Tabletop RPG Metathread: We Like To Party

[Actaeon]

Can Diki run a campaign in the world her stories are set in?

[Tyranicus]

Originally Posted By: Actaeon

Can Diki run a campaign in the world her stories are set in?

So we would roleplay ourselves?

[Sudanna]

We could roleplay each other.

[Slawbug]

These have both been done.

 

http://pied-piper.ermarian.net/topic/1/3462

 

http://pied-piper.ermarian.net/topic/1/3477

 

HEY ARAN, FIX YR INTERWEBS.

[Lilith]

I've set up an early draft of my latest Nibiru project: a formalised system for working out the stamina costs of combat abilities. Yeah, it's kinda rulesy, but at least most of the heavy rules stuff can be dealt with between sessions. I haven't converted over all of the abilities from the Compendium yet, but I've got what I think is a representative sample.

[Triumph]

Shouldn't there be separate or new compendium for Nibiru?

[Lilith]

That is the separate Compendium, or at least the draft of it. Check out the "Ability List" sheet.

[Triumph]

Hmm...that's confusing (at least to tired me right now). I'll try to reread it sometime.

[Lilith]

The more I tinker around with the Nibiru system, the more I realise that levelling up isn't actually necessary at all in order to make the game work the way I want it to. It seems like the main benefits to including levels are that players feel rewarded for playing, have ways to customise their character over time, and get a sense that their character is progressing in ability, but there are other ways to do all of those things. How would people feel if we did away with the concept of levels entirely, but instead created a sense of character advancement and reward by handing out perks more often, like at a rate of close to 1 per session? The way I see it, giving each character mechanically unique abilities tied to their achievements during play has the potential to be more interesting than making numbers get bigger.

[Sudanna]

I wouldn't like it, and it seems far more troublesome. Unique, interesting, and relevant perks are hard to come by, and that would place character advancement at the mercy of the DM. You could have players come up with them, but I'm pretty sure I for one would find doing that creatively frustrating, like I've heard some DMs complain it is. Making the numbers go up also ensures that your advancement is useful, or at least probably will be. Perks are more situational and can be more easily wasted. Also, would everyone just be stuck with their starting abilities/customizations? I assume not, but still should ask.

 

Short answer,

Quote:

I wouldn't like it

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Thin Gypsy Thief

I wouldn't like it, and it seems far more troublesome. Unique, interesting, and relevant perks are hard to come by, and that would place character advancement at the mercy of the DM. You could have players come up with them, but I'm pretty sure I for one would find doing that creatively frustrating, like I've heard some DMs complain it is. Making the numbers go up also ensures that your advancement is useful, or at least probably will be. Perks are more situational and can be more easily wasted.

My thinking on perks at the moment is that they'd be worked out by agreement between the GM and the player, so it wouldn't just be a matter of the GM handing you a perk. You're still right that it requires one of them to actually step up to the bat and come up with mechanics that are both cool and useful, although I'm going to include some guidelines and maybe set up a mini-database of perks to help with that.

The thing is, if levelling up just makes your numbers bigger, then all that means is that you're going to be facing challenges that have bigger numbers -- and at that point, why level up at all when it does nothing but make the game's arithmetic harder to do in your head? If mechanically-defined character advancement is to exist at all, I think it needs to be something that makes characters feel different in play; if we want the game to play the same way at all levels, then we can achieve that most easily by just getting rid of levels.

The question I've wrestling with for some time is, if we don't want the game to play the same way at all levels, then how exactly do we make an advanced character feel different from a less advanced one while still keeping the game both balanced and easy to learn and play at all levels of advancement? Dintiradan's already offered some useful suggestions, but I'm still giving some thought as to how they can be put into practice.

Quote:

Also, would everyone just be stuck with their starting abilities/customizations? I assume not, but still should ask.

Definitely not. I'd probably just change the retraining rules to say "after every session" instead of "with every levelup".

[Sarachim]

Everything Nalyd said, plus this: rules that only apply in very specific situations are hard to remember, and perks are especially prone to this (which is why I keep reminding you to apply Lephista's ). If I had to remember several unique mechanical elements for every PC, I would make a mistake every combat round.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Sarachim

Everything Nalyd said, plus this: rules that only apply in very specific situations are hard to remember, and perks are especially prone to this (which is why I keep reminding you to apply Lephista's ). If I had to remember several unique mechanical elements for every PC, I would make a mistake every combat round.

Yeah, this is a definite problem. I don't want characters to become too mechanically complex, and every time you add a perk you're adding complexity. Maybe we need fewer passive situational bonuses and more active abilities that give new options, along the lines of "Once per session, you may do X". That has its own problems, though -- you can still forget what your options are, and if you remember them all then at a certain point you can start to suffer from option paralysis. Still, the few active perks that do exist have generally been well-received, so I think it's a design space worth exploring.

So if we want any kind of character advancement at all (do we?), how do we handle it without falling into either of the two traps of "bigger numbers for the sake of bigger numbers" or "more complexity than we can handle"?

[Sarachim]

Originally Posted By: Lilith

So if we want any kind of character advancement at all (do we?), how do we handle it without falling into either of the two traps of "bigger numbers for the sake of bigger numbers" or "more complexity than we can handle"?

In the status quo, advancement takes three basic forms:

1. You can have points in a wider variety of skills.
2. You can have more spells/techniques as your relevant skill goes up.
3. The spells/techniques you have access to become more powerful (sort of, because this is vague and nonstandardized).

The first is strictly noncombat, and still exists in Nibiru as far as I can tell. The second can easily be added, and is probably simpler than adding more perks, so I think it's a good idea. The interesting question, I think, is the last one: is it practical to add this to Nibiru, and if so, is it desirable? On one hand, it creates a whole host of new balance problems; on the other, part of character advancement is learning to do things you couldn't before, not just to do the same things better.

