A few thoughts/gripes about recent game modern game design.

[SmallbutVicious]

At this point I'm wondering what games you're actually talking about, because aside from some satires, I'm not really coming up with any that fit this, except perhaps some versions of D&D with the GM making a very harsh interpretation of what thief skills actually mean, and Runequest with no prior experience. Or maybe a killer GM running Rolemaster.

A starting character in WFRP 2e is gonna have a less than 50% chance to succeed at a lot of things.

 

[TJS]

WFRP is a game where characters being not particularly competent works.

You're not playing a team of comptent professionals you're playing a group of ordinary people in over their heads.

 

[Sharrow]

And if you read the text about skills in 1e with an eye to game design and expectations at that time, it's clear that you weren't expect to roll except when there was a decent chance of a fuck-up. Someone with Riding wouldn't be expected to need to roll for it most of the time, and so on.

So, as with Rolemaster, you only looked like actual fuck-ups if the GM made you roll all the damned time.

 

[TJS]

I've never played in a game of WFRP where the players didn't fuck up all the time.

So if that's not supposed to happen then something's gone badly wrong.

I don't know what is says buried in the rulebook. But if the mechanical intentions of the design don't translate to actual tables than blaming the players doesn't help much. You've failed at the design part of the design.

And I find this doesn't really amount to much anyway. My character doesn't feel incompetent because the GM makes him roll to ride down an empty road, his feels that way because when it matters he can't rely on the skill. Just like it doesn't matter that I can succeed on a stealth roll when nothing's at stake - when do you make a stealth roll when nothings at stake? I'm not making a plan that relies on being stealthy if I have a stealth of 35%.

 

[TJS]

This ties into larger issues with skills and ways to make certain approaches work.

Is the following a viable plan? "I follow a cultist down the alleyway, knock him out, steal his robes and use them to sneak into the cultists hideout, and then get out by climbing over the wall."

I probably need to make a stealth roll to sneak up on the cultist. I likely need to make a different sort of roll to knock him out. I probably have to roll a different skill to carry off my disguise and bluff that I belong in the cultists temple and depending on the wall I may have to make a roll to climb to climb out again.

In a game like D&D where each roll has a high chance of failure, players don't tend to come up with such plans. It's not even a question of using a different means of adjudicating. They don't make such plans, because the system intrinsically discourages it (unless they're very new) - in many cases I don't think they even realise they avoid such things. They rely on magic because that's reliable and they make plans that involve using magic to do things.

In Savage Worlds, with it's bennies and it's bell curves such a plan is a lot more viable.

In WFRP you don't have skills you can rely on and you don't have magic so you bumble through in some uniquely WFRP and often hilarious way.

 

[TristramEvans]

F-ing up is definitely a part of WFRP's unique flavour, as is learning to avoid combat if at all possible.

As Trevor wisely put it, "Warhammer is a game where you start out thinking you're playing D&D, but quickly find out that you're actually playing Call of Cthulhu."

 

[Moracai]

Now that my current WFRP2 group is on their third careers, they start to give off the feel and act more like 1st level D&D5 characters. I keep Fate Points secret from my players so they only know what their total pool is so they don't know that one of them is about to die the next time he fucks up.

BTW wasn't Hârn like this too? It's been so long I've played it last time (and I mean last time).

 

[Alai]

RPGs aren't popular compared to really any other geek hobby.

*long tail of the geek-hierarchy noises intensify*

 

[Alai]

F-ing up is definitely a part of WFRP's unique flavour, as is learning to avoid combat if at all possible.

As Trevor wisely put it, "Warhammer is a game where you start out thinking you're playing D&D, but quickly find out that you're actually playing Call of Cthulhu."

WH is the game where you start out playing RQ, but then the Brits lose the licence, and move it out of the Bronze Age.

 

[AsenRG]

We can't win this game. Zero to hero means "starts off with 70% chance of success" (with what, I'm not sure).

I will offer that the PCs in my RQ campaign, some of which started with a measly 35% in their weapon, have won north of 90% of the fights they've been in. They've never had a TPK. They have had one PC resurrected 2 or 3 times, and several other PCs die. They have a few times executed a strategic advance to the rear. I'd call that a pretty damn good success rate. As to other skills, sure, they have failed a bunch, and they've missed a few treasures, but I don't hear complaints. Of course I AM using the previous experience. But it still leaves most skills in the 5-40% range, and not all characters wind up with 70% or even 50% in their combat skills. Maybe some characters don't even have any skills above 50%.

The OD&D play by post game, I joined after a TPK. That was the only TPK in the campaign. I lost my first PC in the first or second combat, and then my elf survived the rest of the campaign. We won almost all the combats we entered.

That's what zero to hero gaming can look like.

Yup...that's also my experience. Even in games that are supposedly notorious for failure, like CoC.
Last month (?) I played a CoC game. We "investigators" were a couple of teen-agers in the 80ies. Result: None of us went mad or died.

