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Post by jeffgeorge on Oct 6, 2016 21:26:05 GMT -9
I've been away from the tabletop RPG hobby for going on two decades now, and the more I read, the more I realize I've missed out on. D&D is on its fifth edition (which does seem like a better version of D&D than the last one I played, AD&D 1e!), and around that there seem to be two trends in FRPs--rules-light systems, and OGL retro-clones. I've downloaded and printed out the rules for Labyrinth Lords and Swords and Wizardry in the retro-clone department, and they seem to be very faithful to White-box style D&D. Does anyone know which of these, or which other systems like Basic Fantasy or OSRIC, are actually getting played? Or does it matter, since they're all d20/OGL games that are so close in terms of rules that content for one works with any of them?
And on the rules-light side, what do people like? Dungeon World? Dungeon Crawl Classics? Dragon Age?
I feel like Rumpelstiltskin. Can someone bring me up to date?
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Post by alloydog on Oct 6, 2016 23:02:07 GMT -9
I play Tunnels & Trolls 5th edition from time to time. The actual game mechanics are fast and light and there are hundreds of solo adventures as well. It also uses regular d6s. I say 5th edition, as a few years back, it was revamped and a 7th edition was released: That version, I feel, made things much more complicated and uses polyhedral dice - it became too much like D&D which it was originally written because D&D was thought to be too heavy... Both versions are actively supported both in communities and commercially through outlets such as DriveThruRPG. You can even get a legit, abridged version of the 5th edition rules HERE.
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Post by jeffgeorge on Oct 7, 2016 0:17:32 GMT -9
I played T&T solo adventures back while we were playing White Box or early 1e D&D. I loved the Flying Buffalo attitude--the tone and attitude of the rulebooks and especially the adventures were lots more engaging than anything from TSR at that time. Back then, T&T's rule system was light and simple, and arguably more internally consistent than D&D. Unfortunately, the way that monster attacks were simply huge handfuls of d6's meant that combats with any monster with more than about four attack dice were very, very predictable. (Bell curves get real steep when totalling 5 or more numbers randomly chosen from 1-6.) For that reason, we never played it face-to-face--it just didn't scale. Have they addressed that problem in the many editions since that one? I'll read that link and find out...
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Post by migibb on Oct 7, 2016 1:50:34 GMT -9
I am just setting up to run my first game in years (upon years... upon years...) too, and am going to run D&D5e for my step-daughters. This was down to one of them actually asking me for Dungeons and Dragons for their birthday - and who was I to say no?? lol! I have bought them the basic set and plan to run the scenario that comes in that and see how they take to the hobby. If they do enjoy it, the "basic" rules are free so there need not be any further layout of cash for me for the moment..... Personally I would rather have run something a bit more rules-light myself - but I didnt want to give them a pdf for their birthday!! lol! Among the retro-clones and OSR (old school roleplaying/rennaissance) Labyrinth Lord and Swords & Wizadry are the big dogs AFAIK. S&W probably has more published for it/support. Both run very like 0/1e D&D from what I can see. I suppose it depends on what kind of game you want. As I am running for three 10-11 year old girls I was actually tempted to try Hero Kids (simple system where you play kids) or Beyond The Wall (a retro-clone with fairy tale sensibilities). On the rules-light side I have heard great things about Far Away Land (has a real 'Adventure Time' vibe - and its own paper miniatures!!), Dungeon World (D&D done "narrative-style") and The Black Hack - which seems to be everyone's current flavour of the month. Basically it is D&D stripped down to its most basics, with everything (virtually) being settled by a stat roll by the players - like Dungeon World, the DM does not roll to hit - the players roll to avoid the monsters..... Tunnels & Trolls still has a huge place in my heart - the first unified mechanic in the Saving Roll, folks!! But still uses that terribly "broken" (IMHO) combat system. It is now on to its latest " Deluxe" edition, which harks back to the 5th seemingly - but with a lot more info on Trollworld and Ken St Andre's home campaign. Hope this gives you some food for thought, let us know what you decide on and how you get on!!!! PS - if you are looking for news/views about OSR and retro-clones, my first stopping point would always be Tenkar's Tavern.
