One D&D

[hawkeyefan]

I remember quite liking d20 Cthulhu

Yeah, it actually wasn't bad. I think that's mostly because without armor, AC/defenses are lower, which works well with investigators being vulnerable. Similarly, you limit the accrual of HP and the combo works well to keep the characters very squishy.

For most other genres, where the characters are likely meant to be as capable in their worlds as a D&D character would be in its world, you'd likely need to make adjustments.

 

[TJS]

I wonder if people tend to use 5e for things because they don't necessarily have the preconceived notions of what kind of systems match with genres that older gamers have.

Using 5e for say Space Opera or Cyberpunk may seem odd, but is it really any odder when you get down to it then using it for Fantasy?

I think my issue is less that's it an innappropriate system and more that it's just not a particularly good* one and the only real good reason to play it is the wide userbase.

*In some ways I think discussions on internet forums have a tendency to tie themselves into knots in an effort to avoid just this kind of basic judgement.

 

[robb]

I wonder if people tend to use 5e for things because they don't necessarily have the preconceived notions of what kind of systems match with genres that older gamers have.

Maybe. But part of it is also naivete. Every week on redit there are posts like "I just found out there are rpgs without classes...".

 

[opaopajr]

Regardless of RPG system opinion I find it fascinating in an archaeological way how fast the past is buried in the steady march of pop culture. It's why I wish libraries and museums were more readily available for ephemera and pop entertainments, like online Abandonware Museums, to catalog the past and let people explore on their own. It is the one saving grace of streaming that I can now catch up on old shows I'd normally would have trouble completing otherwise.
/returns to watching "Petticoat Junction" (Now with classes and levels! )

 

[BedrockBrendan]

I wonder if people tend to use 5e for things because they don't necessarily have the preconceived notions of what kind of systems match with genres that older gamers have.

I think that is probably part of it. I also think D&D has always been popular and there have long been people who strictly play D&D. But we are like 25 years into the d20 era, and while there have still been alternatives, I can see that people might not have the same impulse that we had in say the 90s of a different system for each concept. There is also I think less bandwidth for mastering new systems from everyone being online and shortening their attention spans. Just as a bit of anecdotal evidence, I can visibly see the difference in feedback people give on the games I put out going back to just 2009. There is a much higher rate of people getting core mechanics incorrect when describing them, and a much higher rate of filtering their interpretation of those mechanics through d20. It isn't ubiquitous. It is pure speculation just based on observations from where I am sitting but I think our loss of attention span has impacted peoples' ability to absorb new systems the way we once did. I know I have had to make a point of going back to reading deeply by turning off all my devices, turning my chair away from the computer and sitting and reading for 2-3 hours without even minor interruption (I was definitely seeing it affect my ability to absorb new mechanics when I would read them until I made this change)

 

[BedrockBrendan]

Using 5e for say Space Opera or Cyberpunk may seem odd, but is it really any odder when you get down to it then using it for Fantasy?

I think my issue is less that's it an innappropriate system and more that it's just not a particularly good* one and the only real good reason to play it is the wide userbase.

This is subjective, but I haven't gotten this impression. I know so many groups that are fully content to play 5E without modding it (so many in fact I almost have to tear them away to try other systems). I am not a big 5E player, don't have anything against the system, and I wasn't enthralled by the aesthetics of the core books, but it seems to be one of the more widely played and popular editions. When I play D&D, I play 2E these days, so I am not exactly plugged into what makes 5E work or not. The OGL fiasco seems to have a had a much bigger effect than deficiencies in the system, in driving people towards alternatives like pathfinder

 

[BedrockBrendan]

Maybe. But part of it is also naivete. Every week on redit there are posts like "I just found out there are rpgs without classes...".

This has always been an issue. It may be worse now. But there are games I remember quite liking in the 90s that made a big production about how they were not like D&D. And if you had been playing TORG or GURPS or any number of other systems we were swimming in in the 90s, it felt kind of odd (one in particular I recall being an exceptional game, but it did seem like the designers had no real awareness of RPGs outside D&D---that or they were just assuming the audience would all mostly have D&D as a reference point)

 

[BedrockBrendan]

Yeah, it actually wasn't bad. I think that's mostly because without armor, AC/defenses are lower, which works well with investigators being vulnerable. Similarly, you limit the accrual of HP and the combo works well to keep the characters very squishy.

For most other genres, where the characters are likely meant to be as capable in their worlds as a D&D character would be in its world, you'd likely need to make adjustments.

I ran a number of successful campaigns with it. I got the impression that a lot more thought went into that book than many of the other d20 games being released during the boom in the early 2000s (I remember buying so many that felt like cut and paste jobs with zero effort put into them)

 

[EmperorNorton]

This has always been an issue. It may be worse now. But there are games I remember quite liking in the 90s that made a big production about how they were not like D&D. And if you had been playing TORG or GURPS or any number of other systems we were swimming in in the 90s, it felt kind of odd (one in particular I recall being an exceptional game, but it did seem like the designers had no real awareness of RPGs outside D&D---that or they were just assuming the audience would all mostly have D&D as a reference point)

Ah yes, the Fantasy Heartbreakers of the 90s. All designed by people who clearly had never played anything but D&D, yet thought they were revolutionary.