Can someone back this up for me? What's the basic argument that well designed systems should have a 60+% chance of success? Or that D&D is not a huge influence on most RPGs?

According to M migo because incompetent characters would chase people off RPGs. He assumes, and I'm not sure I agree, that most people would want to play them, if the characters were more competent.
(Man, I'm tagging you in case I misrepresented your case unintentionally).

I think that most games have it that a character of average ability attempting a task of "moderate" difficulty without any extra aid, tools or contextual bonuses should hover at aroun 50-60%.

...I'm not sure that most games are like this, actually. Which games are those?

I'm quite fond of games where you fail most rolls. The idea of such a game is to try and avoid rolls. To try and think of plans such that the GM can't ask for a roll because they're self-evidently succesful. To try and avoid the danger that will force unavoidable rolls on you through clever planning. In difficult situations, to try to set things up such that you can succeed by using the few skills where you have an above 50% chance. That's the game, for me.

That's always the problem with the RPGMathematicians among us. Their analysis is always out of context, White Room bullshit. Without being placed in a scenario, there is no way to know what PC tactics are and how those might swing things in a different way (better or worse).


Pure silliness. You may as well say Masturbation is more popular than Sex.

Well, if we look at the numbers participating, you can make the argument that it is. But if you ask the participants whether they'd prefer the other option...

WFRP is a game where characters being not particularly competent works.

You're not playing a team of comptent professionals you're playing a group of ordinary people in over their heads.

...the objection in the thread is that all games that are about "ordinary people who are in over their heads" are badly designed (if they're modern ones) according to M migo 's argument. And really, a lot of people want to play exactly this kind of game. In fact, I'd wager something inconsequential that it's more popular of a fantasy than the fantasy of super-competent characters!

But either way: Please, man, look at Unknown Armies and Delta Green. Most of your rolls are going to be way below 70%. But these are two of the most tightly designed games out there. I suspect you're overestimating how important having those high scores is to modern design, and to modern players...

Or, you know, here is a ruleset you might like:
You have Character Levels (which possibly are an in-game measure of competence). Skills are Non-Proficient, Proficient, Specialised, but you don't need to write them down: the odds of success change according to level. At 1st level you have 70% at Specialised, 50% at Proficient, 30% at Non-Proficient tasks (and of course, it's d100 roll-under, because why bother).
So, do you think this game would be fun to play? I'm just curious. Because there's no reason not to run a BRP-style game exactly like this.

 

[Alai]

Sure. My point was to contrast the claim that to be well designed (if I got the point correctly) a game has to have a 66+% chance of success for the PCs. OD&D certainly didn't do that out of the gate and while it's debatable if it's well designed it's designed well enough that people enjoyed it enough to create a whole genre.

Depends whether you're talking about "success" in the branchpoint or the current-activity sense, though. If you spend most of your time hilariously or teeth-grindingly frustratingly whiffing, but eventually beat 'em up and take their stuff, that's still a "success". If you spend it dinking them with technical "hits", but end up running away going "weewee-weewee-wee!", that's still a failure.

For the game to flow as some sort of recognisable collaborative creation process -- at least in line to the Laws thesis -- you have to "succeed" about 2/3rd of the time or so, I've seen it argued. But that's in the broadest sense. I think that's very different from whether the procedural process (all those die rolls! to so little purpose!!) was fun as an activity, appeared to reflect the fiction, whether the fiction itself was what the players wanted, etc.

 

[Alai]

I probably need to make a stealth roll to sneak up on the cultist. I likely need to make a different sort of roll to knock him out. I probably have to roll a different skill to carry off my disguise and bluff that I belong in the cultists temple and depending on the wall I may have to make a roll to climb to climb out again.

... or you're playing a game that does goal/conflict resolution, in which that might all be one roll. Or an extended series of rolls. Or no rolls at all. Depending on the context of it in the game.

 

[migo]

Been at this for 40 years and actively involved in critiquing and reviewing RPGs for 13. I am aware of what various systems are about especially those in the metal levels. And you didn't reply to my point about offering your own review of the systems in the metal levels.

Then talk about that. Don't just do a quick filter and say "here, there are X RPG corebooks that aren't D&D". You did so little it might as well have been nothing at all. I don't need to provide an alternative to that, I just need to point out that it's nothing.

If you want to make a more substantial argument, then you can say I should provide my own data.

This has nothing to do with anything we've been talking about. Are we simply shifting the goal posts here or is there some secret way in which other non-TTRPG hobbies are related in any way to your opinions about TTRPG design? There's a glimmer of a argument in that last point, but generally speaking anecdotal evidence, especially of the vague and unsubstantiated variety, doesn't carry a lot of water.

Your argument is D&D is popular (as far as TTRPGs go) that means the average person must like D&D. The opposite is true. You're trying to claim my tastes are niche, and the people who like D&D's early level suck are in the majority. I'm pointing out that the people who like D&D's early level suck are in an overall very small minority to begin with. And games that don't have that early level suck are way more popular.

