Role-playing games

Just leveled up choosing shit and stuff now. Also o have a bagpipe, haven't been allowed to use ut yet

Yeeeeeaaaah beast master and gotten myself a motherflippin' hawk!

Very cool, Norc. Which version of D&D are you playing? Looks a lot like 3.5 to me but I dunno how similar 4 and 5 really are since I've never played them.

We're playing 5

Bah, who needs Charisma anyway.

It's great that you're having such a fun time Norc, reminds me of when I started playing last fall!


Eldo:
5th Edition is simpler by far than either 3.5 or 4th edition. For example, that list of skills in the bottom left side of the Character sheet (Acrobatics, Animal Handling, etc.) replaces all of the various skill point systems that they had in 3.5 D&D.

I dont like the dumbing down of the skills at all- its stupid and less fun.

If memory serves things like climbing and swimming fall under the same stat in 5th- which is ridiculous, they are unrelated skills, you could have grown up in a rocky desert and never seen enough water to learn to swim in.
Plus one of the great pleasures for players is leveling up and allocating their points on skills- I dont see the sense in reducing the available options the players have to create a unique specific character.

A system like 5th is perfectly fine if its underpinning a computer role playing game, where you expect simplification for necessity sake, but not in a proper table top game.

I remember you had these complaints before as well Petty. I simply chalk these things up to personal preference. It seems like most people just really like the edition or game they play, and other games or editions just will not work for them. I remember Lindybeige on Youtube complaining about how, in D&D, the more armour and the heavier the armour you wear, the less chance you have of getting hit, somehow suggesting that toting around plate makes you more nimble and adept at dodging about.

Anyway, I don't think the point is valid that this reduction of "available options the players have to create a unique character" is damaging to the game: I think this simplification of game mechanics simply moves the focus of the game away from the detail-bits about physical and magical abilities and onto storytelling. Perhaps better storytelling can be achieved by knowing all the different rules for physical interactions in the D&D universe; but I doubt it. And a simpler system is certainly less daunting to newcomers. Who knows if Norc would now be playing D&D if she was faced with a more complicated game?

5e Characters are less unique, certainly, than the splat-booked 3.5 character, but I don't think anyone can make the argument that less storytelling and characterization is happening in this edition than in earlier ones. It's an edition-based game that changes according to the whims of various silly people, and it seems that we all like the one we start with the most. (Except 4th edition of course, mostly. )

You are correct though about the swimming. There are some suggestions for intuitively DMing whether or not a character will know how to swim in the DMG, but the basic default is that they are both defined by Athletics.

But in the end, it all boils down to personal preference. Some players enjoy placing points in skill builds. Some players like to draw fancy pictures of their characters. Some players like to equip their characters with ridiculous types of weapons. (I encountered one guy who was complaining tons about how lame it was that there was no Final Fantasy "Buster Sword" in the 5th edition rules. To this guy, a "proper tabletop RPG" required Buster Swords.)

P.S.
I really don't understand the argument that a proper tabletop RPG is more complicated than a computer game though. Especially with your knowledge Petty of the endless mods for Skyrim and the interactivity of the universe in that space-exploration game, I would have thought you'd think that tabletop games are necessarily simplified, so as to give our brains a break from the calculation of precise physics and the minute details of a gridded, calculated, and controlled world. Tabletop RPGs are to computer RPGS (or physics-based games), as a witty writer is to a pedantic statistician.

I think this simplification of game mechanics simply moves the focus of the game away from the detail-bits about physical and magical abilities and onto storytelling.- Forest

I dont agree. My games have always been character and narrative led, not stat led (go read my book and see for yourself!! ), I try to keep the actual intrusion of rules to a minimum and only where they are necessary. But thats not the same as the stats on which players build their character.
A character should not just be quickly thrown together, they should be considered, and having more options on where to place points in skills helps players to define the fine detail of their character, it gives them points to consider- if they are a good swimmer why? Where did they learn? When? Who taught them? It naturally leads to the creation of deeper, more considered character development by players.

Also leveling up even in a simplified game system like Skyrim is fun- deciding where to put your hard earned perks is fun, its the reward aspect, and I don't think that should be reduced in D&D for the sake of simplification.