My favorite example is always Imagine Roleplaying. Man that game was a mess.

I'm pretty sure that their domain name is worth more than their system: https://www.role-playing.com/

 

[Dyrnwyn]

I remember quite liking d20 Cthulhu

It seemed like most people who bashed it did so reflexively, without actually reading it, and just assuming it would be D&D plus Cthulhu. It was a pretty good implementation of the system, IMO.

 

[Jetstream]

Ah yes, the Fantasy Heartbreakers of the 90s. All designed by people who clearly had never played anything but D&D, yet thought they were revolutionary.

My favorite example is always Imagine Roleplaying. Man that game was a mess.

I'm pretty sure that their domain name is worth more than their system: https://www.role-playing.com/

… how the fuck have I never heard of these fuckers, but they’re sitting on the second or third most obvious url I can imagine?

 

[Fenris-77]

… how the fuck have I never heard of these fuckers, but they’re sitting on the second or third most obvious url I can imagine?

It's just like not being able to find the milk that's sitting in plain sight at the front of the fridge.

 

[EmperorNorton]

Yeah, every time I look it up because my brain flashes back to the system (in the early 2000s, it was my brother's favorite system. I played in a 3 year campaign of it), and I'm like... dude y'all could sell that domain name for so damn much compared to what you are probably getting in sales from your game.

 

[Stan]

I ran a number of successful campaigns with it. I got the impression that a lot more thought went into that book than many of the other d20 games being released during the boom in the early 2000s (I remember buying so many that felt like cut and paste jobs with zero effort put into them)

It was also made by people who fully understood both 3e and CoC. Many of those cut and paste jobs were made by people who didn't bother totally learning 3e before altering it.

 

[robertsconley]

There is also I think less bandwidth for mastering new systems from everyone being online and shortening their attention spans. Just as a bit of anecdotal evidence, I can visibly see the difference in feedback people give on the games I put out going back to just 2009. There is a much higher rate of people getting core mechanics incorrect when describing them, and a much higher rate of filtering their interpretation of those mechanics through d20.

Or is the fact that communications and your ability to be in contact with others has grown exponentially since 2009?

For example, in the 1990s and early 2000s, I ran and managed LARP Events. The NERO LARP is not that detailed, as a result being a system meant to be used for live action and mostly adjudicated between players. Most players in my chapter had a minimal understanding of how the rules worked. Most just learned what they had to and that was that. They would rely on "that friend" who knew the system inside and out for advice about what to do when they advanced.

For the most part, it wasn't that they were incapable of mastering the system; they didn't care enough to master the system.

And when you start dealing with large number of hobbyists all at once whether it is organized gaming like a LARP chapter or through dealing with one's customers as a publisher the absolute numbers of the good, average, bad, and indifferent goes up. But I don't get a sense that the proportions have changed over the years.


My recent Kickstarter is a good example of this. I had nearly a thousand backers which is over triple what I had before. To date, I had about two dozen complaints of folks not getting their codes. At first, I was going what the hell, but then I remembered I had triple the number of backers. Plus, when I looked through my first Kickstarter, I had fewer complaints per number of backers than I did the previous KS I did. Probably because this time I used DriveThruRPG complimentary copy tool to send everybody a specific email about their rewards.

The thing about the Internet I find that for better or worse everybody's front porch is just across the virtual street or virtual next door from you. People are still people but often they are not prepared for that level of closeness to that many people. Especially now that mobile devices have made all of this far more accessible than it was in the 90s or 2000s.

 

[Baulderstone]

Another element with new players is that so many of them come to TTRPGs from having played video games with RPG elements which draw heavily on D&D. Because D&D is so tightly mechanical, it's a lot easier to turn into a video game than most RPGs out there. In the early '80s, when you recruited someone new into your group, they had no idea what they were getting into. Now, a new players is probably already familiar with hit points, levels, fighting level appropriate monsters, and locks that get more difficult as your lock pick skill increases.

Games that attempt to model something approaching reality are baffling to them.

 

[BedrockBrendan]

Ah yes, the Fantasy Heartbreakers of the 90s. All designed by people who clearly had never played anything but D&D, yet thought they were revolutionary.

My favorite example is always Imagine Roleplaying. Man that game was a mess.

I'm pretty sure that their domain name is worth more than their system: https://www.role-playing.com/

This wasn't a fantasy heartbreaker (not a big fan of that term, as tons of heartbreakers exist in all systems and styles, just due to profit margins being so low in the industry). It was actually a good game. But they spent a lot of ink talking about how great the game was for not having mechanical elements found in D&D (didn't mention D&D by name) and slagging on D&D (in a kind of "certain other games" kind of way). But the game itself was one of the better ones from that era that I remember playing

 

[BedrockBrendan]

Or is the fact that communications and your ability to be in contact with others has grown exponentially since 2009?