Yeah, but it's not "bad design" just because it doesn't fit your tastes and schedule.

Not just my tastes and schedule. Far more people have stopped playing D&D since graduating high school than have continued.

The issue is that if you want to make the claim that a game is badly designed you need to support the claim with an objective argument.

"I don't like playing characters that are not hyper competent from the first session" or "I don't have free time" are you problems, not problems with the games or problems shared universally by other gamers, as you try to imply.

If you think not having time to play isn't a universal problem, you need to get your head out of your ass.

At this point I'm wondering what games you're actually talking about, because aside from some satires, I'm not really coming up with any that fit this, except perhaps some versions of D&D with the GM making a very harsh interpretation of what thief skills actually mean, and Runequest with no prior experience. Or maybe a killer GM running Rolemaster.

It's not a harsh interpretation of Thief skills. It's the correct interpretation of a shit class that was published with minimal to no playtesting. You play it RAW, realize it's crap, and if you're smart you change it. But just because people change it doesn't mean the original design wasn't shit to begin with.

Sure. My point was to contrast the claim that to be well designed (if I got the point correctly) a game has to have a 66+% chance of success for the PCs. OD&D certainly didn't do that out of the gate and while it's debatable if it's well designed it's designed well enough that people enjoyed it enough to create a whole genre.

If D&D weren't the first game to market, nobody would be talking about it. It would be even less relevant and more obscure than Cyborg Commando, Lejendary Adentures and Danjerous Journeys. Gary wasn't a good game designer by any stretch of the imagination. He just got it out to market first, a proof of concept, to show the idea. It wasn't even a year before people had already started publishing better RPGs as an alternative to D&D.

You're also not either realizing or acknowledging that these activities overlap. Most RPGers I know do at least one of the other activities, if not all. Everyone plays Video Games in addition to everything else, because it's the easiest to do.

One, you're proving my point that a game that requires regular sessions over a long period of time isn't as well designed as one that can be played quicker and in shorter chunks.

Two, while there is overlap, people from other hobbies who try RPGs will just dip their toes in and not come back. It's not a question of not having the time when they're visiting at the same time, but playing Magic or Mario Kart on the other side of the living room while the RPG players are having their hobby. They have the time to play, and they're choosing not to.

 

[robertsconley]

Then talk about that. Don't just do a quick filter and say "here, there are X RPG corebooks that aren't D&D". You did so little it might as well have been nothing at all. I don't need to provide an alternative to that, I just need to point out that it's nothing.

I did do that, I went on the Adamantine level and specifically counted what was D&D related and what wasn't. But if you can't be bothered to look at the list yourself. Then here is the breakdown


Non-D&D

• Alien RPG
• Blades in the Dark
• Eclipse Phase
• Exalted 2e
• Fate
• Fiasco
• Five Torches Deep
• Genesys Core Rulebook
• Hero Kids
• Kids on Bike
• Kids on Brooms
• Mork Borg
• Mothership
• Mythic Roleplaying
• Numernera
• Ranger of Shadow Deep
• Star Trek Adventures
• The Witcher RPG

Cyberpunk

• CyberPunk Red/Cyberpunk Red Starter Kit
• Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0 2e

D100

• Basic Roleplaying
• Call of Cthulu Starter Set
• Legend
• Runequest Starter Set

Savage World

• Savage World Deluxe
• Savage Worlds Adventure Edition

Shadowrun

• Shadowrun 4e
• Shadowrun 5e

Warhammer

• Warhammer 40K: Wrath & Glory
• Warhammer Fantasy 4e

Storyteller System

• Demon the Descent
• Mage the Ascension 20th anniversary.
• Mage the Awakening 2e
• New World of Darkness
• Vampire the Dark Ages, 20th anniversary
• Vampire the Masquerade 20th anniversary
• Vampire the Masquerade 5th edition
• Vampire the Requiem 2e
• Werewolf: The Apocalypse

D&D Related

• Beyond the Wall
• Black Hack Second Edition
• Dungeon Crawl Classic
• Dungeon World
• Knave

Kevin Crawford

• Stars without Number
• Worlds without Number

D&D System (various editions)

• AD&D 2e (PHB, DMG, & MM)
• AD&D 1e (PHB, DMG, & MM)
• B/X D&D (Basic, Expert)
• D&D Rules Cyclopedia

As for the 16,000+ core rule books. Picking random pages in search results shows that the same pattern holds for the results shown on each page.

If you want to make a more substantial argument, then you can say I should provide my own data.

As much as you try to avoid it with ad hominem attacks the fact remains you have presented zero hard evidence for any of your assertions while I have. I am not going to do your homework.

 

[SavAce]

Then talk about that. Don't just do a quick filter and say "here, there are X RPG corebooks that aren't D&D". You did so little it might as well have been nothing at all. I don't need to provide an alternative to that, I just need to point out that it's nothing.