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Post by alloydog on Oct 7, 2016 2:04:10 GMT -9
The link to a shortened version of the 5th edition, so just covers the basics. In the full rules, there is a section that specifically addresses the issue you mentioned. In the section "Personalizing Monsters", it covers several ideas, but as the expense of making things a bit more complicated. And that is the trade off. I've seen plenty of one/two page wargame and RGP rules where they have gone for simplicity, but really just end-up having a dice-shoot-out.
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Post by okumarts on Oct 7, 2016 3:09:09 GMT -9
I like Swords and Wizardry White Box, but I also run a Labyrinth Lord Colonial Boston campaign I am quite fond of.
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Post by wyvern on Oct 7, 2016 3:29:43 GMT -9
I started out with the three D&D booklets in the White Box just over 40 years back, and after flirting with a lot of other FRPG systems over the intervening decades, came back to D&D firmly when I learnt 5th edition was on the way. I always kept an eye on D&D even during the decades when I wasn't playing or designing stuff to run in it, since to me, it always seemed to have the edge over whatever competition there was, as a playable, entertaining system that did its best to cover most possibilities. D&D 5e is definitely worth trying, particularly as you can download the rules for nothing from the Wizards' website. If it does seem tempting from this, I'd recommend picking up the Starter Set as well, as unlike pretty much every other D&D Starter Set down the years, you CAN actually start playing the game just from this boxed set (basic rules to get your characters to 5th level, a set of polyhedral dice, pregen character sheets, plus a campaign booklet which has enough options to develop into a much broader campaign should you wish).
I can't claim to have made a huge study of the many (many, many...) attempts to revisit D&D variants via OGL-style rules, or the supposedly rules-light variants, but those I have just haven't done it for me. "Rules-light" is often a real misnomer in what I've seen, as the initial rules can be so basic, the designers seem to end up having to add more and more as "supplements" to cover things they'd clearly forgotten about, or chosen to ignore for whatever reason (cynically, so they can part you from yet more cash for each supplement), or had to add as supposed one-off features within adventures. Consequently, it soon becomes impossible to keep track of where any actual rule is with some of these. Either that, or you have to endlessly invent things on the fly yourself, because the "rules" are so limited (or badly-written - or both) that they don't cover sufficient real cases with enough precision. Takes me right back to those original D&D days, but not in a good way! The OGL systems I've looked at often seem to fall into similar traps, or head down the impossibly-complex-system route (usually for combat, in a desperate, and endlessly failing, series of tries to better "simulate" fantasy combat).
It's unfair to tar so many systems with the same brush, perhaps, and it may be if you sample enough, you'll find one or two systems you like enough to stick with them for at least a while. But I can't help reflect that 40+ years on, and D&D in its 5e version still seems to me the best of what's available for fantasy RPGs. And I seem to have wasted a lot of effort finding that out the hard way!
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Post by nolabert on Oct 7, 2016 3:55:50 GMT -9
I'll add my 2 cents. I haven't played any of the retro-clones. I did support the new edition of DCC Kickstarter but the hardcover still hasn't been printed (I have the pdf but haven't really explored it). I have a really good group of players who play D&D 5E. We're all in our 40s or older mostly. Many of us hadn't played since 1st or 2nd Edition AD&D. 5E D&D is a clear winner. It's a flexible system too where you can make it more complex (using the variant feat rules) if you want. I actually like the feats.
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Post by jeffgeorge on Oct 7, 2016 5:12:56 GMT -9
Great reading about so many people's experiences!
The more I read both 5e and the retro-clones, the more I remember why my group abandoned D&D for Champions and Fantasy Hero. We had two basic problems, neither of which is really deal-breaking, but both of which are constant, low-level irritants. The first is the stupid D&D magic "system", which consists of a list of ultimately arbitrary spells, which you much choose in advance of each play session, guessing what you'll need, and then hoard because once you cast a particular "memorized" spell, it's gone. I know 5e has tried to patch over this with it's spell-slots rules, but even that seems arbitrary and kludgy to me. The D&D magic system goes back to the white box, and was deliberately based by Gygax on fiction by Jack Vance, which handled spells in a very unusual manner relative to the rest of fantasy literature, and if that style of magic isn't right for your campaign world, you're stuck, or your house-ruling HARD...