It could be that. I feel like it is more about the proportion of people getting things wrong, than about the volume (and the errors largely seem more a product of skimming). I do think there is a danger of oversimplifying. In some ways the extreme ends might be more pronounced (as the internet also affords so much access to systems and you will meet people with encyclopedic knowledge that I only bumped into once in a while in the 90s----because every game is now available at the push of a button). But I also do think there is no denying that our attention spans are being impacted by screen time and things competing for our focus online. And I am sure this has had an impact. People in general seem to skim a lot more. Maybe out of necessity because there is such a high volume of material to consume. Like I said, I see it in myself too (who here hasn't skimmed a forum post, missed a crucial point, and made a fool of themselves by posting a quick response that is far afield from the post they are responding to?). I had to force myself to slow down again and read at the pace I did prior to the internet to get back to absorbing content more fully. Am I saying this is the sole reason people prefer to stick to one system? No. But I do think it is a factor (for a variety of reasons, not just because reading a rulebook cover to cover is harder now for people, but because when they do encounter break downs of new games, they are often breakdowns that are a product of skimming or a superficial understanding of the system (this has happened to me countless times when I have looked into RPGs, after having been told they are X, Y and Z, only to discover they are X, C and D.

The thing about the Internet I find that for better or worse everybody's front porch is just across the virtual street or virtual next door from you. People are still people but often they are not prepared for that level of closeness to that many people. Especially now that mobile devices have made all of this far more accessible than it was in the 90s or 2000s.

I think people are still people, but I do think we are processing information in a different way, and that is impacting things like attention spans and peoples ability to sit and truly read a book deeply. Again, not saying this is happening with everyone, not saying people aren't using the internet to go beyond what they could know in the 90s or even mid-2000s, just it is clearly having an effect on focus and content absorption

 

[AsenRG]

I wonder if people tend to use 5e for things because they don't necessarily have the preconceived notions of what kind of systems match with genres that older gamers have.

Using 5e for say Space Opera or Cyberpunk may seem odd, but is it really any odder when you get down to it then using it for Fantasy?

You have a point - other than for D&D inspired fantasy, using 5e is odd.

I think my issue is less that's it an innappropriate system and more that it's just not a particularly good* one and the only real good reason to play it is the wide userbase.

*In some ways I think discussions on internet forums have a tendency to tie themselves into knots in an effort to avoid just this kind of basic judgement.

I've never avoided any such thing...

Maybe. But part of it is also naivete. Every week on redit there are posts like "I just found out there are rpgs without classes...".

"Yes, since 1977 at least" is my go-to answer...but then I'm not seeing many of these posts for some reason!

It's just like not being able to find the milk that's sitting in plain sight at the front of the fridge.

Another element with new players is that so many of them come to TTRPGs from having played video games with RPG elements which draw heavily on D&D. Because D&D is so tightly mechanical, it's a lot easier to turn into a video game than most RPGs out there. In the early '80s, when you recruited someone new into your group, they had no idea what they were getting into. Now, a new players is probably already familiar with hit points, levels, fighting level appropriate monsters, and locks that get more difficult as your lock pick skill increases.

Games that attempt to model something approaching reality are baffling to them.

I haven't found any such thing. But the trick is to avoid comparing them to video games, precisely because of knowing that they draw heavily from D&D.

So what I do instead is telling them "it's a VR, except without a computer and the intelligence ain't artificial". They do get the idea behind that just fine, IME!

 

[BedrockBrendan]

Or is the fact that communications and your ability to be in contact with others has grown exponentially since 2009?

For example, in the 1990s and early 2000s, I ran and managed LARP Events. The NERO LARP is not that detailed, as a result being a system meant to be used for live action and mostly adjudicated between players. Most players in my chapter had a minimal understanding of how the rules worked. Most just learned what they had to and that was that. They would rely on "that friend" who knew the system inside and out for advice about what to do when they advanced.

For the most part, it wasn't that they were incapable of mastering the system; they didn't care enough to master the system.

And when you start dealing with large number of hobbyists all at once whether it is organized gaming like a LARP chapter or through dealing with one's customers as a publisher the absolute numbers of the good, average, bad, and indifferent goes up. But I don't get a sense that the proportions have changed over the years.


My recent Kickstarter is a good example of this. I had nearly a thousand backers which is over triple what I had before. To date, I had about two dozen complaints of folks not getting their codes. At first, I was going what the hell, but then I remembered I had triple the number of backers. Plus, when I looked through my first Kickstarter, I had fewer complaints per number of backers than I did the previous KS I did. Probably because this time I used DriveThruRPG complimentary copy tool to send everybody a specific email about their rewards.

Sure, there was definitely a lot of word of mouth back in the day. And I always knew people who half learned or quarter learned a system because they couldn't be bothered, or were more insterested in other aspects of play (I had one GM who literally just made up the spells in the PHB rather than look them up when NPCs used them). Not saying it was an idyllic paradise.