One think we could do is allow spells/techs with variable effects at higher levels. For instance, Lephista traded Solid Shot (normal damage to 1 target) for Wall of Missles (normal damage to any number of targets, each beyond the first costs 1 stamina). I pick this example because both abilities cost exactly the same in Nibiru, but the latter is clearly more powerful because the player can choose a number of targets.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Sarachim

In the status quo, advancement takes three basic forms:

1. You can have points in a wider variety of skills.
2. You can have more spells/techniques as your relevant skill goes up.
3. The spells/techniques you have access to become more powerful (sort of, because this is vague and nonstandardized).

I'm with you so far.

Quote:

The first is strictly noncombat, and still exists in Nibiru as far as I can tell.

I'm still thinking about how to handle skills. My personal inclination is to have a simplified system of relatively static skill modifiers, as that's what easiest to balance, but based on the feedback I've received so far I think I can modify it to allow room for customisation and growth, rather than just lateral change. The price is that the system will eventually fall apart at very high levels, but if I do end up having to say "this game is only balanced for levels 1 to 20 or so", I don't think that's a terrible price to pay.

Quote:

The second can easily be added, and is probably simpler than adding more perks, so I think it's a good idea.

Possibly. I think there are good psychological reasons (related to the concepts of working memory and option paralysis) to believe that there's an "ideal" number of options for a player to be presented with at any one time, which is kind of informing my design of the combat ability system. I don't really want high-level characters to be choosing between 15 abilities every time they get a turn, but there are probably ways to offer versatility without creating that problem. It's probably also okay to have the number of options increase somewhat with advancement, as players get better at analysing their options and pruning out ones that aren't applicable to their current situations.

Quote:

The interesting question, I think, is the last one: is it practical to add this to Nibiru, and if so, is it desirable? On one hand, it creates a whole host of new balance problems; on the other, part of character advancement is learning to do things you couldn't before, not just to do the same things better.

I think the major stumbling block is, as you said, the current lack of standardisation. Of course, if there's one thing I'm good at it's standardising things, so let's see what I can do with it.

Quote:

One think we could do is allow spells/techs with variable effects at higher levels. For instance, Lephista traded Solid Shot (normal damage to 1 target) for Wall of Missles (normal damage to any number of targets, each beyond the first costs 1 stamina). I pick this example because both abilities cost exactly the same in Nibiru, but the latter is clearly more powerful because the player can choose a number of targets.

This is something I've been thinking about as well, and that specific example is a good one to illustrate your point (although I'd probably have to rebalance the damage and accuracy of the ability a bit to make it work in Nibiru -- at its base it'd be a "multiple attacks" Strike ability, maybe with a limitation "all attacks must hit different targets" to balance out the advantage "pick how many attacks you make at time of casting". That could all possibly be handled on an ad-hoc basis rather than writing it into the rules, though.)

Maybe your level places some kind of limit on the absolute value of all the modifiers applied to your ability? So at level 1, you can have up to 3.5 total points' worth of advantages and limitations -- that means you can have a 1-stamina ability with 3.5 points of advantages, or a 0-stamina ability with 3 points of advantages and 0.5 points of limitations. At level 5, you can have up 7.5 points' worth of advantages and limitations, so you could take a straightforward, nothing-but-advantages 5-stamina ability, or a 1-stamina ability with 5.5 points worth of advantages and 2 points worth of limitations.

That seems like it'd be functional, although it might be a bit complicated to get one's head around at first. I think it has the potential to create an interesting dynamic -- relatively low-level characters can do a couple of powerful things but have to mostly pay for it with stamina, while higher-level characters are going to be more inclined to take some limitations in exchange for being able to do those same powerful things more cheaply, and thus more often.

[Triumph]

Originally Posted By: Lilith

How would people feel if we did away with the concept of levels entirely, but instead created a sense of character advancement and reward by handing out perks more often, like at a rate of close to 1 per session? The way I see it, giving each character mechanically unique abilities tied to their achievements during play has the potential to be more interesting than making numbers get bigger.

I like this. I actually advocated fewer levels and more perks quite a while back.

I like to be able to start characters at "higher levels," so that I have enough points to fully flesh out a character concept (something I just don't believe is possible at level 1 in the existing systems), or even really be competent to get much done. But once the character is competent and matches the concept in my imagination (whether because it started that way or achieved via leveling over time), I find no need for further levels - campaigns have not yet ran long enough (in in-game time) to justify massive character growth and huge increases in competence. At that point, I think perks can offer a fun, creative way to give slight enhancements to characters and make them more unique, without the wholesale escalation of power that levels tend to involve.

I hope this make sense.

[Sudanna]

Quote:

The thing is, if levelling up just makes your numbers bigger, then all that means is that you're going to be facing challenges that have bigger numbers -- and at that point, why level up at all when it does nothing but make the game's arithmetic harder to do in your head? If mechanically-defined character advancement is to exist at all, I think it needs to be something that makes characters feel different in play; if we want the game to play the same way at all levels, then we can achieve that most easily by just getting rid of levels.

See, I understand what you're saying, and I know this is like one of your favorite principles of game design, but I have to disagree if what you're saying is that the only way to have meaningful progress is to add new mechanics. Yes, increasing numbers don't effect the gameplay very much or in terribly interesting ways, all things considered, and yes, cool new things are indeed cool, but I still think that simple stat increases can serve a purpose, if only as some way of quantifying your character's progress, which is not valueless in roleplaying.

Dantius said something like this a while ago and you disregarded it then, but I think it has value. When you're a level one wizard, you're going around casting firebolt on some goblins. When you're level ten, you're shooting lightning bolts at giants. When you're level twenty, you're warping the molecular structure of demigods.

These situations are mechanically different in magnitude only, but increasing the magnitude of your character's power is rewarding, at least to me. New mechanics, perks, and diversifying a characters power - which is your preferred approach to character progression - is fun and interesting and rewarding as well, often more so. But decrying increases in magnitude to the degree of trying to remove them entirely is overzealous. At some point you want to stop using Firebolt on fyoras and start using Kill on drayks, even if they're both single-target spells that hit for about a third of an enemy's health. You could tackle that by just changing the names of stuff, but my feeling is that it loses some significance then, gets too transparent.