The other problem is more foundational, though it's actually easier to fix, and that is using that stupid d20 for everything. A single d20 gives you a 5% chance of rolling each and every number, making a result of 11 no more likely than 20 or 1. 3d6 covers the exact same range of numbers (though it loses 1, 2, 19, and 20, its bell curve is the same as the average roll on 1d20), but gives a really sweet bell curve, which I think better reflects "reality", but more importantly, irons out a lot of the "swinginess" of D&D combat. The hardest part of house-ruling that you use 3d6 to attack, save, or attempt a skill is convincing the skeptics at your table to give it a try; there are very few situations in play where you have to actually adjust a number because you're rolling on a 3-18 bell curve instead of a flat 1-20.
Oh, and I hate the rigidity of character classes, but that's just me.
All that said, I do have the three core books for 5e, and it is a much cleaner, more consistent version of the D&D than the ones we played in the late 70s to the mid-80s, and I have played a couple of pick-up sessions at the local game shop, so I can bear it if I have to. I'm looking around for a regular gaming group, since I know literally no one interested in RPGing, and I'll play whatever they want to play, of course. Once I know some people, I'll run a campaign myself, and then I'll be able to have more influence over the choice of system.
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Post by oldschooldm on Oct 7, 2016 6:39:52 GMT -9
[soapbox]
Please, before judging 5e, play a few sessions at your FLGS with an experienced DM. "Patching over" the spell system is not what it feels like at all (to me.)
I'm resisting publicly judging any game system I haven't actually played (even though I have staring opinions about them.) What I do is ask a lot of questions and listen to a lot of live-plays to get the feel of a game, but I still don't know if I'll like it until I try it. Conventions are great places to try them.
But, if you don't like d20 and character classes, please - by all means - play a different game. There are SO many choices these days. :-) But, the 5e math is pretty tight, and replacing d20 with 3d6 isn't going to work at all well with the AC/Monsters, etc. In fact, it would most certainly suck. If you try that, don't blame D&D for the mess you made. :-)
BTW, I personally reject all calls to "reality/realism" when talking about D&D. To me, the mechanics (magic, healing, death saving throws, all of it - actually) are all game mechanics, not a simulation of anything "real".
YMMV [/soapbox]
(That's the only thing I'll post on the subject... Where's that xacto knife?) :-)
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Post by oldschooldm on Oct 7, 2016 6:49:45 GMT -9
I lied.
One more post on 3d6 v d20 for D&D 5e:
Combat in D&D is hit-or-miss. If you adapt d20 to 3d6 in a matter that the *probability* of a hit is the same using 3d6, you haven't changed a thing.
Quick example: 25% chance to hit is 16 on d20 and it is about 12 on 3d6. Other than rounding error, you haven't changed the probability of a hit.
If you don't the change target for 3d6 to hit, you break ALL the combat/skills math, and all bets are off. +1 adjustments are HUGE/TINY depending on the original target. You can't change the dice without changing the math, and if you change the math you're playing a different game in the D&D setting.
(Now I'm really done.)
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Post by nolabert on Oct 7, 2016 7:34:09 GMT -9
The only mechanic that I don't like in D&D 5E is being fully healed after a long rest of 8 hours. It feels too video-gamey to me. It also seems to produce too much meta-gaming (my big pet peeve) where when characters are down the focus/strategy is to just find a place to secure a long-rest.
In my campaign, I've switched to the variant rules for rests as indicated in the DMG. So a long rest is a week and a short rest is 8 hours. But I've modified it so that spell slots are refilled after a short rest. And characters heal 1d4-1 (+ any constitution modifiers) x level hit points for a short rest.
I'm also more generous in terms of gaining hit points per level (since I'm stingy with healing). Players roll but take the given amount per character class as the minimum.