And yes the data pool is bigger so the overall volume of people getting things wrong, giving negative feedback, positive feedback, etc, should go up. I think where we are sensing things differently is you feel the proportions have stayed the same and I feel they are not the same anymore.

I think our reading habits have changed substantially and this has led to a lot more widespread skimming of content. I know in my own experience, I recall comfortably reading new systems and running or playing them, with pretty full understanding of how they worked, and that spending too much time online, impacted my ability to do this so I changed the way I read (I don't read on kindle anymore even though it is more convenient in a lot of ways, and I always physically move myself away from the computer and phone and don't allow myself to check things, even for a moment).

Also to be clear, I am not saying the internet is bad, or that people are now stupid. And I am not saying there are not upsides.

 

[BedrockBrendan]

Another element with new players is that so many of them come to TTRPGs from having played video games with RPG elements which draw heavily on D&D. Because D&D is so tightly mechanical, it's a lot easier to turn into a video game than most RPGs out there. In the early '80s, when you recruited someone new into your group, they had no idea what they were getting into. Now, a new players is probably already familiar with hit points, levels, fighting level appropriate monsters, and locks that get more difficult as your lock pick skill increases.

Games that attempt to model something approaching reality are baffling to them.

I do think there may be something to the language of D&D being standardized. I don't play video games so I can't really weigh in beyond saying I do meet players who seem to have first encountered things like HP through a video game

 

[EmperorNorton]

This wasn't a fantasy heartbreaker (not a big fan of that term, as tons of heartbreakers exist in all systems and styles, just due to profit margins being so low in the industry). It was actually a good game. But they spent a lot of ink talking about how great the game was for not having mechanical elements found in D&D (didn't mention D&D by name) and slagging on D&D (in a kind of "certain other games" kind of way). But the game itself was one of the better ones from that era that I remember playing

I played the game for 3 years and it was one of my brothers favorite games at the time. It was not a good game.

It was insanely overly convoluted. You had to track everything to the second, including taking multiple seconds to reach full speed when moving, and taking time to decelerate (iirc you could make skill checks to accelerate/decelerate faster). Certain actions could overlap with your movement, some couldn't. Like you could swing your weapon (which had speeds based in how many seconds it took to swing it, which was modified by your stats), and move at the same time.

It used hit locations and armor was bought in 3 layers (flexible, semiflexible, rigid), and you would think "oh, that means I just buy each layer at a time" but no, you bought individual pieces, that covered different areas, and you had to find a way to buy all the various pieces and overlap them without accidentally overlap 4 layers, or accidentally layer too many of the higher types (you could technically do flexible flexible semiflexible, or flexible semiflexible semiflexible, but not flexible rigid rigid). Also there were penalties if you didn't have the flexible layer first, and there might have been penalties for two flexible layers layered together, but i can't remember.

Additionally, all the armor layers took damage in addition to your hp taking damage. Except the armor took damage based on what kind of damage hit it. And all three layers of your armor could take different proportions because it was different types.

The casting used a mana points system where your mana points recovered on a per minute basis. And not a "oh, it's been 10 minutes so you are back up to full" situation, one where timekeeping to the minute was absolutely necessary because it was fast enough to have to constantly track, but slow enough that it still could take an hour to get everything back.

The hit system used a bullseye system, which determined if you hit where you aimed, but also if you didn't hit dead center, it would tell which direction you did hit, which could also still hit some part of the body. Determining whether you were using piercing/slashing/bludgeoning and which direction you were attacking with slashing and bludgeoning was necessary, because that could also change where you hit. (for example, if you were aiming at the head but missed to the right with a piercing weapon, it was always a hit. But if you were aiming at the head with a slashing weapon and missed right while swing left to right, you still hit the head, if you were swinging downwards you hit the shoulder). This lead to "Slashing weapon, slashing left to right (or right to left), aimed at the neck" being almost always the correct attack, because it would either hit the head, neck, or shoulder.

Attack rolls were d20, but almost everything else was percentile roll under, and EVERYTHING was a skill. Including various types of parries (there were iirc at least 3 (weapon parry, shield parry, body parry (my favorite part of body parry being that the head was often the easiest place to layer a ton of armor, so when attacked with anything light, the joke became "I body parry with my face" (also remember to calculate how much damage you were doing to your weapon or armor from parrying with it!)), sweep was a skill (the ability to hit multiple people in one attack), like, just it had a skill list that would put almost any other game I've ever played the same.

Oh also, I forgot we have 3 types of skills. Racial Skills, Class Skills, and uh Background skills? I think that was the last one. Except you could have the same skill from two different sources (Racial and Class), and if you did, they could ACTUALLY HAVE DIFFERENT PERCENTILES. No you didn't get the better of the two and then get to progress it like a class skill, you had two different percentages. I can't even remember how you rolled if you had a skill from two sources anymore.

And this is all stuff that I can just remember off the top of my head having not played it in probably 20 years. Every part of the entire system was like this. The game was insanity.