'and it seems that we all like the one we start with the most.'

Not me. I started on Basic 1st Edition, then moved to Advanced Edition, then onto 2nd edition, then finally 3rd where I started to have serious worries, then 3.5 which I point blank refused to use as the issues were now overwhelming.
When I do game (rarely these days) the house rules are mainly 3rd edition, but with a smattering of 2nd edition in there too.

'I really don't understand the argument that a proper tabletop RPG is more complicated than a computer game though. Especially with your knowledge Petty of the endless mods for Skyrim and the interactivity of the universe in that space-exploration game, I would have thought you'd think that tabletop games are necessarily simplified, so as to give our brains a break from the calculation of precise physics and the minute details of a gridded, calculated, and controlled world.'- Forest

The narrative of a table-top game is more flexible, thats the crucial difference- no matter how different my character in Skyrim might be to yours, we will both have met the same main players, heard them say the same stuff, and we will both have done all the same main events- warned Riverwood, gone to see the Jarl of Whiterun, got the artifact for Bleakfalls Barrow, taken it back, fought the dragon, become the Dragonborn.
Whereas a good DM doesn't have a series of set events, just the chessboard with all the pieces set out on it in their starting positions, the story, its people, their actions are all flexible and all dependent upon the actions of the players- a computer rpg strives to create the impression your actions are what cause events, when in reality playing through predetermined paths just unlocks the same events for everyone.
So in that sense I mean computer games are by necessity limited in comparison to tabletop.

That limitation also pertains to just how much it can implement what a player can do. So stats are limited by usefulness, in a computer game you might amalgamate all physical actions under one stat like Athelitcs simply because there is no way for the game system to run all the programming scripts every second it would need to to check environment against stats against what the player is doing- the power of computers limit their reach.

That limitation does not apply to table top- now I am not against some sensible streamlining, where actions are similar- roll and dodge for example there is little practical game need to differentiate between the two and which DM's used to make the roll on was largely a matter of preference, but when you start putting disparate activities like swimming and climbing under the same stat and same dice roll its stops working. Now its just an imposed limitation in an environment, tabletop gaming, where there is no need for such an imposition.

So to sum up reducing the stats is bad because it limits the scope of character creation and therefore individualism of character. With fewer stats for everyone to choose from differences between character stats become less pronounced and sameness creeps in.
And many of the old stats they have chosen to combine don't make any sense as they are obviously completely different skills learned in different environments.
Thirdly I have yet to meet a player who doesn't like leveling up and allocating their points, its one of the highlights for most gamers of their characters lives is achieving levels and thereby new or superior skills. Anything which potentially reduces this enjoyment I think is a bad idea.
And lastly its putting a reduction on available options where none is needed, the whole advantage table top gaming has over computer rpg's is the lack of such necessary limitations.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:I think this simplification of game mechanics simply moves the focus of the game away from the detail-bits about physical and magical abilities and onto storytelling.- Forest

I dont agree. My games have always been character and narrative led, not stat led (go read my book and see for yourself!!    ), I try to keep the actual intrusion of rules to a minimum and only where they are necessary. But thats not the same as the stats on which players build their character.
A character should not just be quickly thrown together, they should be considered, and having more options on where to place points in skills helps players to define the fine detail of their character, it gives them points to consider- if they are a good swimmer why? Where did they learn? When? Who taught them? It naturally leads to the creation of deeper, more considered character development by players.

Also leveling up even in a simplified game system like Skyrim is fun- deciding where to put your hard earned perks is fun, its the reward aspect, and I don't think that should be reduced in D&D for the sake of simplification.

Whether player actually considers the character ramifications behind all these numbers is another matter of course. I can imagine many players checking off their "Swimming skill" box with a +3 or whatever, and then moving on without a second thought. It isn't really a matter of the game being "character-led" or "stat-led", however, as these terms mean the same thing (stats are meant to represent what the character is like). It's a matter of what the players spend their time doing as they create characters and play the game. With a simplified set of skill proficiencies you have the advantage of less time spent calculating stat details.