If you want to make a more substantial argument, then you can say I should provide my own data.

You're acting in a very impolite way. This comment where you replied "You may think you're being clever, but your data is useless" is.. less than kind. This is in addition to your non-stop goal-post shifting and refusal to back up any of your points with anything other than bald assertions, while at the same time dismissing anyone who tries to provide evidence as being insufficient. "I don't need to provide data so long as I can shit on yours" is bad posting.

Your argument is D&D is popular (as far as TTRPGs go) that means the average person must like D&D. The opposite is true. You're trying to claim my tastes are niche, and the people who like D&D's early level suck are in the majority. I'm pointing out that the people who like D&D's early level suck are in an overall very small minority to begin with. And games that don't have that early level suck are way more popular.

Look, I don't even like D&D, but... Nothing about D&D's popularity means that the "average person must like D&D", because the average person does not play RPGs. So, maybe... "average role player"? Anyways, what games "that don't have early level suck" are you talking about? The ones that are way more popular than D&D. Are you even talking about RPGs? Can you name them? Also, are you talking D&D 5e? What is the early level suckage of modern D&D? Like, you can have a person who shoots bolts of magic out of their fingers all day long like a god-damned super hero from level one. You could have a buff level 1 fighter face off 1v1 vs. people in a village and kill... how many before he got taken down? I'll tell you this: It's more than one. But apparently a modern game, to appeal to today's busy modern person, must start you out like one of the god-damned Avengers or the average person of today will feel you're wasting their time.

Not just my tastes and schedule. Far more people have stopped playing D&D since graduating high school than have continued.

Wait until you hear about how many people stopped playing Football, Basketball, Baseball, Softball, Wrestling, Track, Cross-Country and Volleyball since graduating high school vs. those that have continued! D&D is doing pretty well now that I think of it that way. Hell, I even know people who were introduced to D&D post high school.

If you think not having time to play isn't a universal problem, you need to get your head out of your ass.

You're a beautiful person.

Anyways, yeah, not everyone has time to play or do everything in this world, then we die. Not sure what this has to do with RPGs in particular, except I get the idea you don't like how much time they take, vs. however many years I have to work in this job before I can retire or whatever.

One, you're proving my point that a game that requires regular sessions over a long period of time isn't as well designed as one that can be played quicker and in shorter chunks.

This proves no such thing. By your logic, bloody knuckles or Rock, Paper Scissors are the best designed games of all time, though perhaps too much of a waste of time compared to doing nothing at all (can't get faster than that!) Man, I'm thinking about a season of Baseball, all of those slow boring games through spring and summer before they finally wrap it up in the World Series. Poor game design, is what that is.

Two, while there is overlap, people from other hobbies who try RPGs will just dip their toes in and not come back. It's not a question of not having the time when they're visiting at the same time, but playing Magic or Mario Kart on the other side of the living room while the RPG players are having their hobby. They have the time to play, and they're choosing not to.

"They have the time to play, and they're choosing not to." ??? M migo !!! "It's not a question of not having the time when they're visiting the same place at the same time..." M migo !!! I thought the modern adult, in today's crazy busy society didn't have time to play RPGs? I thought we had to pull our heads out of our asses because we didn't realize this M migo ?

 

[Bunch]

If D&D weren't the first game to market, nobody would be talking about it. It would be even less relevant and more obscure than Cyborg Commando, Lejendary Adentures and Danjerous Journeys. Gary wasn't a good game designer by any stretch of the imagination. He just got it out to market first, a proof of concept, to show the idea. It wasn't even a year before people had already started publishing better RPGs as an alternative to D&D.

Nobody can know if that's true or not. We have places where it arrived later due to translations and never gained dominance and areas where it arrived around the same time and still managed to push out competitors.

Some people like to push the D&D is shit line but their wrong. It may not be elegantly designed but OD&D is simple and fun for a lot of people. Even now folks look back at some design choices and admire the simplicity and ease with which it got players into the game. I'd say that was something 5e specifically went back to after 3&4e. Complexity came later in a characters life.

 

[AsenRG]

Your argument is D&D is popular (as far as TTRPGs go) that means the average person must like D&D. The opposite is true. You're trying to claim my tastes are niche, and the people who like D&D's early level suck are in the majority. I'm pointing out that the people who like D&D's early level suck are in an overall very small minority to begin with. And games that don't have that early level suck are way more popular.

TBH, I've also suspected that

Not just my tastes and schedule. Far more people have stopped playing D&D since graduating high school than have continued.

OK, man, but does that mean they stopped because they weren't playing a game like the one I suggested above? Do we know that if they were playing Exalted, Phaserip, or whatever, they'd have stayed?
Because IME, RPGs requiring multiple people to be present at the same time and location for an extended period of time is the bigger issue by far!

If you think not having time to play isn't a universal problem, you need to get your head out of your ass.

Exactly.

One, you're proving my point that a game that requires regular sessions over a long period of time isn't as well designed as one that can be played quicker and in shorter chunks.