Was it playable? Sure. Was it good? Absolutely not. And I say that as someone who likes games that people call "complicated".

EDIT: Oh yeah, I also forgot on the "tracking per second" you had to track per second for EACH HAND. If you weren't ambidextrous you got 10 seconds with your main hand, and 5 with your off hand. If you were ambidextrous you got 10 with each. Also you rolled initiative, but all it did was determine if you wasted any time at the beginning of the round. So if you rolled higher than a 0 on the initiative check you would lose seconds of time and start the 10 second round on whatever you rolled rather than at second 1. You rerolled initiative every round to see if you lost some seconds).

 

[Urdlen's best boy]

Another element with new players is that so many of them come to TTRPGs from having played video games with RPG elements which draw heavily in D&D. Because D&D is so tightly mechanical, it's a lot easier to turn into a video game than most RPGs out there. In the early '80s, when you recruited someone new into your group, they had no idea what they were getting into. Now, a new players is probably already familiar with hit points, levels, fighting level appropriate monsters, and locks that get more difficult as your lock pick skill increases.

Games that attempt to model something approaching reality are baffling to them.

I think you're right on the familiarity part but only to a degree. Level appropriate monsters etc aren't that systematic and that a degree of simulationism is still expected from a video game in the CRPG genre, though that depends on niches. The Elder Scrolls have level scaling but most CRPGs I played don't or it's only partial - either way having access to "later level areas" is a staple of the genre you find in Final Fantasy, Infinity engine games, MMOs etc. Day and night cycles, player agency, reactivity, NPC routines, etc are also all stapples of the genre. Some also have some amount of physics behind (eg TES archery or gravity).

Then there's also a wealth of physics simulation games, and CRPGs only partially went away from the physics based/RTS influence. So I don't know if that many people come to TTRPGs from that sort of gaming. Coming from there, the old Total War games & forums have their own endemic form of roleplay, but idk how much of it translates to TTRPG or even TTwargaming. Now, the big simulationist games are World of Tanks & co which are probably more advanced and thorough than any (playable) TT wargame with simulationist ambitions. They're also unbelievable successfull, with WoT having generated something like 7 billion $ (compare to the few hundred millions of BG3 and SHEESH)

There is also an amount of cross pollination, going back 25 years ago, in that the use of real time for many CRPGs likely partly comes from RTS gaming. IE games certainly do feel like good RTS gameplay, and the wargame frame of AD&D was perfect for that. And then you have the CRPG/RTS subgenre à la Spellforce, though those games are more stat based than physics based, usually.

Either way it's really not the case that "attempting to model something" is alien to a modern CRPG/video game audience. It may depends on the niche, but overwhelmingly, no. Disconnected executives beleive that because they're only exposed superficially to the craft and are attempting to pander to the mythical wider audience - and, being fair, deal with more understandable constraints regarding having to developp simulationist systems in addition to story, personalizable aesthetics, quest reactivity etc. But meanwhile a billion boomers are playing world of tanks 24/7 because it has the precise measurement of whatever polish medium tank and calculates angle and ballistic blablabla. Sure they're not transferable, but as I've said the simulationist approach to CRPG is established and has it's proponent, it just hasn't been much developped lately and there's no reason to believe drawing more from that would be commercially bad or leave players so confused that they enter catalepsy.

I'll even say most of the CRPGs that came out predicated on the idea that simulation is just not for CRPGs were and are trash and not particularily successful monetarily, with TES being the closest to a franchise increasing revenue while going away from simulationism - but even they retain a physics engine, agency, etc. Games like Pillars of Eternity which championed this to the extreme didn't do nearly as well.

 

[AsenRG]

The hit system used a bullseye system, which determined if you hit where you aimed, but also if you didn't hit dead center, it would tell which direction you did hit, which could also still hit some part of the body. Determining whether you were using piercing/slashing/bludgeoning and which direction you were attacking with slashing and bludgeoning was necessary, because that could also change where you hit. (for example, if you were aiming at the head but missed to the right with a piercing weapon, it was always a hit. But if you were aiming at the head with a slashing weapon and missed right while swing left to right, you still hit the head, if you were swinging downwards you hit the shoulder). This lead to "Slashing weapon, slashing left to right (or right to left), aimed at the neck" being almost always the correct attack, because it would either hit the head, neck, or shoulder.

...but how did it do diagonal attacks, which are beloved to many people for this exact reason?

 

[EmperorNorton]

...but how did it do diagonal attacks, which are beloved to many people for this exact reason?

WITCHCRAFT!

 

[AsenRG]

WITCHCRAFT!

Like, you can't make a diagonal swing in this system?

 

[EmperorNorton]

Like, you can't make a diagonal swing in this system?

Honestly I can't remember. I'm almost tempted to find my copy of the books in storage just to try to read through it. My brother gave me a full set of the books that were out at the time (first 4 books iirc), and I still have them somehwere.

 

[BedrockBrendan]

I played the game for 3 years and it was one of my brothers favorite games at the time. It was not a good game.