Anyways, my point is not that making numbers go up is great. It gets tedious, or pointless, or dull, but only if that's all that goes on and the choices start having less to do with customization and more to do with obligatory point-spending. On the other side, a persistent problem that's you've identified is that giving players more options as a reward is that at some point people have all the options they need or want and more just gets tedious, obligatory, and dull, in addition to confusing and complicated.

That was probably just too many words to say something you just basically don't agree with, but whatever.

A different issue. I might be mistaken, but I don't think the emphasis on ease of learning is entirely warranted. We aren't designing a a system to appeal to a mass market, and I don't think any system put forward so far has been met with any complaints in that regard. I mean, you may be intending to use Nibiru elsewhere, in which case ignore me, but increased complexity is, at this point, not something to shy away from. Complication, sure, but not complexity.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Thin Gypsy Thief

See, I understand what you're saying, and I know this is like one of your favorite principles of game design, but I have to disagree if what you're saying is that the only way to have meaningful progress is to add new mechanics. Yes, increasing numbers don't effect the gameplay very much or in terribly interesting ways, all things considered, and yes, cool new things are indeed cool, but I still think that simple stat increases can serve a purpose, if only as some way of quantifying your character's progress, which is not valueless in roleplaying.

Dantius said something like this a while ago and you disregarded it then, but I think it has value. When you're a level one wizard, you're going around casting firebolt on some goblins. When you're level ten, you're shooting lightning bolts at giants. When you're level twenty, you're warping the molecular structure of demigods.

These situations are mechanically different in magnitude only, but increasing the magnitude of your character's power is rewarding, at least to me. New mechanics, perks, and diversifying a characters power - which is your preferred approach to character progression - is fun and interesting and rewarding as well, often more so. But decrying increases in magnitude to the degree of trying to remove them entirely is overzealous. At some point you want to stop using Firebolt on fyoras and start using Kill on drayks, even if they're both single-target spells that hit for about a third of an enemy's health. You could tackle that by just changing the names of stuff, but my feeling is that it loses some significance then, gets too transparent.

Okay, but... why do you actually need the numbers to increase in order to do any of that stuff? The numbers are arbitrary to begin with -- if you started with 100 HP at level 1 but all enemies inflicted 30 damage, would that really make you feel more powerful than if you started with 10 HP and enemies inflicted 3 damage? Alternatively, suppose you started at level 1 with 10 HP, but HP and damage both increased by a factor of 10 every level, so your level determined the number of 0s added on to the end of every damage number -- would that really satisfy your desire to feel more powerful as you levelled up? I guess the issue to me is that number inflation is already a transparent disguise for the fact that the gameplay isn't changing, so all it does is make the math harder to do.

I'm not really a fan of the rules-as-physics design approach. I don't think there needs to be some kind of "objective" measure of how powerful your character is relative to everything else in the game world, because everything else in the game world doesn't exist until the PCs make contact with it. If everyone's on board with the assumption that the party is fighting goblins in session 1, vampires in session 10 and dragons in session 20, then if you want the game to play the same way in session 1 as it does in session 20, just structure the group's expectations and the flow of the campaign in such a way that that happens. If you don't want a vampire to be an enemy that the PCs can reasonably fight at the start of the campaign, don't make it into one.

This will probably become a bit clearer once I finish and release the NPC rules. There are ways to use the system to communicate "you're out of your league against this enemy" or "this enemy is a pushover" other than just making it much higher or lower level than the party and messing up the combat math in the process. People who are familiar enough with 4e D&D to know about minions, elites and solo monsters already grasp the general idea, although the details are different.

I should add that for the kind of games I want to run and play in, the idea that a significantly large and well-organized mob of dudes with torches and pitchforks can pose a real threat to an arbitrarily powerful evil wizard is a feature, not a bug. So if you want Nibiru to be a game where low-level monsters eventually become totally irrelevant to high-level PCs, you're likely to be a bit disappointed in that regard.

Now, having said all that, I've been talking to Sarachim a bit over AIM and levels are probably going to stay in the game after all, but they'll be handled in a way that minimizes number inflation.

Quote:

A different issue. I might be mistaken, but I don't think the emphasis on ease of learning is entirely warranted. We aren't designing a a system to appeal to a mass market, and I don't think any system put forward so far has been met with any complaints in that regard. I mean, you may be intending to use Nibiru elsewhere, in which case ignore me, but increased complexity is, at this point, not something to shy away from. Complication, sure, but not complexity.

Well, ideally I do want Nibiru to be a system that I can promote to people elsewhere on the web as a balanced, rules-light D&D-style system optimised specifically for online play -- but even within the context of this forum, we want to recruit new players. So keeping the system simple enough to not scare them off is a goal that I'm conscious of.

[Student of Trinity]

I think levels are important. They made D&D take off. Whatever else an RPG may be, it's a power fantasy. I think it's important that players can gain power in some consistent way that they can anticipate and control. If I have to invent my own perks and get them approved by the DM, then how cool I can look forward to becoming will depend upon the unknown of how inventive I'll turn out to be, and how lenient the DM. That's too vague to get excited about.

 

But levels have to be big enough to make any difference. If you're finding levels tedious, maybe the problem is that they're too small. It's just no big deal if you get to hit goblins in leather armor 5% more often, and the goblins you meet start all wearing studded leather that is 5% harder to penetrate.

 

My guess is that if it took longer to gain a level — several sessions, say, rather than one or two — but each level really made a big difference, then players would be happier. You could abruptly go from fighting goblins to fighting ogres, or something like that.

 

Of course, if all you ever do is fight ogres instead of goblins, then it still makes no real difference. You can make higher levels genuinely meaningful by letting the range of tactical options expand, but I think Lilith is right that you hit diminishing returns from this quickly, because if the number of useful tactical options gets too big, the game becomes too complex.

 

What I think works better, for making levels meaningful, is just to provide context in the campaign. Let the players meet (and flee from) tough monsters at low levels, so that it means something when they come back and beat them (and get whatever tantalizing Maguffins the tough monsters were guarding). Then let the party receive obsequious thanks and free beer from the same villagers who used to mock them and throw them out of the tavern.