Two, while there is overlap, people from other hobbies who try RPGs will just dip their toes in and not come back. It's not a question of not having the time when they're visiting at the same time, but playing Magic or Mario Kart on the other side of the living room while the RPG players are having their hobby. They have the time to play, and they're choosing not to.

Sure, but how would we estimate whether this was due to a "DM was a dick" problem, a "Can't Commit To Regulat games" problem, or an "I just want faster games" issue?

 

[TristramEvans]

Not just my tastes and schedule. Far more people have stopped playing D&D since graduating high school than have continued.

Even if you had any evidence to support that claim (and since you provided none, according to your own standards "You did so little it might as well have been nothing at all. I don't need to provide an alternative to that, I just need to point out that it's nothing."), it has fuck-all to do with game design.

If you think not having time to play isn't a universal problem, you need to get your head out of your ass.

Listen sweet cheeks, you are clinically retarded if you think that there is suddenly now less hours in the day then there always was. You have less time for gaming because you are prioritizing other things. The idea that "modern game design" should cater specifically to your aging demographic because your life choices are different than they were in school, beyond being insipidly myopic, suggests that maybe you should have spent more time paying attention in school and less gaming, so you might actually understand the concepts of objective vs subjective criticisms. Hint: the first one involves giving up the notion that the world should revolve around you.

 

[migo]

Lots of games and designers escape the gravity of D&D pretty well, IMO anyway, which seems to work against your thesis and I think the burden is on you to explain the difference.

This was the original quote that you were intending to back up.

Non-D&D

• Alien RPG
• Blades in the Dark
• Eclipse Phase
• Exalted 2e
• Fate
• Fiasco
• Five Torches Deep
• Genesys Core Rulebook
• Hero Kids
• Kids on Bike
• Kids on Brooms
• Mork Borg
• Mothership
• Mythic Roleplaying
• Numernera
• Ranger of Shadow Deep
• Star Trek Adventures
• The Witcher RPG

These are your "non-D&D" games that you believe have escaped the gravity of D&D pretty well. It takes only a cursory glance of Five Torches Deep to see that isn't the case. I'm not familiar with all the games in that list, but that you got FTD wrong is enough to tell me that you didn't put any effort into quickly throwing together that list.

 

[migo]

You're acting in a very impolite way.

I'm responding in kind. Don't like me being a dick? Don't be a dick.

Look, I don't even like D&D, but... Nothing about D&D's popularity means that the "average person must like D&D", because the average person does not play RPGs. So, maybe... "average role player"? Anyways, what games "that don't have early level suck" are you talking about? The ones that are way more popular than D&D. Are you even talking about RPGs? Can you name them? Also, are you talking D&D 5e? What is the early level suckage of modern D&D? Like, you can have a person who shoots bolts of magic out of their fingers all day long like a god-damned super hero from level one. You could have a buff level 1 fighter face off 1v1 vs. people in a village and kill... how many before he got taken down? I'll tell you this: It's more than one. But apparently a modern game, to appeal to today's busy modern person, must start you out like one of the god-damned Avengers or the average person of today will feel you're wasting their time.

Off the top of my head, Dragonlance 5th Age doesn't have early level suck, and allows mixing of different power levels. I've never experienced early level suck with any ORE games either. I haven't played much Earthdawn, but I don't remember it having any.

 

[migo]

Even if you had any evidence to support that claim (and since you provided none, according to your own standards "You did so little it might as well have been nothing at all. I don't need to provide an alternative to that, I just need to point out that it's nothing."), it has fuck-all to do with game design.

When robert provided a little more, it proved he did exactly as little as I said he did. He just listed games that he hadn't even looked at the character sheet of.

Listen sweet cheeks, you are clinically retarded if you think that there is suddenly now less hours in the day then there always was. You have less time for gaming because you are prioritizing other things. The idea that "modern game design" should cater specifically to your aging demographic because your life choices are different than they were in school, beyond being insipidly myopic, suggests that maybe you should have spent more time paying attention in school and less gaming, so you might actually understand the concepts of objective vs subjective criticisms. Hint: the first one involves giving up the notion that the world should revolve around you.

Any adult has less time. And if we're talking clinically retarded, you challenging the notion that more people have stopped playing D&D since graduating high school is about as close to that as you can get.

 

[chuckdee]

Then talk about that. Don't just do a quick filter and say "here, there are X RPG corebooks that aren't D&D". You did so little it might as well have been nothing at all. I don't need to provide an alternative to that, I just need to point out that it's nothing.

*sigh* You can find this information easily enough on DTRPG. They have filters for that sort of thing.

Filter on Core Rulebooks - 16151 items

- minus -

Filter on Core Rulebooks (Dungeons and Dragons) - 1804 items

- equals -

14347 items that don't use Dungeons and Dragons as a system.

Is this the equivalent of LMGTFY for DTRPG?

