber
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Runequest 2e encumbrance - wonderfully intuitive; about the only system where I have bothered to enforce encumbrance.Alas, not many games use this.
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Runequest 2e encumbrance - wonderfully intuitive; about the only system where I have bothered to enforce encumbrance.Alas, not many games use this.
Yeah, I did say "not many"....Runequest 2e encumbrance - wonderfully intuitive; about the only system where I have bothered to enforce encumbrance.
Yes, the RQ2 ENC system is just pure in it's simplicityRunequest 2e encumbrance - wonderfully intuitive; about the only system where I have bothered to enforce encumbrance.
It was the one I came up withYeah, I did say "not many"....
Of course the metric system probably wouldn't exist in the far, far future, or in some completely other galaxy (that somehow has humans in it). However, it 'feels' more SF-like than Imperial/US customary, because it's got consistent scaling (powers of ten), and avoids having to use constants when converting from one unit to another or when working with multiple units. Basically, metric is cleaner.
Well, I did specify the year 100 million. That's ~40,000 times farther in the future than traditional Chinese measurements have existed on this reading.As long as people keep having the same number of fingers, decimal systems are still going to be most likely to be in use.
Also, you can always get a page from Chinese measures. Those survive (with minor changes) since the times of Qin Shihuangdi, who also made them decimal.
I don't see a reason to believe metric would be any less viable, especially since it's also decimal!
All of which makes we wonder how useful, really, the seamlessness of metric is for gaming purposes. As I said above, it's nice for an engineering/accounting game with a physics-engine system (GURPS, I'm looking at you) but for other approaches it's not so useful.Sure, that's about all that you need in a game.
In fact, what's the most relevant distance measure for an adventure-focused game? Long/middle/close distance. Those can be covered by range zones just fine and actually much more immersively (for me).
Yes, indeed!Fair enough. A lot of the advantages of metric are only relevant to accounting/engineering style games, it seems to me. If players or gms have to worry about how many hectares they can dust with the franistan bioweapon or the capacity of cargo holds, then metric has advantages.
...then I have never played a Space Opera game, it seems.In a more Space Opera sort of game, this kind of thing does not come up. Or a game with a narrative system rather than a physics-engine approach.
Sure, but then it's also ~2000 times further in the future than the modern humans have existed (counting from the Cromagnon man despite theories for crossbreeding with the Denisovian proto-humans and Neanderthals).Well, I did specify the year 100 million. That's ~40,000 times farther in the future than traditional Chinese measurements have existed on this reading.
If yes, than true. However, modern sniper rifles can quite well kill you a kilometer away, and rocket launchers can have greater than that. Weapons in a SF environment might be even better.All of which makes we wonder how useful, really, the seamlessness of metric is for gaming purposes. As I said above, it's nice for an engineering/accounting game with a physics-engine system (GURPS, I'm looking at you) but for other approaches it's not so useful.
The perceived weakness of traditional units is that they are a hodgepodge of measures that are not really related to one another. The reason for this, of course, is that they weren't designed to be. Each type of measurement was employed in a specific context. The fact that a mile is 5280 feet just wasn't that significant; one unit was used for short distances, the other for longer.
If the same is true in a game--if one only uses specific measures in specific situations--then easy conversion of one to another isn't very important.
Sure, but that's for spaceship travel/combat, strictly. I'm thinking "planetside vehicles" and "personal weapons", which might well switch between personal range and kilometers away.In a way, it's ironic that we are having this discussion in the context of SF, since it shows this feature strongly. Big-scale astronomical distances are not generally measured in either miles or kilometers, but in other units which have no simple relationship to either linear scale, or to each other: the astronomical unit, the light-year, and the parsec.
That may not be the designer/writer's fault but the layout person.The One Ring 2e: Ruins of the Lost Realms. Looks lovely; maps leak over pages. Do the graphic designers play RPGs?