 

Let them occasionally blast through armies of goblins when they reach high levels, just to remind them that they've come a long way. Let them be rescued from the ogre by the royal cavalry when they're at low level, let them fight alongside some of the same royal cavalry at mid level, then let them slay the dragon that slaughtered the royal cavalry when they reach high level. That sort of thing.

 

Though maybe that sort of thing works better in the kind of slowly meandering campaign you can run with a few high school friends at home. Maybe your AIMHack campaigns have a faster plot pace, and people don't want to spend their online time approaching the ogre only to run away from it and come back three weeks later.

[Dintiradan]

I'm actually levelling up right now (4E, Deva Avenger, going from 4th to 5th, mostly just item selection). And I'm thinking about all the times I've been excited about levelling up.

 

Making numbers go bigger: this is hardly ever a cause of excitement for me. The only exception I can think of is increasing HP in low-level D&D 3.0. See, a band of vanilla orcs is supposed to be an appropriate encounter for a level one party. And for the most part, they are. But your typical orc carries a d12 axe, which does triple damage on a crit. Which means your typical Fighter needs to be level three, four before a crit from an orc stops being sudden death. My first character death came when my level two Fighter opened a door and triggered a readied attack. Went from full HP to dead. This means that a level four Fighter feels significantly different compared to a level one Fighter.

 

Now, this is mostly due to a balance issue in D&D 3.0; crits from high level monsters don't kill high level characters. But this anecdote does illustrate something I alluded to earlier: going up a level should mean that my play experience changes. It could mean that I go from being afraid that a single hit could kill me to thinking, "Okay, I can still take a few more hits, let's plan ahead". It could mean going from a level one Fighter starting a feat chain with Dodge to having a level six Fighter end it with Whirlwind Attack. Maybe you're excited about your new level because now you finally qualify for that shiny prestige class.

 

The funny thing is, these are all examples of things I don't miss from D&D 3.0. I don't want high variant combat at low levels. I don't want to worry about build order optimization. I don't want to minmax the crap outta my character with prestige classes. And yet, I find I'm never excited about my 4.0 levelups the way I was with 3.0. There's no anticipation beforehand, and no sense of reward when I do finally level.

 

I want to talk more on this subject, and on related subjects, but I want to go to bed at a somewhat reasonable hour as well, so good night for now.

[Alorael at Large]

I am not actually involved, but I'll toss in my cents. I think there's value in having a system that acknowledges that fighting giants is different from fighting goblins. It means that if you go and re-encounter those goblins from ten levels ago, you'll be able to push them around all you want without changing the mechanics. In general, I'm in favor of static mechanics both because they really drive home the feeling of advancement the way game flavor doesn't and because it limits GM cheating, at least a little, even if only in his or her own head.

 

Because I hate it when I go back to deal with those goblins and suddenly they're still a threat. They shouldn't be. They're the same goblins, and are still equally threatening but not disastrous to those puny villagers!

 

It's also critical as a shorthand if you might have more than one campaign, or more than one group using a system. "We're level 1" can mean "we fight goblins" and "we're level 10" mean "we fight giants." That's actually useful for communication.

 

—Alorael, who would say the best way to handle this really is simple math. Very simple. Simple enough that the benefits are obvious, the math doesn't cause error or terror, and (ideally) the game doesn't break on different ends of the spectrum. The exception, of course, is games in which you want goblins to always be something of a threat, and giants to always be beyond any single PC, but that can be as little as a smaller constant in front of your calculation.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: glub!

It's also critical as a shorthand if you might have more than one campaign, or more than one group using a system. "We're level 1" can mean "we fight goblins" and "we're level 10" mean "we fight giants." That's actually useful for communication.

—Alorael, who would say the best way to handle this really is simple math. Very simple. Simple enough that the benefits are obvious, the math doesn't cause error or terror, and (ideally) the game doesn't break on different ends of the spectrum. The exception, of course, is games in which you want goblins to always be something of a threat, and giants to always be beyond any single PC, but that can be as little as a smaller constant in front of your calculation.

You know, I can live with this. How does the following sound?

NPCs and monsters have a base level, and also a power category (normal, tough, elite, extraordinary or overwhelming). The mechanical details aren't important right now, but they're in ascending order of power.

If an enemy's level is higher than yours, it gets +2 to all attacks and +1 to all defenses. If its level is lower than yours, it gets -1 to all attacks and -2 to all defenses.

In addition, for every 4 full levels an NPC is above or below you, it gets upgraded or downgraded by one power category. So if you're level 4 and you're fighting what would normally be a level-8 Elite NPC, it's treated as an Extraordinary NPC instead. This means that it gets extra HP, extra stamina and various other advantages in combat.

If an NPC gets "pushed off the scale" in either direction, then one of you is completely out of the other's league. An enemy that goes a category below Normal is still mechanically treated as a normal enemy, except that it can only harm you on a critical hit. An enemy that goes a category above Overwhelming is still treated as an overwhelming enemy, except that you can only harm it on a critical hit.

Combine this with some kind of table of what levels different kinds of NPC and monster are, and you've got a serviceable system for working out what kind of threat an enemy should be to a party of a particular level, with minimal mechanical complexity. I'm not sure about the exact numbers but the idea seems sound.

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity

Though maybe that sort of thing works better in the kind of slowly meandering campaign you can run with a few high school friends at home. Maybe your AIMHack campaigns have a faster plot pace, and people don't want to spend their online time approaching the ogre only to run away from it and come back three weeks later.

To an extent, I think you're right. Campaigns tend to last about 10 sessions of 4-6 hours each, and online play is inherently a bit slower than face-to-face play, so there's only so much stuff you can pack into those hours. Which means you want to make the stuff you do pack in count.