Now you can argue Petty that you, as an experienced player, can keep the rules intrusion to a minimum. But to get to this point, the average player must first learn how to create their characters, spend the time rolling stats and allocating points and so on, and then memorize (or become familiar with) what all those numbers are and mean and then play lots of games in order to get an ingrained sense of the game before they can reach that same point. This is a dedication of time and energy that does not appeal to everyone, and as an alternative a simplified system has the advantage of approachability and ease-of-use. We are able to skip over much of the fiddly bits and spend less time calculating stats and more time thinking about our characters and playing the game!

Pettytyrant101 wrote:
'and it seems that we all like the one we start with the most.'

Not me. I started on Basic 1st Edition, then moved to Advanced Edition, then onto 2nd edition, then finally 3rd where I started to have serious worries, then 3.5 which I point blank refused to use as the issues were now overwhelming.
When I do game (rarely these days) the house rules are mainly 3rd edition, but with a smattering of 2nd edition in there too.

I mean, this hardly discredits the idea, but having never played 3.5 edition (I read over part of a friend's PHB when I was young, that's all) I'm curious as which changes were the more worrying in that edition.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:
'I really don't understand the argument that a proper tabletop RPG is more complicated than a computer game though. Especially with your knowledge Petty of the endless mods for Skyrim and the interactivity of the universe in that space-exploration game, I would have thought you'd think that tabletop games are necessarily simplified, so as to give our brains a break from the calculation of precise physics and the minute details of a gridded, calculated, and controlled world.'- Forest

The narrative of a table-top game is more flexible, thats the crucial difference- no matter how different my character in Skyrim might be to yours, we will both have met the same main players, heard them say the same stuff, and we will both have done all the same main events- warned Riverwood, gone to see the Jarl of Whiterun, got the artifact for Bleakfalls Barrow, taken it back, fought the dragon, become the Dragonborn.
Whereas a good DM doesn't have a series of set events, just the chessboard with all the pieces set out on it in their starting positions, the story, its people, their actions are all flexible and all dependent upon the actions of the players- a computer rpg strives to create the impression your actions are what cause events, when in reality playing through predetermined paths just unlocks the same events for everyone.
So in that sense I mean computer games are by necessity limited in comparison to tabletop.

That limitation also pertains to just how much it can implement what a player can do. So stats are limited by usefulness, in a computer game you might amalgamate all physical actions under one stat like Athelitcs simply because there is no way for the game system to run all the programming scripts every second it would need to to check environment against stats against what the player is doing- the power of computers limit their reach.

That limitation does not apply to table top- now I am not against some sensible streamlining, where actions are similar- roll and dodge for example there is little practical game need to differentiate between the two and which DM's used to make the roll on was largely a matter of preference, but when you start putting disparate activities like swimming and climbing under the same stat and same dice roll its stops working. Now its just an imposed limitation in an environment, tabletop gaming, where there is no need for such an imposition.\

I think one of the points that we're both getting at here is that tabletop games deal in ideas. These ideas are created and processed in our minds and represented (or not) by miniatures and written details of our characters. Because the entire system is contained within ourselves, we have control of it entirely. Computer games deal in digital sequencing interpreted by our monitors and speakers. These are also ideas, in a sense, but they are created by third parties and delivered to us as finished products. They are intrinsically unchangeable by us (unless we are game designers) as they involve a long series of complicated steps outside of our control.

This is the basis, the reason, for the flexibility of tabletop gaming and the repetitiveness/unchangeability of computer games.

What I was really getting at though was the way in which, when playing a tabletop game, we don't have to calculate every movement the same way computers have to in, say, Skyrim. We can literally say that "we travel to such-and-such" and immediately arrive at such-and-such. I can say that I walk out of the room and simply imagine myself walking out of the room. This is the simplicity of which I was talking. What you describe though, about the lack of limitations in tabletop gaming, is really more like a description of LARPing. In which we can use our bodies to simulate a video-game/theatre type of play. Computers cannot simulate real-life thing like a handshake to the extent that a LARPer can, but I think computers still fall somewhere in between LARPing and tabletop gaming in terms of complexity.