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Post by okumarts on Oct 7, 2016 7:57:44 GMT -9
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Post by okumarts on Oct 7, 2016 7:59:22 GMT -9
Great reading about so many people's experiences! The more I read both 5e and the retro-clones, the more I remember why my group abandoned D&D for Champions and Fantasy Hero. We had two basic problems, neither of which is really deal-breaking, but both of which are constant, low-level irritants. The first is the stupid D&D magic "system", which consists of a list of ultimately arbitrary spells, which you much choose in advance of each play session, guessing what you'll need, and then hoard because once you cast a particular "memorized" spell, it's gone. I know 5e has tried to patch over this with it's spell-slots rules, but even that seems arbitrary and kludgy to me. The D&D magic system goes back to the white box, and was deliberately based by Gygax on fiction by Jack Vance, which handled spells in a very unusual manner relative to the rest of fantasy literature, and if that style of magic isn't right for your campaign world, you're stuck, or your house-ruling HARD... The other problem is more foundational, though it's actually easier to fix, and that is using that stupid d20 for everything. A single d20 gives you a 5% chance of rolling each and every number, making a result of 11 no more likely than 20 or 1. 3d6 covers the exact same range of numbers (though it loses 1, 2, 19, and 20, its bell curve is the same as the average roll on 1d20), but gives a really sweet bell curve, which I think better reflects "reality", but more importantly, irons out a lot of the "swinginess" of D&D combat. The hardest part of house-ruling that you use 3d6 to attack, save, or attempt a skill is convincing the skeptics at your table to give it a try; there are very few situations in play where you have to actually adjust a number because you're rolling on a 3-18 bell curve instead of a flat 1-20. Oh, and I hate the rigidity of character classes, but that's just me. All that said, I do have the three core books for 5e, and it is a much cleaner, more consistent version of the D&D than the ones we played in the late 70s to the mid-80s, and I have played a couple of pick-up sessions at the local game shop, so I can bear it if I have to. I'm looking around for a regular gaming group, since I know literally no one interested in RPGing, and I'll play whatever they want to play, of course. Once I know some people, I'll run a campaign myself, and then I'll be able to have more influence over the choice of system. We went the Fantasy Hero route as well. Today we use OSR games and enjoy them as well. Mostly pick up, rules light fun campaigns.
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Post by Punkrabbitt on Oct 7, 2016 9:19:11 GMT -9
I ran a few sessions of Swords and Wizardry White box for my kids two summers ago. I found the most important thing was that the rules are just guidelines. Maria wanted to be a magic user whose father was a dragon and so she could breathe fire.
Mechanically, this meant Burning Hands castable once per hour in addition to other spells. Not in the rules, but so what? It wasn't game breaking, and she had fun.
Roleplaying, she was "dragonborn." She suffered an automatic negative reaction modifier from anyone who recognized her as dragonborn. Her draconic features would become harder to hide as she levelled up.
Her character wore heavy robes and a veil most of the time!
The rules are there to help have a good time. If something needs to be changed or tweaked, do it. It isn't the Poker World Series!
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Post by Punkrabbitt on Oct 7, 2016 9:20:22 GMT -9
I ran a few sessions of Swords and Wizardry White box for my kids two summers ago. I found the most important thing was that the rules are just guidelines. Maria wanted to be a magic user whose father was a dragon and so she could breathe fire.
Mechanically, this meant Burning Hands castable once per hour in addition to other spells. Not in the rules, but so what? It wasn't game breaking, and she had fun.
Roleplaying, she was "dragonborn." She suffered an automatic negative reaction modifier from anyone who recognized her as dragonborn. Her draconic features would become harder to hide as she levelled up.
Her character wore heavy robes and a veil most of the time!
The rules are there to help have a good time. If something needs to be changed or tweaked, do it. It isn't the Poker World Series!
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Post by migibb on Oct 7, 2016 9:31:08 GMT -9
If class and level games bother you - as they did me in the 1980s "heyday" of AD&D - then you can always go down the Runequest route. RQ itself is back with the Chaosium, and a new version (heavily tied into Glorantha) is due out soon, but there are a number of clones of it kicking about too. Mythras from the Design Mechanism is the re-badged version of Runequest 6, the most recent "official" version, while Newt at D101 games had the simplified version in OpenQuest. After they lost the RQ licence, Mongoose re-branded their version as Legend (and it's only $1.00 on drivethrurpg). All of them use the same D100, roll-under system (same as Call of Cthulhu), the differences are in character generation, how skills are divided and (complexity of) combat. But supplements for each should be as easy to convert over as swapping between LL and S&W.... Nearly forgot - both Mythras and OpenQuest have free, barebones versions available too.....