 

[migo]

OK, man, but does that mean they stopped because they weren't playing a game like the one I suggested above? Do we know that if they were playing Exalted, Phaserip, or whatever, they'd have stayed?
Because IME, RPGs requiring multiple people to be present at the same time and location for an extended period of time is the bigger issue by far!

If it were games like Lady Blackbird or Fiasco that were being played in high school, yeah you'd see more people continuing to play them out of high school. It's fun if you have only a short amount of time to invest, and makes it more worth putting the effort in to keep some regular play going. If it takes you the better part of a year to get some characters up to a point where it's actually fun to play, you're just not going to bother. And if the only game you know is D&D, you'll just quit the hobby entirely.

Sure, but how would we estimate whether this was due to a "DM was a dick" problem, a "Can't Commit To Regulat games" problem, or an "I just want faster games" issue?

Different GMs, so they would have to think all the GMs were dicks, and that would be weird to continue hanging out with them.

They committed to hanging out with us on a daily basis, just playing different games in the same room.

So yeah, it's the game.

When I invited one of my girlfriends along for a game of HarnMaster, after she had already been introduced to D&D (heavily houseruled by me not to have early level suck) and ORE and liked it, and she said everyone at the session was nice, and liked the GM, the constant failure almost made the entire experience bad. Even with everyone being very nice. She never came along for another game of HarnMaster, although that didn't turn her off RPGs entirely. That's just one more, to the many examples of people who tried games like that once, didn't like them, and moved on.

 

[migo]

*sigh* You can find this information easily enough on DTRPG. They have filters for that sort of thing.

Filter on Core Rulebooks - 16151 items

- minus -

Filter on Core Rulebooks (Dungeons and Dragons) - 1804 items

- equals -

14347 items that don't use Dungeons and Dragons as a system.

Is this the equivalent of LMGTFY for DTRPG?

I know you can do that, and the information you get from doing it is useless. Robert did that and came to the conclusion that Five Torches Deep was non-D&D.

 

[chuckdee]

I know you can do that, and the information you get from doing it is useless. Robert did that and came to the conclusion that Five Torches Deep was non-D&D.

No, it's not useless. Five Torches Deep is decidedly NOT included in that list. If you even bothered to go to the entry, you'd see this:



I'm not sure where he got the list he did. I'm just using the tools there. And they definitely categorize things pretty well.

 

[migo]

No, it's not useless. Five Torches Deep is decidedly NOT included in that list. If you even bothered to go to the entry, you'd see this:

View attachment 58019

I'm not sure where he got the list he did. I'm just using the tools there. And they definitely categorize things pretty well.

Once again, this is what he was responding to:

Lots of games and designers escape the gravity of D&D pretty well, IMO anyway, which seems to work against your thesis and I think the burden is on you to explain the difference.

Five Torches Deep is not a game that has escaped the gravity of D&D, at all.

The data he lazily (just like you) pulled up is useless, because it's wrong.

Pointing out he's wrong about FTD is about as much effort as I will put into dismissing his list, because he put even less effort into constructing it.

 

[chuckdee]

Once again, this is what he was responding to:



Five Torches Deep is not a game that has escaped the gravity of D&D, at all.

The data he lazily (just like you) pulled up is useless, because it's wrong.

Pointing out he's wrong about FTD is about as much effort as I will put into dismissing his list, because he put even less effort into constructing it.

I'm not responding to his response if you notice. You're just dismissing the findings because it doesn't align with what you want. I don't know where he got his list from- it's irrelevant. Mine is core items that don't have D&D as the system. That's just basic use of database data available. Call it lazy- but I call it using data points provided. There's a difference.

 

[EmperorNorton]

Game design includes writing as well as coming up with mechanics.

Robin Laws is a great example of communicating through writing very clearly what the intent was behind the mechanics choices. It would be nice if he weren't an exception, and rather just one of many.

I'm going to be honest here, almost every time I see house rules for games, I immediately see that most people don't actually understand how RPGs work. So I tend to be very skeptical of anyone who has an "objective opinion" on what games are badly designed, because 9 times out of10, it is because they don't have the comprehension of the game to actually make that call.

(I'm not talking about clearly trying to do something new and different with the game with house rules. I'm talking about house rules that very clearly break obvious things about the game and completely ignore the principles of how the game is designed. (a good example is any house rule that lets you get more than 1 roll per round in Star Wars FFG, cause more rolls = more advantage threat, and that is why only actions have rolls and maneuvers in the game do not)

 

[robertsconley]

M migo Thanks for correcting my list.

However

Spoiler

my original point hasn't been refuted.