But what do you mean by saying that "it stops working" once, say, one combines Swimming and Climbing into an Athletics check. Does the game stop working? It's not a far stretch to consider that someone who is good at swimming could also be good at climbing. Of course not everyone can swim, and so this is an intuitive point on which to complain about oversimplification, but is it really so damaging to the quality of the gameplay?

"Rope-handling" was a skill in 3rd edition in which players could specialize. "Spot" and "Search" were separate checks, one for noticing enemies and one for being able to find objects in, say, a chest. I don't think these fiddly bits are damaging to the game, they simply make it more complicated. Sure, a person could define their character in light of their ability to handle ropes really well (a former sailor or some such) and this would add to their depth of characterization. But this is not something that is lost in 5th edition's simplified skill rules. One can still be a sailor with seafaring abilities like ropemanship, but this is expressed through the Background section of character creation, not in the specialization through skills aspect. Is it not easier to simply say that someone with enough strength and deft hands (and who could sensibly imagine having handled ropes before) could be able to tie a rope fairly well?

I think the shift here is one from attempting to simulate all the aspects of a person's abilities in real-life (swimming, fighting, rope-work, smithing, historic knowledge, etc.) and towards creating characters for whom the player can intuitively have a grasp of their abilities without actually having to know all the details of their abilities. This is, I feel, quite similar to the simplification of combat from 4th edition to 5th edition. The former attempted to simulate all the aspects of combat that you could encounter in a combat video-game, the latter leaves far more up to the imagination of the person playing. (For example, no longer are there mandatory rules about facing, in combat.)

Pettytyrant101 wrote:
So to sum up reducing the stats is bad because it limits the scope of character creation and therefore individualism of character. With fewer stats for everyone to choose from differences between character stats become less pronounced and sameness creeps in.
And many of the old stats they have chosen to combine don't make any sense as they are obviously completely different skills learned in different environments.
Thirdly I have yet to meet a player who doesn't like leveling up and allocating their points, its one of the highlights for most gamers of their characters lives is achieving levels and thereby new or superior skills. Anything which potentially reduces this enjoyment I think is a bad idea.
And lastly its putting a reduction on available options where none is needed, the whole advantage table top gaming has over computer rpg's is the lack of such necessary limitations.

Counter arguments, en garde!

1. Can one claim that a game that places emphasis on which abilities to level up or which stats to max out really helps create unique characters?  

"Sameness creeps in" along with power creep, and min-maxing, and a ruleset that prizes stat-allocation as a mini-game. Knowing the pervasiveness of min-max attitudes from the video-game age I would actually expect to see more similar characters in such a game than one in which the focus is on simplified rules and storytelling. I don't mean to harp on the storytelling part of course, because, as you have pointed out, you have even written whole stories about your 2e/3e D&D games. My main point here then, is to refute the idea that simplified rules lead to cookie-cutter characters. From hearing what D&D players are doing with 5th edition, and what their responses are to the changes, I can confidently say that less characterization is not what is happening.

A character will retain complexity regardless of whether they have separate die rolls for swimming and climbing.

2. I really don't think that the combined skills are illogical. Beyond the obviousness of "being strong and quick does not immediately make you good at swimming," I haven't heard any other complaints on this point from you Petty! I mean, take a look, this isn't dysfunctional:

D&D 5th Edition PHB wrote:
STR: Athletics

DEX: Acrobatics, Sleight of Hand, Stealth

INT: Arcana, History, Investigation, Nature, Religion

WIS: Animal Handling, Insight, Medicine, Perception, Survival

CHA: Deception, Intimidation, Performance, Persuasion

And that's it, that's all the skills. However, the information on a regular character sheet that defines the character will also include: Age, Height, Skin, Weight, Hair, Appearance (if you want to draw a picture), Character Backstory, Background (like a vocation, Soldier, Outlander, Guild Merchant, Criminal, Acolyte, etc.), Personality Traits, Ideals, Bonds, Flaws, Equipment, Proficiencies (tools, vehicles, etc.) and Language, Features and Traits (Class and Race related), and Allies and Organizations. It's not lacking in flavour and characterization.