Well the AU, LY and parsec do all have a clear and simple relation to each other as well as being linear. They are all just measures of distance...now what distance really means on parsec and light-year scales is an interesting question..... Big-scale astronomical distances are not generally measured in either miles or kilometers, but in other units which have no simple relationship to either linear scale, or to each other: the astronomical unit, the light-year, and the parsec.
Runequest 2e encumbrance - wonderfully intuitive; about the only system where I have bothered to enforce encumbrance.
Yeah, I did say "not many"....
Yes, the RQ2 ENC system is just pure in it's simplicity
Most of the better encumberance systems were influenced by this
Many of the other ones seem so fiddily by comparison (including RQ3's fatigue pts/encumberance rules)
I don't know RQ6/Mythras does it, but you could carry items without penalty = average of STR & CON, but never higher than your STR.So how did RQ2 do encumbrance? Was it significantly different than RQ6/Mythras?
We are prepping a Steampunk SWADE campaign, none of us having played Savage Worlds before. SWADE is a very nice compact rulebook that worked well even though we were passing it around the table at the pub.
But my, there are some redundancies. Abilities and Skills are both Traits. One has to look under Traits to find them. Traits appear to be a completely unnecessary category. If one wants to cast a spell you have to choose an Edge, a Skill and a Power to get there. Again there is a redundant stratum. Are these things fan service left over from old editions, i.e. “it’s just not Savage Worlds” without them?
I’d also like to give a shout out to Mean Streets from Precis Intermedia. What a nicely designed ruleset with everything where it should be, including stat blocks for stock NPCs that are very easy to lift and plug in. All black & white with good illustrations. Was design just better fifteen years ago than it is now with barely readable full colour? Has anyone ever got Mean Streets to table? How does it play?
Function is form!I'd think that's more down to layout than design!
Dirty hippie storygame nonsense!Function is form!
I agree that it would have been a good move with SWADE to just make all Traits one category. I think Abilities and skills are often redundant in games. Sadly, I think it's too soon to do another big change to SW. The biggest problem would be that it would weaken backwards compatibility, which SW has been pretty good at keeping so far.We are prepping a Steampunk SWADE campaign, none of us having played Savage Worlds before. SWADE is a very nice compact rulebook that worked well even though we were passing it around the table at the pub.
But my, there are some redundancies. Abilities and Skills are both Traits. One has to look under Traits to find them. Traits appear to be a completely unnecessary category. If one wants to cast a spell you have to choose an Edge, a Skill and a Power to get there. Again there is a redundant stratum. Are these things fan service left over from old editions, i.e. “it’s just not Savage Worlds” without them?
I’d also like to give a shout out to Mean Streets from Precis Intermedia. What a nicely designed ruleset with everything where it should be, including stat blocks for stock NPCs that are very easy to lift and plug in. All black & white with good illustrations. Was design just better fifteen years ago than it is now with barely readable full colour? Has anyone ever got Mean Streets to table? How does it play?
That's my feeling. I can see the issue, but it doesn't matter in the heat of play.If I were creating a game, it would either use only attributes or only skills. I'm not a fan of any game having both, especially as the split between them is often arbitrary and poorly thought out.
That said, I've been running a SWADE game for nearly 3.5 years, and in-play the attributes/skills split has been a complete non-issue.
Eh, the thing about Savage Worlds and Attributes vs Skills is that in general the way it works is: Skill = Active use, Attribute = Passive Use.
Attributes are rolled in response to someone using a skill on you, or in cases in the system where you would be resisting something (like soak rolls). This is useful because everyone has all 5 Attributes, while not everyone would have every skill.
Yeah, but from what I've read so far, every resistance test tends to be either a Spirit or Vigor test, and Strength seems to exist just for melee damage. Everything else seems to be a skill test, and there's no reason why there can't be a Resolve (Spirit) and Endurance (Vigor) skill that everyone has for free at d4, just like Athletics, Notice, etc. And melee weapons could just do double dice damage, like ranged weapons, with a bonus from Size or if you have the Brawny edge or whatever.