Non-D&D

• Alien RPG
• Blades in the Dark
• Eclipse Phase
• Exalted 2e
• Fate
• Fiasco
• Genesys Core Rulebook
• Hero Kids
• Kids on Bike
• Kids on Brooms
• Mork Borg
• Mothership
• Mythic Roleplaying
• Numernera
• Ranger of Shadow Deep
• Star Trek Adventures
• The Witcher RPG

Cyberpunk

• CyberPunk Red/Cyberpunk Red Starter Kit
• Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0 2e

D100

• Basic Roleplaying
• Call of Cthulu Starter Set
• Legend
• Runequest Starter Set

Savage World

• Savage World Deluxe
• Savage Worlds Adventure Edition

Shadowrun

• Shadowrun 4e
• Shadowrun 5e

Warhammer

• Warhammer 40K: Wrath & Glory
• Warhammer Fantasy 4e

Storyteller System

• Demon the Descent
• Mage the Ascension 20th anniversary.
• Mage the Awakening 2e
• New World of Darkness
• Vampire the Dark Ages, 20th anniversary
• Vampire the Masquerade 20th anniversary
• Vampire the Masquerade 5th edition
• Vampire the Requiem 2e
• Werewolf: The Apocalypse

D&D Related

• Beyond the Wall
• Black Hack Second Edition
• Dungeon Crawl Classic
• Dungeon World
• Five Torches Deep
• Knave

Kevin Crawford

• Stars without Number
• Worlds without Number

D&D System (various editions)

• AD&D 2e (PHB, DMG, & MM)
• AD&D 1e (PHB, DMG, & MM)
• B/X D&D (Basic, Expert)
• D&D Rules Cyclopedia

As for the 16,000+ core rule books. Picking random pages in search results shows that the same pattern holds for the results shown on each page.

 

[Telok]

In a game like D&D where each roll has a high chance of failure, players don't tend to come up with such plans. It's not even a question of using a different means of adjudicating. They don't make such plans, because the system intrinsically discourages it (unless they're very new) - in many cases I don't think they even realise they avoid such things. They rely on magic because that's reliable and they make plans that involve using magic to do things.

D&D has an issue that it started and continues to be very blow-by-blow simulationist set of rules for interpersonal combat. The whole paradigm of "avoid using the non-combat mechanics if you want heroic adventurers" is a result of trying to make D&D characters' non-combat performance match the "cinematic action hero" style of game being sold & advertised using a system that's not designed to do that.

F-ing up is definitely a part of WFRP's unique flavour, as is learning to avoid combat if at all possible.

As Trevor wisely put it, "Warhammer is a game where you start out thinking you're playing D&D, but quickly find out that you're actually playing Call of Cthulhu."

Low level D&D and starter character WHFRP basically map across pretty well at the character level. The big difference is that D&D downgrades a bunch of opponents to easy mode. You get a really good WHFRP vibe if you take low level D&D, change the cr 1/8th or whatever "goblin soldier" to the cr 1 or whatever "soldier" stat block who happens to be a goblin, and then use the normal dc 15 to 20 range for all the skill rolls. Of course D&D xp gain is a frikken rocket compared to WHFRP xp so it all breaks down after ten or fifteen sessions when the D&D characters combat ability starts going off the charts into superhero territory. But at first level it maps ok if you don't use nerf-monsters.

 

[AsenRG]

Off the top of my head, Dragonlance 5th Age doesn't have early level suck, and allows mixing of different power levels. I've never experienced early level suck with any ORE games either. I haven't played much Earthdawn, but I don't remember it having any.

ORE gets close to your sweet mark only after you hit 6 dice in a pool. If you only have 4 dice, that's a 50% odds of success...
So it depends on how you built your characters.

If it were games like Lady Blackbird or Fiasco that were being played in high school, yeah you'd see more people continuing to play them out of high school. It's fun if you have only a short amount of time to invest, and makes it more worth putting the effort in to keep some regular play going. If it takes you the better part of a year to get some characters up to a point where it's actually fun to play, you're just not going to bother. And if the only game you know is D&D, you'll just quit the hobby entirely.

I've had similar suspicions as well, admittedly. But I'm not voicing them as much because, well, a lot of other people find those offensive, and because I'm not sure that it wouldn't be the opposite: maybe less people would stick to playing after high school. Life is unpredictable that way...

Different GMs, so they would have to think all the GMs were dicks, and that would be weird to continue hanging out with them.

If you only know one GM, that's 100% of all GMs you know...

They committed to hanging out with us on a daily basis, just playing different games in the same room.

So yeah, it's the game.

OK. You obviously have someone in mind. Have you suggested it to him or her to try a game and explained that this time it would be different?
If that doesn't work, maybe show him/her this thread and ask to participate in an experiment?

When I invited one of my girlfriends along for a game of HarnMaster, after she had already been introduced to D&D (heavily houseruled by me not to have early level suck) and ORE and liked it, and she said everyone at the session was nice, and liked the GM, the constant failure almost made the entire experience bad. Even with everyone being very nice. She never came along for another game of HarnMaster, although that didn't turn her off RPGs entirely. That's just one more, to the many examples of people who tried games like that once, didn't like them, and moved on.

Well, "try once, move on if you don't like it" is kinda how it works in all hobbies. But it doesn't refute the idea that other people might move along if they didn't like some other element.