It was insanely overly convoluted. You had to track everything to the second, including taking multiple seconds to reach full speed when moving, and taking time to decelerate (iirc you could make skill checks to accelerate/decelerate faster). Certain actions could overlap with your movement, some couldn't. Like you could swing your weapon (which had speeds based in how many seconds it took to swing it, which was modified by your stats), and move at the same time.

It used hit locations and armor was bought in 3 layers (flexible, semiflexible, rigid), and you would think "oh, that means I just buy each layer at a time" but no, you bought individual pieces, that covered different areas, and you had to find a way to buy all the various pieces and overlap them without accidentally overlap 4 layers, or accidentally layer too many of the higher types (you could technically do flexible flexible semiflexible, or flexible semiflexible semiflexible, but not flexible rigid rigid). Also there were penalties if you didn't have the flexible layer first, and there might have been penalties for two flexible layers layered together, but i can't remember.

Additionally, all the armor layers took damage in addition to your hp taking damage. Except the armor took damage based on what kind of damage hit it. And all three layers of your armor could take different proportions because it was different types.

The casting used a mana points system where your mana points recovered on a per minute basis. And not a "oh, it's been 10 minutes so you are back up to full" situation, one where timekeeping to the minute was absolutely necessary because it was fast enough to have to constantly track, but slow enough that it still could take an hour to get everything back.

The hit system used a bullseye system, which determined if you hit where you aimed, but also if you didn't hit dead center, it would tell which direction you did hit, which could also still hit some part of the body. Determining whether you were using piercing/slashing/bludgeoning and which direction you were attacking with slashing and bludgeoning was necessary, because that could also change where you hit. (for example, if you were aiming at the head but missed to the right with a piercing weapon, it was always a hit. But if you were aiming at the head with a slashing weapon and missed right while swing left to right, you still hit the head, if you were swinging downwards you hit the shoulder). This lead to "Slashing weapon, slashing left to right (or right to left), aimed at the neck" being almost always the correct attack, because it would either hit the head, neck, or shoulder.

Attack rolls were d20, but almost everything else was percentile roll under, and EVERYTHING was a skill. Including various types of parries (there were iirc at least 3 (weapon parry, shield parry, body parry (my favorite part of body parry being that the head was often the easiest place to layer a ton of armor, so when attacked with anything light, the joke became "I body parry with my face" (also remember to calculate how much damage you were doing to your weapon or armor from parrying with it!)), sweep was a skill (the ability to hit multiple people in one attack), like, just it had a skill list that would put almost any other game I've ever played the same.

Oh also, I forgot we have 3 types of skills. Racial Skills, Class Skills, and uh Background skills? I think that was the last one. Except you could have the same skill from two different sources (Racial and Class), and if you did, they could ACTUALLY HAVE DIFFERENT PERCENTILES. No you didn't get the better of the two and then get to progress it like a class skill, you had two different percentages. I can't even remember how you rolled if you had a skill from two sources anymore.

And this is all stuff that I can just remember off the top of my head having not played it in probably 20 years. Every part of the entire system was like this. The game was insanity.

Was it playable? Sure. Was it good? Absolutely not. And I say that as someone who likes games that people call "complicated".

EDIT: Oh yeah, I also forgot on the "tracking per second" you had to track per second for EACH HAND. If you weren't ambidextrous you got 10 seconds with your main hand, and 5 with your off hand. If you were ambidextrous you got 10 with each. Also you rolled initiative, but all it did was determine if you wasted any time at the beginning of the round. So if you rolled higher than a 0 on the initiative check you would lose seconds of time and start the 10 second round on whatever you rolled rather than at second 1. You rerolled initiative every round to see if you lost some seconds).

I should have been a bit more clear in my post. I wasn't talking about the game you linked (I haven't played that). I was talking about the game I played that made a talking point in its text being not D&D. It wasn't a fantasy heartbreaker. It was a whole other genre. More of a beer and pretzels game really but one that actually worked well for bigger campaigns. The game you linked, I have no knowledge of at all

 

[EmperorNorton]

I should have been a bit more clear in my post. I wasn't talking about the game you linked (I haven't played that). I was talking about the game I played that made a talking point in its text being not D&D. It wasn't a fantasy heartbreaker. It was a whole other genre. More of a beer and pretzels game really but one that actually worked well for bigger campaigns. The game you linked, I have no knowledge of at all

All good. I have fun occasionally making a rant about Imagine. Tbh, I'm glad I played in that campaign years ago, because just trying to explain the game to people is fun.

 

[Ladybird]

You have a point - other than for D&D inspired fantasy, using 5e is odd.

I think it's slightly more complex than that.

I think there's a sizable chunk of players who just want the game structure that 5e is really, really good at - "meaningful fight, funny voices time, explore a bit, meaningful fight, more funny voices, really big fight, rest". If you're following that, the set dressing - are all the characters dressed up like RenFaire party goers, flappers. Burning Man attendees, Cyberpunkz, whatever - is irrelevant; 5e will help you have a good time doing it. Whereas this group doesn't really care about the other things that a more genre-focussed system might offer, so those things are worthless to them and just extra things they have to learn.