[keira]

For lack of a better topic, I'll announce this here:

 

Everyone's favorite wiki, the AIMhack Wiki, has just been moved over to my shiney new VM host. However it can take up to 48 hours for the global DNS to be repointed to this new host. This hopefully won't be the case, since I told everyone on the internet that the TTL was only half a day. Anywho, if you get a hankerin' to edit anything for some reason, make sure it doesn't say that you are visiting the "(OLD) AIMhack Wiki", because this means you are visiting the old aimhack wiki and your edits will be eaten by the internets in up to 48 hours' time. So just wait a short while and see if you it Has Been Updated for you (or flush your DNS and try again (ipconfig /flushdns (for Windows Users (Might need admin permissions)))).

 

Apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused.

[AtomicLord]

Hello, I would first like to preface this post with saying

i have never posted before on these boards but have been enjoying Jeff's games for quite a while now.

 

And now on to my relevant musings;

 

First off has anyone ever used a mechanic in an AIMhack campaign where there is only 1 "class" just differing approaches to how it is used?

 

Example: Atomic A has the ability to manipulate atoms and uses this power to create a sword/twin assault rifles/minions/etc. for combat; Atomic B has the same power but uses it to subvert obstructions/pick locks/

and disassemble opponents @ the molecular level/etc.

 

Atomic A had majored in biology and minored in engineering during college in order to do these things. Atomic B majored in assembly and minored in tech:electronics.

 

Both are assumed to have expert knowledge in both chemistry and organic chemistry.

 

really the only limiting factors for things the PC can accomplish are knowledge and number of steps needed for the desired effect.

 

obviously the "disassemble @ molecular level" is a bit OP so there should be a limit to uses per day or maybe even per 2 days. but in a high fantasy setting i see no reason why this idea wouldn't work. set the PCs up for escaping an alternate plane of existence pop. by demigods or something,

just make it a believable challenge for the PCs.

 

if this is at all interesting and if any of you think its worth exploring more in detail just reply in the affirmative or e-mail me directly at makogun2000@gmail.com with AtomHack in the subject line.

 

-AtomicLord

[Nioca]

Oh, hey. This thread's almost dead. We can't have that.

 

So, I have been doing more on the AIMHack front then just playing. I've actually been puttering away on my own variant of the AIMHack system which I've tentatively called QuadHack, which combines some of my own ideas with ideas implemented in other versions of AIMHack (particularly ZombieHack). Whereas CreepingHack and Nibiru have been leaning towards abolishing attributes and such, QuadHack goes the other direction, and actually calls back a bit to the Labyrinth version of AIMHack.

 

Right now, I've got most of the basic rules up (I'm borrowing Lilith's idea of splitting the rules into the basic need-to-know, DM stuff, and advanced stuff). But it's getting late here, so I'll have to work on getting the other stuff up tomorrow.

 

Anyway, it's up on Sylae's AIMHack wiki. Ta-da! I'm looking for feedback, so please make sure to post your thoughts, compliments, criticisms, questions, and observations.

[Triumph]

Response after a first glance at around midnight: Looks fine. The main thing that jumped out at me was that a few of the skills seemed kind of similar (Interrogation versus Examination?).

 

It looks to me like you could really provide just one skill list, with asterisks identifying Arcana and Electronics as setting-specific skills that may not apply, depending on the context of the campaign. The rest of the skills look like they'd be equally valid any setting, and having just one list would be slightly cleaner. Not a serious gripe, just a minor suggestion.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Triumph

Response after a first glance at around midnight: Looks fine. The main thing that jumped out at me was that a few of the skills seemed kind of similar (Interrogation versus Examination?).

Yeah, some skills seem a little over-broad (Examination) while others seem a little over-specific (Crafts vs. Mechanics).

Apart from that the system seems functional enough, although it still inherits the old-AIMhack problem of one-stat builds becoming increasingly superior to multi-stat builds in the long run.

[BJ Back From the Beyond]

I agree with Triumph and Lilith. Some of the skills seem like they do the same thing. I also see that many of the skills from other systems have been dropped.

 

Anyway, here is a list of the skills and where I think they would fit (plus some from other systems I feel would be good to keep). Comments are in parenthesis.

 

Common Skills

Citywise (I'm rather fond of the old Streetwise, personally)

Deception

Examination (This seems sort of like the old Perception skill)

Forestry

Interrogation

Medicine

Sleight (ZombieHack lacked a skill like this. I support adding it)

Stealth

Mechanics (I put this here because it and Engineering seem to essentially do the same thing, they just have different names)

 

Fantasy Skills

Arcana

Crafts (Not sure what this would be used for.)

Alchemy (noted that this was omitted from the list. Was this on purpose?)

 

Modern/Sci-Fi Skills

Electronics (I like the separation of this from Mechanics. There's a big difference between being able to pick a lock and hack a computer.)

Engineering (See Mechanics)

Social (I would suggest changing the name. Perhaps Culture?)

Gun Knowledge (Something from ZombieHack that was omitted. It doesn't seem to be covered by any other skill, so I'm wondering 'why?')

Driving (See Gun Knowledge)

 

The rest of it looks good.

[Nioca]

Originally Posted By: Lilith

Originally Posted By: Triumph

Response after a first glance at around midnight: Looks fine. The main thing that jumped out at me was that a few of the skills seemed kind of similar (Interrogation versus Examination?).

Yeah, some skills seem a little over-broad (Examination) while others seem a little over-specific (Crafts vs. Mechanics).

Originally Posted By: B.J.Earles

I agree with Triumph and Lilith. Some of the skills seem like they do the same thing. I also see that many of the skills from other systems have been dropped.

Okay, so I'm getting this subtle feeling that some of the skills are to similar, either in execution or description.

Examination vs. Interrogation: I think this is a combination of me not explaining Interrogation properly and Examination indeed being overly broad. Interrogation is both intimidation and picking up on a person's body language, speech patterns, and mannerisms (to determine if they're being truthful, to try and figure out why the noble's nervous, so forth).

Examination... It's not an idea I'm particularly attached to, really. I'll have to think on what to do with it.

Crafts vs. Mechanics: This is a combination of two things. First, it's because the way Thievery and Artifice butted heads always bothered me, so I did some tweaking to try and stop them from overlapping. The second is because I apparently am a moron who thinks the dark ages didn't have engineering. So... yeah, both of those are probably going under engineering.