Plus Parry is a passive value derived from a skill so there's already precedent for skill being used to resist stuff. Granted, Parry is a static value, while Spirit and Vigor test make you do opposed rolls. But mathematically they're almost the same thing, since Parry is the average die value +2. And there are also skills used for opposed rolls essentially to resist stuff, like Stealth vs Notice.
So Attributes are basically just a skill tax. They're something you have to blow an Advance every once in a while to avoid having to pay double for skill increases.
Check the rules on Tests. Tests are a big deal and a central part of the combat system and you should be using them. If you had to explicitly buy up skills to counter tests, then they would be WAY too easy to pull off. Also, Smarts is used for the range of powers, and quite a few powers are resisted by various Attributes. Also Evasion for area of effect attacks is Agility. There are a ton of places in the rules where Attributes are used passively or reflexively.
How would skills be easier to pull off when they're on the same scale as attributes for rolls? They're also more specific and numerous, so you'd still be spread thin trying to grab every resistance related skill (if they were treated as skills), even if skills cost only half as much as attributes.
Power ranges could be handled by the power's skill, which is more directly related. Stuff resisted by Smarts could be replaced with Academics, or Notice in the case of stuff like Illusions. Evasion could be handled with Athletics. Stuff resisted by Strength could probably be resisted with Athletics as well, though, that might weight things in favor of Athletics a bit as the go-to skill for physical stuff.
Looking at powers, though, there's a lot of stuff that's resisted by skills already, so it's not like this is an alien concept to the game. The majority of stuff is resisted by Spirit, though, which could just as easily be a skill.
By the way, I'm not disputing that attribute tests appear listed in the rules. What I'm asking is, are they truly necessary from a game design point of view? Do these test have to be handled by attributes specifically, as opposed to an appropriate skill (which are already used in some situations)? Cuz I think skills alone would handle a lot of this stuff more efficiently, rather than relying on attributes that have only situational uses and otherwise just tax your skill development.
They would be easier to pull off because no way in hell that you can buy up all the resistances you would need to resist them, so it would be way easier for someone to find a skill you have no skill in resist to. By making the defenses against attributes, which everyone has, it keeps tests from being incredibly easy.
And if you did decide to make them all skills, then defenses would basically just become must buy skills. Especially whatever is used for soak.
By making them attributes that use a different set of points, you end up having to balance your various defenses against each other, rather than balancing your skills and defenses against each other.
Also, I would say the intention IS to make skill development a little bit harder on the higher end. Hitting d12 in a skill is way too easy if you take away the attribute limits.
And then you kind of end up with the same thing you have now but even weirder in my opinion. All the other skills are about actively doing things, but then you have these five defensive skills thrown in there that you don't really actively use. And you have to use the same pool of points for both.
I think of it like D&D saves. They could have been shoved into the skill system, but it feels wonky for them to use the same resources.
Idk man, I can get that you don't like it, but I guess I am coming from the perception of the thread title "Game Design Sins" and I just don't see this as being objectionable, just a different way than you would have done it.
Sadly, that's how I feel about practically all the rpgs I've read. There are so many factors that can affect how a round performs even when you're looking at just one caliber that actual realism is impossible.Even if things are going well to that point, sooner or later I get to the equipment section, and I'm reminded that their gun stats don't make a lot of sense
How much experience do we actually have of humans being shot with .50 BMG? And then at the same range you would shoot a Garand? If the target is a person, .50 BMG is being used at ranges over a mile.Sadly, that's how I feel about practically all the rpgs I've read. There are so many factors that can affect how a round performs even when you're looking at just one caliber that actual realism is impossible.
But yeah, I facepalmed hard when I first read SW and saw that getting hit by .50 BMG was only a tiny bit more damaging than a bullet from a Garand. Gun damage as a whole is far too compressed into a narrow range. I also really hate how the big two-handed melee weapons aren't worth using at all.