Some people just want to play in the tropes. And that's fine. As ever, I'd rather they admitted it to themselves so we could all stop talking at cross purposes, but that's just life.

 

[finarvyn]

Regardless of RPG system opinion I find it fascinating in an archaeological way how fast the past is buried in the steady march of pop culture.

I agree. The evolution of ideas is interesting to me because people who start with the final thing can't see how we got there.

This happens in science all of the time, where we teach things (like models of the atom) with gradual evolution of ideas but we often ignore the totally wrong ones. Students get the idea that growth of ideas is always forward and don't realize how many dead ends exist along the way.

So in RPGs people come up with "new" ideas without realizing that someone might have done it years before. (I keep thinking of RuneQuest and similar percentile games that had a big emphasis on hit locations. Well, Dave Arneson did it nearly a decade before and some pretty complex rules were published by 1975 in D&D Supplement II.)

What has been done before gets forgotten quickly if it's not in the "in vogue" model.

 

[AsenRG]

I think it's slightly more complex than that.

I think there's a sizable chunk of players who just want the game structure that 5e is really, really good at - "meaningful fight, funny voices time, explore a bit, meaningful fight, more funny voices, really big fight, rest". If you're following that, the set dressing - are all the characters dressed up like RenFaire party goers, flappers. Burning Man attendees, Cyberpunkz, whatever - is irrelevant; 5e will help you have a good time doing it. Whereas this group doesn't really care about the other things that a more genre-focussed system might offer, so those things are worthless to them and just extra things they have to learn.

Some people just want to play in the tropes. And that's fine. As ever, I'd rather they admitted it to themselves so we could all stop talking at cross purposes, but that's just life.

On one side, you can say that many CoC adventures follow the same structure as well, especially if you do a poor job of the investigation...
(That is, if you don't avoid the fully avoidable fights during the investigation).

But that doesn't mean that d20 is a good system for CoC. Quite the opposite, in fact, because avoiding those fights is a big, big part of the game when dealing with Mythos shit. In fact, if you can, you should avoid all of them, including the final one!

Besides, in d20, it's not the fight-talk-talk-fight-talk-talk cycle, it's a fight-checking if you get a power-boost*-talk-talk-fight-checking if you get a power boost* cycle that defines D&D, IMO.


OTOH, I get what you're saying. But my point is, that's a weird structure for fantasy, too. A game that relies on this isn't going to do even a halfway decent job of many genres. I mean, I think of Perdido Street Station, and this shit doesn't fit.
In fact, it isn't going to do a decent job even of fantasy. I mean, what power boosts there were in The Broken Sword? Jack of Shadows? Dilvish, the Damned?

So yeah, I maintain that's an odd structure for fantasy. Which is what prompted my post.

And I still think we kinda agree, but I'd just say that if you want to actually do a different genre, you should leave the D&D genre's trappings behind. Otherwise you're not exploring anything new, not really.
...Which, on re-reading your post, is kinda what you're saying, too. It is true that sometimes fingers run on keypads faster than the eyes read on screen, I guess?

I'm going to leave it as is, because editing it is too much work.

*Getting money, recovering expendables that were spent during the fight, getting XP all count.
And not getting a power boost every time is a huge part of it, too, acting as casinos would recommend - not being sure when you'd level up is a big part of what makes people push another piece in the one-armed bandit.

 

[The Mad Hatter]

I think there comes a point where you have to ask am I doing more work to change an existing system to do what I want than it would be to just craft my own system.

I mean, I know that "5e compatible" tag on the cover is important for attention and possible sales, but is it worth all that extra effort?

Most of my homebrews starts with me just wanting to change a couple of things in a game, and when I'm done I often end up with an almost new game. My heavily house-ruled AD&D 2e game was basically like this.
To the question of is it worth it; well it is for me. But I like tinkering with systems like this. For example, I've been contemplating converting the Journey and Council rules from The One RIng and maybe some of the mechanics from FiTD to Savage Worlds. Why not just play either of those games you may ask. Well I'm already quite familiar with Savage Worlds, so it means I wouldn't have to get used to a new system.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I wonder if people tend to use 5e for things because they don't necessarily have the preconceived notions of what kind of systems match with genres that older gamers have.

Using 5e for say Space Opera or Cyberpunk may seem odd, but is it really any odder when you get down to it then using it for Fantasy?

I think my issue is less that's it an innappropriate system and more that it's just not a particularly good* one and the only real good reason to play it is the wide userbase.

*In some ways I think discussions on internet forums have a tendency to tie themselves into knots in an effort to avoid just this kind of basic judgement.

I don't think it's always about age so much as experience. Of course, older players and GMs potentially have more experience. But there are plenty of examples of people who've only ever played D&D for 50 years.

I think it comes down to understanding what a given design is doing and why. Like, D&D was essentially a collection of different little subsystems cobbled together to facilitate a pretty specific experience: delving a dungeon to collect loot. The game has shifted focus over the years, and some elements have been changed to reflect that shift in focus, and some have not.