As a counterexample, it was a new player on her first session (ORE, I think Nemesis) that told me we have too many points. So not everyone wants to have a really competent PC. She just wanted a "normal person gets in the deep and finds it's way over her head", that much was obvious... I just wasn't sure what to do, at the time (my first time meeting such a player).

 

[SavAce]

Any adult has less time. And if we're talking clinically retarded, you challenging the notion that more people have stopped playing D&D since graduating high school is about as close to that as you can get.

I know this is something I'm going to point to as evidence, and so it is to be either ignored or completely denigrated as the ravings of a dolt, but... surveys by WotC show the following breakdown of D&D players by age:

15-19: 12%
20-24: 24%
25-29: 18%
30-34: 18%
35-39: 14%
40+ : 13%

So... twice as many people aged 20-24 than there are people aged 15-19... Wouldn't that mean more people had to start after high school, a time where a person would be considered an adult? It just feels like maybe you're not correct? While calling someone clinically retarded?

Dungeons and Dragons Infographic Shows How Popular the Game Has Become

Wizards of the Coast releases a massive infographic detailing Dungeons and Dragons' meteoric rise in popularity throughout 2020.

gamerant.com

 

[Bunch]

Lets all cut it out with the personal insults. Be basically civil human beings or stop participating.

 

[Bunch]

I can understand the claim that a shorter game would have more opportunities to be played by virtue of where it can fit in life. But that isn't the only criteria. If it were we'd all play 5 Minute Dungeon. I mean it literally takes around 5 minutes to play. Clearly that's the best if time is the primary criteria.

I dont think it is and I dont think anyone else thinks it is. It's one criteria. Clearly if all we're talking about is one shot games then anyone who wants characters to grow over time is going to be left out. RPG's become closer to board games in some regards, one and done. It's interesting to contrast that with the movement among some board games to have legacy elements which shoot the one and done criteria in the foot. BGG lists 5 games in the Top Ten that are either Legacy games and/or 3+ hour time commitments. Length may be more desirable than you think M migo.

 

[Moracai]

I know this is something I'm going to point to as evidence, and so it is to be either ignored or completely denigrated as the ravings of a dolt, but... surveys by WotC show the following breakdown of D&D players by age:

15-19: 12%
20-24: 24%
25-29: 18%
30-34: 18%
35-39: 14%
40+ : 13%

So... twice as many people aged 20-24 than there are people aged 15-19... Wouldn't that mean more people had to start after high school, a time where a person would be considered an adult? It just feels like maybe you're not correct? While calling someone clinically retarded?

Dungeons and Dragons Infographic Shows How Popular the Game Has Become

Wizards of the Coast releases a massive infographic detailing Dungeons and Dragons' meteoric rise in popularity throughout 2020.

gamerant.com

Also there's the thing where older people tend to ignore these kinds of surveys totally, so that skews the result somewhat.

 

[Sharrow]

D&D has an issue that it started and continues to be very blow-by-blow simulationist set of rules for interpersonal combat. The whole paradigm of "avoid using the non-combat mechanics if you want heroic adventurers" is a result of trying to make D&D characters' non-combat performance match the "cinematic action hero" style of game being sold & advertised using a system that's not designed to do that.


Low level D&D and starter character WHFRP basically map across pretty well at the character level. The big difference is that D&D downgrades a bunch of opponents to easy mode. You get a really good WHFRP vibe if you take low level D&D, change the cr 1/8th or whatever "goblin soldier" to the cr 1 or whatever "soldier" stat block who happens to be a goblin, and then use the normal dc 15 to 20 range for all the skill rolls. Of course D&D xp gain is a frikken rocket compared to WHFRP xp so it all breaks down after ten or fifteen sessions when the D&D characters combat ability starts going off the charts into superhero territory. But at first level it maps ok if you don't use nerf-monsters.

Or you use a pre-3e version of D&D, so a skeleton or orc with 1HD is actually comparable to a fighter or cleric in toughness and combat ability. Actually, at that point the WHFRP character is probably more robust.

 

[AsenRG]

Also there's the thing where older people tend to ignore these kinds of surveys totally, so that skews the result somewhat

Yes, but towards younger, if anything.

 

[TristramEvans]

And if we're talking clinically retarded, you challenging the notion that more people have stopped playing D&D since graduating high school is about as close to that as you can get.

Now, now, refrain from dishonesty please.

I didn't make any claim or challenge, I simply pointed out that you made a claim without providing any evidence to back it up, one paragraph after chewing out Robert for that exact thing.

I'm sure there is a word for that...starts with an H...

 

[thebigh]

Yeah, I think we can do without calling people retards.

 

[Numidius]

Maybe I'm just old, but when I ran a mini campaign with OSE plus advanced options for six 6th level starting characters, it felt like freakin' power fantasy.

Now, I'd love to play a 1st level old school Thief in someone else's game, after reading this thread.