The weapons in SW have always been designed specifically for tabletop mini play. As an example, weapon ranges are deliberately short. I like Savage Worlds, but it's not a game that works well if you are looking realism. Savage Worlds just isn't interested in that.I bounce off Savage Worlds every time I read it. Even if things are going well to that point, sooner or later I get to the equipment section, and I'm reminded that their gun stats don't make a lot of sense, and at that point I lose trust that they've done the rest of the game right. SWADE is 'better' because they've removed the katana's massive 'ethnic badass' bonuses and simply taken out more of the offending guns (not fixed, just removed from the rules), but it's still not good there, and I can't get past that.
I can forgive the narrow damage range - the whole damage range in SW is very narrow, and it's obviously a fairly coarse system.Sadly, that's how I feel about practically all the rpgs I've read. There are so many factors that can affect how a round performs even when you're looking at just one caliber that actual realism is impossible.
But yeah, I facepalmed hard when I first read SW and saw that getting hit by .50 BMG was only a tiny bit more damaging than a bullet from a Garand. Gun damage as a whole is far too compressed into a narrow range. I also really hate how the big two-handed melee weapons aren't worth using at all.
This is exactly why I usually don't give a shit about this level of detail when it comes to guns.I can forgive the narrow damage range - the whole damage range in SW is very narrow, and it's obviously a fairly coarse system.
From the Deluxe Edition:
However, that's no excuse to have all pistols do basically the same damage except the 9mm Glock (2d6+1 and 2d8 are basically the same once you account for open-ended dice) and the Ruger .22 (and .22LR doing 2d6-1? Really?).
Then there's the matter of the AK-47 doing more damage than the G3 (7.62x51mm NATO). That should be reversed. Which machinegunes get 2d8 vs 2d8+1 seems to be pretty arbitrary. For some unknown reason a .50 BMG is a 'Heavy Weapon' but the 14.5mm KPV is not (I assume this was just an oversight), but the .50 BMG should not have better armour penetration than the 14.5mm.
As for the AT and tank guns... They are simply awful.
And of course there's the armour-piercing katana that does damage like a greatsword, but doesn't require nearly as much Str, or even 2-hands.
SWADE brings the katana back in line, and reduces .22 pistol damage, but still insists that 9mm is worse than .45 which is as good as .357 magnum. It also still has the AK-47 doing more damage than 7.62x51mm battle rifles and .30-06 rifles. It 'solves' the 14.5mm machinegun problem by removing it. Vehicle weapons still have issues, though some typos have been fixed.
As none of this was hard to research even in the pre-internet days, do what else did they mess up? That's what the little voice in my head keeps saying.
Sorry, meant to hit “sad”. Getting guns wrong is no laughing matter.I bounce off Savage Worlds every time I read it. Even if things are going well to that point, sooner or later I get to the equipment section, and I'm reminded that their gun stats don't make a lot of sense, and at that point I lose trust that they've done the rest of the game right. SWADE is 'better' because they've removed the katana's massive 'ethnic badass' bonuses and simply taken out more of the offending guns (not fixed, just removed from the rules), but it's still not good there, and I can't get past that.
I don't care about the short weapon ranges - I get why they're like that. I don't care that .50AE Desert Eagles do the same damage as rifles - I get why they do that. But... when you have a system that does distinguish between 'big pistol' and 'medium pistol' and 'small pistol', for the love of all, get them in the right category. Saying an M1 Garand does the same damage as a single shot from an M16, while an AK-47 does more than either, that will bust any suspension of disbelief I had good and hard, and probably irreparably.The weapons in SW have always been designed specifically for tabletop mini play. As an example, weapon ranges are deliberately short. I like Savage Worlds, but it's not a game that works well if you are looking realism. Savage Worlds just isn't interested in that.