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Post by berneart76 on Oct 7, 2016 10:13:18 GMT -9
Found out i was luckier than i thought, and just managed to get the retroclone/rework of Warhammer Fantasy Role Play, "Zweihander" through a late pledge program they instituted. Guess I'll be doing a bit of reading this weekend!..
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Post by Punkrabbitt on Oct 7, 2016 15:21:32 GMT -9
Also, RuneQuest allows ducks as PCs straight out of the box. It's just a little crunchier than retroclobes which makes little tweaks create bigger ripples.
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Post by jeffgeorge on Oct 7, 2016 20:54:35 GMT -9
Also, RuneQuest allows ducks as PCs straight out of the box. It's just a little crunchier than retroclobes which makes little tweaks create bigger ripples. Crunchy duck? Is that anything like Crispy Duck? Sounds tasty!
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Post by jeffgeorge on Oct 7, 2016 21:30:27 GMT -9
If class and level games bother you - as they did me in the 1980s "heyday" of AD&D - then you can always go down the Runequest route. RQ itself is back with the Chaosium, and a new version (heavily tied into Glorantha) is due out soon, but there are a number of clones of it kicking about too. Mythras from the Design Mechanism is the re-badged version of Runequest 6, the most recent "official" version, while Newt at D101 games had the simplified version in OpenQuest. After they lost the RQ licence, Mongoose re-branded their version as Legend (and it's only $1.00 on drivethrurpg). All of them use the same D100, roll-under system (same as Call of Cthulhu), the differences are in character generation, how skills are divided and (complexity of) combat. But supplements for each should be as easy to convert over as swapping between LL and S&W.... Nearly forgot - both Mythras and OpenQuest have free, barebones versions available too..... Wow, another stroll down memory lane! You guys are making me feel young and excited about games in a way I haven't for going on three decades. Thanks! I remember the early printings of Runequest well. I owned and read it, along with several supplements, and really liked the system and especially the world. I especially liked that it had character progression without classes or levels, and that it had a more plausible, original and internally consistent world as a setting than any I'd seen for D&D. I think that was while I was in high school, or maybe early college. My group was pretty committed to a long-running AD&D campaign at the time, so I think I actually played Runequest only once or maybe twice. And by the time we had finished with AD&D, we played 1e Champions for a year or two, as I mentioned, and when Fantasy Hero came out, that's where we went. At that point, Runequest was very closely associated with Glorantha, and as GMs, we were interested in building our own campaign settings, so picking up Runequest at that point never even came up. I'll definitely check out those links. If I were going to play Runequest now, I think I'd be very interested in it being a Gloranthan campaign--but I'd have to find a group that would be into that in order to make it work.
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Post by migibb on Oct 8, 2016 2:14:31 GMT -9
If you are going for a Gloranthan campaign, that opens up a whole new can of worms!! lol! The world has developed and moved on massively - the myths and everything around it has become more complex and living.... I love it personally, but it can be a bit daunting! Personally I think the Heroquest narrative rules engine is better for Glorantha than RQ, but I understand those who disagree. But do check out the HQ supplements for background material etc. And if you can - and have a spare six months or so to read it and take it in - pick up the Guide to Glorantha. An absolute gem of a book - but not so much a coffee table book, as a whole coffee table in itself!! But don't be put off by the "canon" - you can do what you like in Glorantha. As of this year Heroquest, Runequest and 13th Age are all going to be "official" ways of playing in Glorantha but I know others have used the D6 system, Pendragon, Barabarians of Lemuria and a host of other systems. Love to see what you end up doing with it - been years since I played any Gloranthan tabletop.