I've not played 3.5e, but with that edition there are horrors like skill feats:
http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/3.5e_Skill_Feats

Can anyone on this forum who does not play D&D honestly say that something like that isn't off-putting? To a newcomer this is asking a lot.


3. 5th Edition still has leveling rewards, so that has not changed. There are no skill points to allocate, but I think that's a sensible change because it makes the game feel less like a computer game in which you have to fill up certain meters until they hit a certain point and you then get better at something.

4. In closing, I'd just like to say that this emphasis on simplicity and trimming-down over-complications like 3.5 skill feats accomplishes something very important that you have yet to address: it makes the game more approachable to new players. Between Norc, yourself, and me, two-thirds of us fall into that category. This is a valid point. Better a game that includes a plethora of calculated values that can be raised or lowered to create an array of slightly-different characters or a game that is easy to pick up and appealing in its approachability?

Whether player actually considers the character ramifications behind all these numbers is another matter of course. I can imagine many players checking off their "Swimming skill" box with a +3 or whatever, and then moving on without a second thought. - Forest

In which case in my view the DM aint doing their job probably. It should be the DM who encourages players to consider their characters background and how it has affected their current state of mind and situation in life. And having a wide selection of skills to choose from helps the player to define and shape that character past in the process of creating it, which in turn suggests certain things to them when they fill out detail about their character's background and personlaity.

'the average player must first learn how to create their characters, spend the time rolling stats and allocating points and so on, and then memorize (or become familiar with) what all those numbers are and mean and then play lots of games in order to get an ingrained sense of the game before they can reach that same point.'


Again this comes down to good DM'ing- if your players are new they should not have to use all their skills, that should take months of gaming. A good Dm should set up the adventure to slowly allow players to try out various rules and get used to them, the adventure should unfold in such a way that it lets the players familiarize themselves, bit like a computer game tutorial level,  they shouldn't be hit with everything at once in their first game and expected to know everything.

'an alternative a simplified system has the advantage of approachability and ease-of-use.'

It does, it also has the disadvantages of lacking subtlety and breadth but I never found any version difficult to use with the  exception of the original DM guide, which went unnecessarily into detail behind the thinking for every choice and was a hell of a hard read, especially aged about 10 as I was at the time.

'Does the game stop working?'

That depends on your definition- for me if the gameworld doesn't hold up, if the rules are not seemingly consistent, if the world doesn't seem to make sense then the effectiveness of the game to function stops working. You lose the belief, interest and more importantly trust of the players if they don't feel the world operates fairly.
Imagine you have two players- one who grew up in a rocky desert, one who grew up by the sea- and they are in a party together and are thrown in a raging river- both players, despite the glaring differences in their abilities and backgrounds will make their rolls based on exactly the same stat, and worse, the climber could have better stats than the swimmer and so be better at swimming despite never having seen a river before in their life!
Now a DM can fix this, but the problem should never arise in the first place and nor do I find the new 'backgrounds' feature anything like an adequate replacement for a proper background worked out by the player and DM based on the allocation of skill points and why.
There are only so many preset backgrounds they come up with, but it lacks it seems to me the flexibility and uniqueness of the old system, and is all too narrow a scope.

'It's not lacking in flavour and characterization.'

I think it is. Its now defined by templates not by imagination.

'it makes the game more approachable to new players. Between Norc, yourself, and me, two-thirds of us fall into that category. This is a valid point.'

D&D was at its heyday in the late 70's and early to mid- 80's, when the books were indepth and complex. It didnt put my generation off and I dont take the position of assuming my generation is somehow cleverer than those which followed (in fact historically each new generation tends to be more intelligent than the preceding one) so I dont buy the idea the game needed reduced to this to be accessible.
At the end of the day its the meat of it which people will return for in a good game. New D&D doesn't seem like a meal with enough meat left in it to me.
And as I mentioned above a good Dm should dole out that meal in small servings, building it up to the full course, not throw it all at players all at once and demand they scoff it down. So accessibility should not be an issue, its something a Dm should have built into their game for new players.