The core system of D&D is, to this day, still influenced by that early expected experience of play, even though most folks don't exactly play with that experience in mind anymore.

Anyone who's using that system as a starting point needs to understand all this. They need to know what they want to achieve and how to change the existing D&D/d20 system to deliver that experience. That can be very tricky... as we've seen, the professionals who are the stewards of the game don't always know how to do it themselves.

I ran a number of successful campaigns with it. I got the impression that a lot more thought went into that book than many of the other d20 games being released during the boom in the early 2000s (I remember buying so many that felt like cut and paste jobs with zero effort put into them)

I think it helped that the designers were involved in the creation of D&D 3e itself. So they had a clearer, more informed grasp of what the system was doing and why, and how to properly change elements to fit another genre.

 

[Ladybird]

On one side, you can say that many CoC adventures follow the same structure as well, especially if you do a poor job of the investigation...
(That is, if you don't avoid the fully avoidable fights during the investigation).

But that doesn't mean that d20 is a good system for CoC. Quite the opposite, in fact, because avoiding those fights is a big, big part of the game when dealing with Mythos shit. In fact, if you can, you should avoid all of them, including the final one!

Oh absolutely, there is totally a structure to a CoC game (I think the same could be said for a lot of games). But most importantly, it's a structure that CoC and it's imitators works with fairly well; it has lots of ways to poke at things and say "is there a clue in here" (As opposed to D&D's lots of ways to poke at things and say "is there an XP in here").

OTOH, I get what you're saying. But my point is, that's a weird structure for fantasy, too. A game that relies on this isn't going to do even a halfway decent job of many genres. I mean, I think of Perdido Street Station, and this shit doesn't fit.

In fact, it isn't going to do a decent job even of fantasy. I mean, what power boosts there were in The Broken Sword? Jack of Shadows? Dilvish, the Damned?

So yeah, I maintain that's an odd structure for fantasy. Which is what prompted my post.

And I still think we kinda agree, but I'd just say that if you want to actually do a different genre, you should leave the D&D genre's trappings behind. Otherwise you're not exploring anything new, not really.

Oh, totally. It's a game structure that doesn't really represent anything other than itself; 5e's a toolkit, but one designed to help you make endless variations on the same theme (Personally I'd go further, and say that "fantasy" is a setting and not a genre, but I'm trying to only get in one fight a day).

If you like that theme, though, you're in for a great time. D&D is fun.

 

[AsenRG]

If you like that theme, though, you're in for a great time. D&D is fun.

...or you could be like me, and wonder what other people find in it!

 

[Telok]

D&D was fun. It hasn't been fun for me for a good while now. It's game is based on varying the order of a very limited palette these days; map-change-description, talk-plot-npc, slow-hp-to-zero-fight, identify-go-shop, check-for-trap. For a long time there just hasn't been the mechanics in the core game for GMs to go beyond that. And most GMs won't go where there aren't supporting core mechanics. I can't remember the last time any of my D&D characters went out on an adventure not 95%+ about just killing a bunch of people and taking their stuff.

Fries, cola, burger, burger, fries, burger, burger, fries, cola, burger, burger, fries, cola, burger, burger, burger... Give me a damn steak and salad option!

 

[Sable Wyvern]

I agree. The evolution of ideas is interesting to me because people who start with the final thing can't see how we got there.

This happens in science all of the time, where we teach things (like models of the atom) with gradual evolution of ideas but we often ignore the totally wrong ones. Students get the idea that growth of ideas is always forward and don't realize how many dead ends exist along the way.

So in RPGs people come up with "new" ideas without realizing that someone might have done it years before. (I keep thinking of RuneQuest and similar percentile games that had a big emphasis on hit locations. Well, Dave Arneson did it nearly a decade before and some pretty complex rules were published by 1975 in D&D Supplement II.)

What has been done before gets forgotten quickly if it's not in the "in vogue" model.

Two things that I've seen come up recently as superior "modern" ideas are not rolling for damage and not having missed attacks where nothing happens.

And, in both cases, I believe those ideas have been around since at least 1975 in Tunnels and Trolls.

 

[Baulderstone]

D&D was fun. It hasn't been fun for me for a good while now. It's game is based on varying the order of a very limited palette these days; map-change-description, talk-plot-npc, slow-hp-to-zero-fight, identify-go-shop, check-for-trap. For a long time there just hasn't been the mechanics in the core game for GMs to go beyond that. And most GMs won't go where there aren't supporting core mechanics. I can't remember the last time any of my D&D characters went out on an adventure not 95%+ about just killing a bunch of people and taking their stuff.

Fries, cola, burger, burger, fries, burger, burger, fries, cola, burger, burger, fries, cola, burger, burger, burger... Give me a damn steak and salad option!

I go hot and cold on D&D. I'm currently burned out on it, but I expect I'll be in the mood for it again.

 

[Endless Flight]

I go hot and cold on D&D.