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Post by jeffgeorge on Oct 8, 2016 8:33:27 GMT -9
If you are going for a Gloranthan campaign, that opens up a whole new can of worms!! lol! The world has developed and moved on massively - the myths and everything around it has become more complex and living.... I love it personally, but it can be a bit daunting! Personally I think the Heroquest narrative rules engine is better for Glorantha than RQ, but I understand those who disagree. But do check out the HQ supplements for background material etc. And if you can - and have a spare six months or so to read it and take it in - pick up the Guide to Glorantha. An absolute gem of a book - but not so much a coffee table book, as a whole coffee table in itself!! But don't be put off by the "canon" - you can do what you like in Glorantha. As of this year Heroquest, Runequest and 13th Age are all going to be "official" ways of playing in Glorantha but I know others have used the D6 system, Pendragon, Barabarians of Lemuria and a host of other systems. Love to see what you end up doing with it - been years since I played any Gloranthan tabletop. I spent some time last night poking around the Chaosium site you linked, and holy cow, Glorantha has expanded and matured in the last 40 years! When I was last familiar with it, it was pretty much limited to the RQ rulebook and the small handful of original supplements--Snake Pipe Hollow, Apple Lane, Balastor's Barracks, Big Rubble. I think I remember Griffin Mountain coming out, but I didn't get it (if that supplement didn't actually come out until later, maybe I am remembering a reference to the mountain in some other supplement, and conflating that with the sourcebook). That's a lot to digest. I didn't know about HeroQuest at all until last night. When people say HeroQuest, I had previously assumed they were referring to the old Hero Quest (or was it Hero's Quest?) D&D-like board game--which I had and we enjoyed. I clearly have a lot of homework to do. Thanks for the guidance!
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Post by jeffgeorge on Oct 8, 2016 8:36:12 GMT -9
I've seen your Anime Hack at OBS, but hadn't picked it up because Anime is not my genre. (I like the art style of the genre, but its narrative conventions don't usually speak to me for some reason.) I'll take a look at Black Hack. I've noticed someone--possibly you?--mention it before in other threads or other forums, and it sounds like it's worth a look. Thanks for the links!
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Post by jeffgeorge on Oct 8, 2016 11:27:01 GMT -9
I'm sorry I missed your posts last night, oldschooldm , because it's a good one. Everyone had added so much great stuff to the thread, the forum software scrolled down past it when I clicked in, and I didn't see it. My mistake, and I apologize. Please, before judging 5e, play a few sessions at your FLGS with an experienced DM. "Patching over" the spell system is not what it feels like at all (to me.) Fair enough. Like it or not, whatever is the current edition of D&D is the lingua franca of roleplaying, and as I've started returning to the hobby, the first thing I did was download the free 5e PDF, and the second thing I did was buy the three core books (PH, DMG, and MM). I don't regret any of those purchases. I could tell from the free PDF that this was going to be a much better version of D&D than any previous one--it was faithful to all the things we liked about D&D in the 70s and 80s, but fixed a lot of the gappiness and klunkiness of the 0e and 1e rules. I really like that they've moved the actual rules of play into the PH, so everyone has it, and devoted the DMG to supporting dungeon masters in assembling and administering campaigns in a way that is almost system agnostic. The DMG now leans on D&D tropes, but it really isn't a rulebook--which is great. Overall, the set is hugely improved over the original AD&D books, in organization, logic, writing and production quality, everything. Sound advice. It's nice that we have live play videos available on demand now, so that I don't have to wait for a convention to see new games in play. Of course, conventions are great in that way, and so many others. I need to make a point of going to the next one I can physically get to. It's not just D&D--I have problems with any combat system that isn't based on a bell-curve-producing set of dice, and I find character classes arbitrary and constraining. My sense is that most the stuff that's been put into D&D since the 80s to make characters more different from one another--feats, backgrounds, and especially archetypes--are at best partially-successful attempts to make a character class system less constraining, but effectively just multiply the number of character classes offered. Character classes have been baked into D&D since the Ford administration, though, and trying to strip them out would be impossible without completely changing both the rules and the flavor of the game. You're right, there are a ton of system choices available these days, and that's fabulous. It's also daunting as hell to someone who played back when there were maybe 20 RPGs on the market, and perhaps five that mattered. When I started this thread, I meant to be asking more about what people were playing personally these days, and what they believed was being played around the hobby. Not surprisingly, "What do you play?" almost always segues into "...and here's why I play it," though. We can certainly have an interesting and engaging discussion about game design theory and practice--I've had lots of them, as I am sure we all have--but that wasn't the conversation I meant to be starting