'I've not played 3.5e, but with that edition there are horrors like skill feats:'

My own issues with that edition were many fold, so much wrong or bad in it- feats were a massive issue, not because they were complicated but because they were utterly unbalancing and quickly fueled resentments among players.
I also had a big issue with a shift form the original Gygax premise that all you need are some friends a few sheets of paper, some pencils and  set of dice and the rest was your imagination- so 3rd edition encouraging you to go buy their miniatures and grid layouts ect ect at every turn was against the whole ethos of the game.
I also found the political correctness made the text enraging to read as gender pronouns continually change, sometimes in midsentence.  

The crux of this seems to come down to the important fact that the DM has a huge influence over how the game rules are interpreted, how new players are introduced to the game rules, and how the actual play works out.

I think we can leave the debate at that because although it is interesting to debate mechanics and edition changes, at the end of the day what really matters is who is sitting at the table with you playing the game.

By the by, I found a new game group! We're meeting next Thursday for character creation, although it will just be three or four of us for this first session. I'm really happy that I have a chance to start over and hopefully have fun and make friends.

Yeah it went pretty well. Just like Norc I'm playing through the introductory adventure the Mines of Phandelever, or whatever it is, so I feel like I'm truly starting afresh, which is exactly the feeling I wanted to have.

The other player with me, however, is quite the murder-hobo. He froze this one goblin stiff with a spell, took a captured goblin and set it up in front of the frozen one and then proceeded to smash apart the frozen goblin with another spell.

This sort of cruelty and violence is greatly familiar to anyone who plays D&D for any period of time, and it disturbs me a bit as to what this trend means in relation to the nature of man.

Well, things should work out. I'm playing a sort of non-mad, and also young, Don Quixote type knight character that I really like, so I'll try and be the voice of non-psychopathicness.

P.S.
As an example of the fun I was having with the knight. He has three retainers that are his followers by right of his title and family and whatnot, but they are incredibly lax in their duties, do not follow him anywhere remotely dangerous and, in fact, spent all of last session in a local brothel. I had my character pretend that they were, in fact, off defending a village from trolls. And, in fact, this is why my character had no horse to ride as he had given it to his retainers to help them in their quest.

(In point of fact, my character has no horse because the DM wouldn't allow it, and of course the only accosting of anyone the retainers were doing was to wenches at the brothel.)

Why won't your DM let you have a horse? Cant your character afford one?

No not yet! We only just started and my character only has 25 gold in loose change. Even with skillful bartering I couldn't get a riding horse (75 gp) or a pony (30 gp). Well, I mean I could have maybe gotten someone to sell me a pony, and a mule or donkey is only 8 gold, but... well that's not really what you want as a human knight.

As I'm sure I've mentioned before, I'm not a big fan of miniatures and grids. But this DM had this good thing he did where he would draw in details on the grid like a fallen weapon or a body as combat went on. It was a nice little touch.

we never got time to finish D&D

Nooo!
I'm sorry Norc.

If I were you I'd go start again with some other friends.

Has/Does anyone here play Magic the Gathering?

Nuuuuh.. What's that?

It's a fantasy/strategy card game.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic%3A_The_Gathering

I have not either. I've never been a fan of the playing cards. Any of the playing cards.

There was a deck of cards that was played with chess that I enjoyed, called Knightmare Chess. But that's rather different.

Do you enjoy the cardboard crack that is Magic: the Gathering Bungo?

My brother has tried to get me into MTG a few times but I've never really been that engaged by it. I know a lot of people who do really enjoy it though.

I downloaded the mobile game and played up until the point that I'd have to pay 10 dollars for access to the rest of the game. I'm not sure if I want to fork out the ten bucks though. I'd like to get a couple sample decks and maybe see if my brother wants to try and play but we're both pretty busy. Maybe I'll keep up on the mobile game before buying any physical cards.

Forest Shepherd wrote:

Do you enjoy the cardboard crack that is Magic: the Gathering Bungo?

From what I've played on the mobile app it does seem fun. But very frustrating at times when you're not able to draw enough lands/mana.I'm very much a noob, though and haven't encountered any too confusing elements yet, plus I haven't played against a real person yet.

I'm pretty sure that collecting physical MTG cards will run you a lot more than $10. Just a warning.

Yeah I know, but ten bucks for a mobile app? Who am I kidding, I'll probably get it anyway.