Quote:

It looks to me like you could really provide just one skill list, with asterisks identifying Arcana and Electronics as setting-specific skills that may not apply, depending on the context of the campaign. The rest of the skills look like they'd be equally valid any setting, and having just one list would be slightly cleaner. Not a serious gripe, just a minor suggestion.

Hmm... Yeah, that could work.

Quote:

Common Skills
Citywise (I'm rather fond of the old Streetwise, personally)

I wanted to broaden it up a bit. The original streetwise was alright, but a bit vague. This might just be a personal preference thing.

Quote:

Fantasy Skills
Alchemy (noted that this was omitted from the list. Was this on purpose?)

Yeah. What I want to do is make the main skills useful in a reasonable variety of situations; Niche skills, skills that just plain don't get used that often, or skills that require additional supplements that only the DM and person using it need to know, I've put under the umbrella of custom skills. You can still train in alchemy, it's just that it's not a main skill to make things easier on new players.

Quote:

Modern/Sci-Fi Skills
Social (I would suggest changing the name. Perhaps Culture?)

Ooh, culture's a good name for it. Thanks!

Quote:

Gun Knowledge (Something from ZombieHack that was omitted. It doesn't seem to be covered by any other skill, so I'm wondering 'why?')

It's covered by Engineering. I didn't make Gun Knowledge a separate skill because it's one of those skills that sound great on paper, but never gets used in practice.

Quote:

Driving (See Gun Knowledge)

This one's simple. You see, I'm a moron. See? Simple!

Originally Posted By: Lilith

Apart from that the system seems functional enough, although it still inherits the old-AIMhack problem of one-stat builds becoming increasingly superior to multi-stat builds in the long run.

I need to run some tests to make sure, but as I've got it set up, I think I've got it so this bullet has been dodged. Yes, one-stat builds are going to have a lot of raw firepower with their chosen weapon, but there's two catches to this: First, defenses are spread across all three stats, which means there's going to be some gaping holes in a single-stat-character's defenses. This is bad, because combat in this system is geared to be fast and bloody (I don't have weapon stuff up yet, but your average melee weapon does 5Dmg a hit, and your average ranged weapon does 4Dmg a hit). Second, the character's ability to use other weapons and strategies will be seriously limited, meaning that if they come across something that straight STR or DEX or PER can't handle, they're going to be up a creek very quickly. As it stands now, I think the system favors two-stat builds more than one-stat builds.

[Sarachim]

Originally Posted By: Nioca

Yes, one-stat builds are going to have a lot of raw firepower with their chosen weapon, but there's two catches to this: First, defenses are spread across all three stats, which means there's going to be some gaping holes in a single-stat-character's defenses. This is bad, because combat in this system is geared to be fast and bloody (I don't have weapon stuff up yet, but your average melee weapon does 5Dmg a hit, and your average ranged weapon does 4Dmg a hit).

But they'll compensate for poor defense against some things with superb defense against other things. And, of course, superior offense in every situation. This is only a problem for specialists if the GM decides to counter their choice by loading fights with the thing they're weak against. I am mean enough to do that, but the rest of you are not.

Quote:

Second, the character's ability to use other weapons and strategies will be seriously limited, meaning that if they come across something that straight STR or DEX or PER can't handle, they're going to be up a creek very quickly. As it stands now, I think the system favors two-stat builds more than one-stat builds.

This would be true if this were a single-player game. Since it isn't, being excellent at some tasks and worthless at others is more useful to the party than being mediocre at all of them. Three specialists with non-overlapping specialties will be better at everything than three generalists.

[Triumph]

I'm still not convinced that this whole specialist-versus-generalist thing is really a big deal. I mean, in real life, wouldn't it be fair to say that (at least in many situations) you'd rather have three experts in different fields than three jacks-of-all-trades with no true mastery? Trying to create a system in which jacks-of-all-trades are consistently as valuable as specialists, it seems to me, is effectively trying to contradict real life.

 

If people want to play generalist characters, good for them! And maybe within limited a game system can encourage people to diversify their training. Certainly, as Sarachim indicated, GMs can provide challenges / threats requiring a variety of skills / attributes. But is it worthwhile to struggle to create a system contrary to the way things work in real life?

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Triumph

I'm still not convinced that this whole specialist-versus-generalist thing is really a big deal. I mean, in real life, wouldn't it be fair to say that (at least in many situations) you'd rather have three experts in different fields than three jacks-of-all-trades with no true mastery? Trying to create a system in which jacks-of-all-trades are consistently as valuable as specialists, it seems to me, is effectively trying to contradict real life.

If people want to play generalist characters, good for them!

It seems to me that your second paragraph contradicts your first. In a game where your right to continue playing can depend on your group's performance in combat, deliberately creating a character who's seriously suboptimal in combat is an act of hostility against your fellow players: by not contributing as much as you could, you're increasing the chance that not only your character but other players' characters will die. If it's truly impossible to bring generalists up to the level of specialists, then the right thing to do is to ban generalists altogether and switch to a pure class-based system. I don't believe that there exists any kind of right to play a useless character.

I don't put much stock in the ~it doesn't work like in real life~ complaint either. Magic doesn't exist in real life, after all.

[Triumph]

Originally Posted By: Lilith

It seems to me that your second paragraph contradicts your first. In a game where your right to continue playing can depend on your group's performance in combat, deliberately creating a character who's seriously suboptimal in combat is an act of hostility against your fellow players: by not contributing as much as you could, you're increasing the chance that not only your character but other players' characters will die. If it's truly impossible to bring generalists up to the level of specialists, then the right thing to do is to ban generalists altogether and switch to a pure class-based system. I don't believe that there exists any kind of right to play a useless character.

I don't put much stock in the ~it doesn't work like in real life~ complaint either. Magic doesn't exist in real life, after all.

Erm...well, I guess, if you want to look at it that way...I never would have imagined character design could be moral issue.