with this thread. All the same, I am more guilty than anyone else of taking this thread down the system-critique rabbit hole, so I accept responsibility for hijacking my own thread. At the end of the day, though, I'll cheerfully play the game that the person who's willing to run a campaign wants to use, and I'm willing to change systems if the game master is not satisfied with the system she's currently using. To me, system choice is the GM's prerogative, and if you don't want to play with the system she's running, stay home. The D&D magic system actually bothers me more than the d20 does, but as a player, I can work around that simply by playing a non-spellcasting class--that's what I did in 1980, and it's what I did a few weeks ago at the local game shop, and I had a fine time. To 5e's credit, D&D now lets me play a D'Artagnan-type, Dex-based swashbuckler as a fighter and be effective, rather than telling me that I had to play him as a thief who is a sub-standard fighter with a lot of inappropriate burglary skills. That's a massive improvement to the flexibility of the D&D system, and as a player, it's sufficient to let me have a good time playing the game. Fair enough. When I complain about the D&D magic system's arbitrary inflexibility, it's not really because it's not "real," but because it imposes a single, very narrow take on magic that fails to capture the essence of magic in anything other than itself and some now-forgotten Jack Vance fiction. D&D has become its own sub-genre of fantasy at this point, with its own tropes and conventions, and it doesn't adapt easily to other settings. Based on my admittedly out-dated experience, by far the best system for letting a GM or players create magic that works they way it should in their particular campaign setting, or to represent the magic in almost any fictional source material, remains Fantasy Hero...but FH spells and characters are a lot of work to create. It's fun work, if you have the time and the taste for it, but not many people have that kind of time, and the system was never successful enough to support a substantial catalog of supplements and sourcebooks. Yeah, I was over-simplifying the task of converting a d20-based system to 3d6, to avoid steering the thread hopelessly off the original topic. You're right that some other adaptations would have to be made to avoid breaking the overall system. I started to write an explanation of how to handle the other aspects of the conversion, but it went down a major rabbit hole, and I deleted it. Suffice to say, you'd have to adjust how you assign difficulty classes for skill checks, and probably break apart the single D&D Armor Class into separate values representing difficulty to hit the target, and its ability to resist or absorb damage. Without going too far into the weeds, the general advantage of a multi-die, bell-curved skill system is that it emphasizes the importance of expertise, represented by positive modifiers to skill rolls, by making an expert several times more likely to succeed at a difficult task than an untrained person, and this difference grows as the tasks become more difficult. In a linear, single-die system, positive modifiers to the skill check roll make only an incremental difference in the chance of success between an expert and an amateur, and that absolute percentage remains constant no matter how difficult the task. For example, in a 3d6 system, a specialist with a proficiency bonus in lockpicking of +4 is nearly twice as likely to successfully pick a simple lock with a DC of 11 than an unskilled person (90.7% vs. 50%), but in a d20 system, the expert is only 20% more likely to succeed than the amateur (70% vs. 50%). If the lock has a DC of 15, 3d6 makes the +4 expert five times as likely to succeed as the amateur (50% vs 9.3%), but a d20 makes the expert barely one-and-a-half times more likely than the amateur (50% vs. 30%). To me, that cheapens the value of expertise in a way that doesn't reflect fantasy literature, and diminishes the difference between characters in the game. And this may be the defining dissonance of my gaming career. D&D is the most popular, best-supported game system in the world, by far, and yet a couple of its core mechanics really bother me. I feel nostalgia for those early days of gaming, and part of that experience was house rules that fixed problems with the versions of D&D we had at the time. But another part of that experience was abandoning D&D for more flexible systems when our frustrations with the D&D mechanics began to interfere with our fun. I remember somebody, some time, defining nostalgia as a longing for a past that never actually happened--I think that may ultimately be the kind of nostalgia the retro-clones are appealing to. At any rate, oldschooldm , every one of your points is totally valid. At this point, if I were to play or GM a retro-clone, it would be because I wanted to re-experience those crazy, high-body-count dungeon-crawl-in-a-vacuum experiences from the late 70s, which would be fun for an evening here and there. If I were going to play in a serious, weekly campaign, I'd be fine playing D&D 5e if that were the DM's preferred system. If I were going to run a game, I'd think long and hard about the kind of campaign style and setting I wanted to create, and look for the right game system to support that vision. Although I didn't intend or expect this kind of discussion to be the focus of this thread, I do enjoy these explorations. I hope that in responding to you, oldschooldm , or anyone else for that matter, I haven't given offense. Even when we have irreconcilable disagreements on the subject at hand, I hope we can do so in an agreeable fashion!