By no means would I agree that "In a game where your right to continue playing can depend on your group's performance in combat, deliberately creating a character who's seriously suboptimal in combat is an act of hostility against your fellow players." I would say the goal of a game is fun, not optimal character design. My ability to have fun should not hinge on others' min-maxing skill. Sub-optimal doesn't automatically equate to useless. As tried to indicate, while generalists are not usually optimal in real life, they can still be very helpful. I suppose, to use your phrase, "seriously suboptimal" or "useless" characters are problem, it's true. But I would disagree that any suboptimal character is necessarily a "serious problem," or "useless." I would disagree that a lesser contribution from a character equates to being a burden on the party, and I'm really taken aback by the idea that players have some moral obligation to optimization their characters for the social good (if I understood you correctly?).

Note: the following may be meaningless, illogical rambling. The above may be, too but I have more hope for it. So don't impugn the above with the below.

Magic is not merely a mechanic - magic a feature of an imaginary world. We can imagine a world in which magic exists and functions and does things. It's not a logic-contradicting anomaly, it's just another skill or ability people can have. Then we create a mechanic in the game to go along with this imagined ability. I'm trying, and I'm not able to imagine a reality in which a generalist can be JUST AS USEFUL as a specialist IN ALL CIRCUMSTANCES. We can imagine things that don't exist. But we cannot violate logic. Things like the law of non-contradiction must always hold true; we cannot create a coherent imaginary world where it doesn't hold true. Logically, I don't see how a generalist can ALWAYS be of equal utility to a specialist; to do so would negate the whole point of the idea of a specialist. Therefore I don't see how we can develop an imaginary world in which this is true, nor create game mechanics representing this imaginary world.

Unlike you, though, I believe a generalist can still be helpful or useful, and I found no "ought," no moral imperative, for players to create optimized characters.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Triumph

Erm...well, I guess, if you want to look at it that way...I never would have imagined character design could be moral issue.

By no means would I agree that "In a game where your right to continue playing can depend on your group's performance in combat, deliberately creating a character who's seriously suboptimal in combat is an act of hostility against your fellow players." I would say the goal of a game is fun, not optimal character design. My ability to have fun should not hinge on others' min-maxing skill. Sub-optimal doesn't automatically equate to useless. As tried to indicate, while generalists are not usually optimal in real life, they can still be very helpful. I suppose, to use your phrase, "seriously suboptimal" or "useless" characters are problem, it's true. But I would disagree that any suboptimal character is necessarily a "serious problem," or "useless." I would disagree that a lesser contribution from a character equates to being a burden on the party, and I'm really taken aback by the idea that players have some moral obligation to optimization their characters for the social good (if I understood you correctly?).

It's absolutely a moral issue. As a player in a tabletop RPG, you're part of a team, and if you run off seeking your own idea of fun at the expense of what the rest of your team wants then you're letting them down.

Now, whatever else they want, players usually want their characters to survive. So if you do something that makes the rest of the group less likely to survive, you'd better have a very good reason for it. For an example of what I'm talking about, look at what happened at the end of session 12 of ATCT: Nioca's decision to have Amadan go after Hirst caused some serious real-life friction among the players, because they felt that their characters ought to stay with Amadan for the sake of keeping the party together even though they also felt that doing so would very likely get all their characters killed. And that happened even despite my best efforts to pre-establish a social contract in which the PCs weren't obligated to work together toward the same goal at all times.

Building a character who isn't capable of working as an effective part of the team, either in terms of abilities or personality, risks creating serious problems for group cohesion both in and out of the game. If the system facilitates doing the same thing accidentally, that's also a problem.

In short, if you really, truly believe in your heart of hearts that your "ability to have fun should not hinge on others' min-maxing skill", then you should want a system where min-maxing is impossible and all characters are equally useful -- because your ability to have fun hinges on your ability to play your character, and you can't play your character if your character is dead because somebody else made a character that couldn't help keep them alive.

I'm not going to respond too deeply to your second paragraph, because the part of my post it was written in response to was a half-joking aside to begin with, and I think I've already responded adequately to the serious point within it anyway. If generalists are as useful on average, and as fun to play on average, as specialists, then they have a place in the game; if they're not, then they don't. It's that simple.

[Slawbug]

I think I agree with both of you.

 

You are definitely part of a team -- a micro-community -- and that makes it a moral issue.

 

And teams of players pretty much always want to survive. (I remember a session of Shadowrun in which one of my comrades, who was playing an idiot, decided to leave the club we were in and attack a large orc gang outside. The rest of the party reluctantly backed him up; I cast Invisibility, ran to the bathroom, and hid. The DM gleefully killed the rest of the party and, while I survived, that was the end of that day of gaming.)

 

On the other hand, I don't think it's fair to hold players to an oath of min-maxing when the role-playing element already implies that they will sometimes deliberately make a sub-optimal choice, because they are role-playing an interesting character. Surely you don't want to discourage interesting role-playing?

 

I do think it is worth discouraging redundant characters because they are less interesting than characters who have useful and unique, or semi-unique, skills. In that context, maybe generalists are worse. But it's not because of obsessive survivalism, it's because of obsessively wanting to game to be interesting and fun.

 

The best thing, IMHO, it to make sure that all players have a variety of interesting and different abilities. They don't have to be strong, necessarily, in the 3rd-level xd6 fireball sense, but they need to be useful and differentiating. Within Aimhack, I think the custom spells and abilities you guys do are the best part of this.

[Lilith]

I'm going to sleep now, but I've got one more thing to say and I figure it's worth making into its own post.

 

Let me use another example to illustrate what I'm talking about, this one hypothetical. I will call it the Parable of the Backstabber and the Bumbler.

 

Consider two characters.

 

The first character is highly optimised and very effective at contributing to the party's survival -- except that once every few sessions, the character's player arbitrarily chooses to stab another player character in the back at the start of a fight. The player preferentially stabs party members with higher HP and lays off on the backstabbing if it's actually likely to place a character at serious risk of death, but it's a drain on the party's resources and a betrayal of the group's social contract all the same.

 

The second character consistently tries to help the party and contribute to their survival -- except the character is so ineptly built that they're not really capable of contributing in any meaningful way, because they fail at most of the things they attempt even when using their best skills. The rest of the party has to work around the bumbling character's inability to help.