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Post by oldschooldm on Oct 8, 2016 11:58:19 GMT -9
It's all good! Thanks for the detailed reply. I know lots of people that talk like you have been creating whole new systems that you might want to check out.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N910A using proboards
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Post by chiefasaur on Oct 8, 2016 12:00:53 GMT -9
I don't know if it's been mentioned, but I just want to throw the Savage Worlds engine into the ring. You build your character from the ground up instead of using character classes. It doesn't use D20s, so if you're not a fan of those, there ya go. Encounters are pretty swift, and even though the engine is pretty streamlined, you still have plenty of things to do. The characters seem a little frail to me, but, it makes combat that much more suspenseful. I've played a few one shots and campaigns, and the system works pretty well for both flavors. If you have the opportunity, give it a try! That said, my "old school" RPG experience is very limited. I've only been playing RPGs since 1998, and it was entirely D&D, since that was the only thing we were even aware of. I do love 5E though, and I think it is a legitimately good system, but I'm also lucky enough to play with a really good group.
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Post by jeffgeorge on Oct 8, 2016 14:21:07 GMT -9
It's all good! Thanks for the detailed reply. I know lots of people that talk like you have been creating whole new systems that you might want to check out. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N910A using proboards I've had one simmering on the back burner for 25 years, myself...I just don't know that the world needs another roleplaying system.
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Post by jeffgeorge on Oct 8, 2016 14:39:25 GMT -9
I don't know if it's been mentioned, but I just want to throw the Savage Worlds engine into the ring. You build your character from the ground up instead of using character classes. It doesn't use D20s, so if you're not a fan of those, there ya go. Encounters are pretty swift, and even though the engine is pretty streamlined, you still have plenty of things to do. The characters seem a little frail to me, but, it makes combat that much more suspenseful. I've played a few one shots and campaigns, and the system works pretty well for both flavors. If you have the opportunity, give it a try! I've downloaded and read through the free Lankhmar scenario for Savage Worlds a while back, and I really wanted to like it, because Lankhmar holds a special place in my heart. Though I don't remember the Savage World mechanics in great detail, I do recall that you roll a single die in skill checks. Any time you are rolling just one die, regardless of how many sides it has, and how many pluses or minuses you're applying, you still get a linear range of results, which is the exact problem I have with the core mechanic of the d20 system. Thus, Savage Worlds has the same basic problem that bothers me about the d20 system--no bell curve, which trivializes expertise or specialization in skills, minimizing the functional difference between characters. You've just got to roll at least two dice to avoid that. 5e is much, much better than the D&D we had when I was playing in the 70s and 80s, and your game master and group will always matter far more than your game system. My frustration with D&D--and this has more to do with the rigid class and magic systems than the roll-a-d20 mechanic--is that the only thing it simulates well is worlds that were created specifically for D&D. If you want to play Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Planescape, or Dark Sun, D&D is the system you want. But if you want to play in a setting that was created without the classes and spell lists of D&D, be it Lankhmar, Middle Earth, Hibernia, Game of Thrones, Pirates of the Carribbean, or an original campaign with a unique take on how magic works, D&D is just not built to accommodate those things.
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Post by tonsha on Nov 14, 2016 4:14:47 GMT -9
I don't really PLAY RPGs, but I do enjoy reading them. I've picked up quite a few of those mentioned above over the last couple of years. One which impressed me (and that isn't mentioned) is Five by Five by Jeff Moore. It LOOKS like a really simple rules-light system, that favours storytelling more than record-keeping, and that provides positive advantages for 'negative' attributes. You can download it here: fivebyfiverpg.blogspot.co.uk/DaveA
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