 

I hope we can both agree that the backstabber's player is doing something seriously wrong. But at the same time, the backstabber is probably less likely to get the whole party killed than the bumbler. Does this mean that what the bumbler's player is doing should be considered even more wrong? Perhaps we'd assign less blame to the bumbler's player than to the backstabber's, since the bumbler's player isn't actively intending to make the party's situation worse -- but still, don't we want a system that makes it hard to create inept characters in the first place?

 

The game's rules probably can't force you not to make a Backstabber. But I think they should at least try to prevent you from making a Bumbler.

[Slawbug]

If this is in fact a moral issue, then surely player intentions are relevant.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S

If this is in fact a moral issue, then surely player intentions are relevant.

Well, I am a utilitarian. I think undesirable states should be avoided regardless of who's responsible for causing them and why.

Also, the bumbler isn't necessarily blameless: players have been known to make inept characters on purpose, and other players have been known to get quite understandably annoyed when they do so. Thankfully, I'm not aware of any examples of that happening in our group yet.

[Slawbug]

Someone could make an inept character on purpose either

 

(1) to deliberately sabotage the group; this is just another Backstabber.

 

or

 

(2) because they think it will be part of the fun for everyone.

 

I fail to see how #2 is a moral problem. It seems to me that's an issue of players having different expectations: primary fun via triumphing over mechanics, roleplaying is secondary but important; or primary fun via roleplaying, mechanics are secondary but important.

[Lilith]

(3) because it seemed like an interesting character and they just weren't thinking about how it'd work out as a member of a team.

 

... which is probably the most common situation, and is still problematic.

[Slawbug]

How is #3 different from #2?

[Lilith]

Because it omits the "for everyone" part. "Fun for me at the expense of others" and "fun for me and also the others" do not cover the entirety of the ground: the rest is "fun for me and it didn't occur to me to think about the others".

[Slawbug]

If they are literally ONLY focused on their own fun and it never occurs to them to think about the fact that there are other people involved, you have a bigger problem in this person than you can fix with rules.

 

I mean, Aimhack with Zephyr Tempest, really?

[Lilith]

The thing is, I don't think it's a problem with the individuals as such -- I think it's a problem with the culture of tabletop gaming. For decades a not insignificant number of players have bought into the idea of absolute character ownership: the idea that "it's what my character would do" is a justification for absolutely anything that it's physically possible for your character to do in a game. We're quite lucky in some ways to have a community that hasn't arisen from that culture.

 

Imagine an entire community of Zephyr Tempests, who have been gaming continuously since the 1980s and never come into contact with any other way of playing. Communities like this do exist. From outside, they're terrifying to look upon. I want to understand what happened to them and learn how to prevent it.

[Kreador]

I'm coming from completely outside this discussion, and I'm not about to read back through 9 pages of conversation to catch up completely, but I'll toss in my few pfennig. Back in the days when I did a lot of tabletop gaming, I came to the funny conclusion that I couldn't play "optimized" characters. When I tried, I'd usually get them and most of my companions killed. When I played a more generalist character, not gimped so much but certainly not optimal, it made me more tactical and made me work better with the rest of the team.

 

I think a big part of the point of role playing games is to get people to learn to work together. Players who are solely out for themselves rapidly find that they're playing by themselves. The backstabber may be helpful overall, but the other players would rapidly get tired of dealing with him and he'd find himself in a fight with no backup. The gimpy character would usually find that he'll get help from the rest of the group to improve the character to a useful level, or the character would die off and the player would create a new, less gimpy one if he wanted to continue.

[Dantius]

Holy crap you people are intense. Not building a specialist character is a moral failure on the part of the participant? Designing a generalist character is equivalent to an assault on your fellow players? Claiming that a character who stabs other players in the back is better for the party than one who happens to be bad at combat?

 

Wow, I'm starting to be glad I have no time to play anymore. AIMHack got craaaazy since I left.

[Triumph]

I hasten to point out, O pontificating Dantius, that only Lilith is advocating the positions of which you speak.

 

Just sayin'.

[Student of Trinity]

Lilith has a point, but I think she's also ignoring the most important parts of tabletop RPGs.

 

Number one: There's a referee. If whether the party lived or died were determined by the iron law of some server farm, then letting the rest of the team down, Leroy Jenkins style, would indeed be pretty low. But a good gamemaster can simply tune the campaign's challenges so that incompetence is less deadly. I've done this in various ways. If memory serves, the best ways were the crudest and simplest. Boost the health of reckless characters. Give duller ones a magic charm of wisdom that is implemented as hints from the gamemaster. Climb down off the high horse of mimesis far enough to decree obvious punishments for the persistent pickers of party members' pockets, until they sheepishly fly more right. Just do whatever it takes to help awkward players pull their weight in spite of their handicaps. This is worth doing because ...

 

Number two: Players are friends. I understand that MMORPG guilds are normally recruited selectively for skill. If you're playing online with total strangers, you don't care about anything else besides how well they play. But tabletop games are normally played by friends whose relationships extend beyond their character sheets. I think this is true of AIMHack campaigns, for that matter.

 

If a friend of mine just likes playing inefficient builds, and doing crazy things in the game, then I'll live with that. I'll cut my friends some slack, in whatever we're doing, because they're my friends.

[Aran]

I'm speaking as someone who hasn't been in AimHack in around two years (nor played more than three real-life sessions - 2* SR, 1* WH40K - in the past year), but I'd go further and say it's more fun if your party doesn't consist of optimized characters who play perfectly.

As you say, SoT, the gameplay is refereed by an intelligent arbiter. Obvious stupidity can be punished, but even spectacularly OOC-stupid actions may be brilliant and daring in-character. And even IC-stupid decisions may be made for good in-character reasons. There needs to be room for that. You play the game; it doesn't play you. It's not an MMO skinnerbox.

[Triumph]

Originally Posted By: Aʀᴀɴ

You play the game; it doesn't play you. It's not an MMO skinnerbox.

In Amerika, you play game. In Soviet Russia, game play YOU!!!