Amazing mechanical solutions

[silva]

Edge

Anything that makes any player and/or the narrative itself less of a slave to dice luck at any time is awesome. Also, I like the idea of beads/tokens/little whoso-whatsits that you can hold onto and chip in.

I understand you mean the Shadowrun atribute. I dont dislike the concept per se, but I prefer when it comes meshed with the game premise or themes.

[Cyberzombie]

A bad GM choosing to ignore the rules is one thing. Having a rule that essentially leaves all things on the whim of the GM is another. The former has no bearing on how good a given rule is the latter is a bad rule because it is either the same as having no rule at all or worse. So no you don't get to say to use 'bad GMs' as either a thing to promote or oppose a rule because bad GMs are bad GMs. The whole 'infinity bears' thing is bad because the rule says 'GM makes it up' AND the writers actually wrote the bear thing as an example of how the rule is supposed to be used.

Well, yeah, if the writers actually said the bear thing as an example of how the rule is supposed to be used, then that's bad. That's very bad. But the point of this thread isn't whether AW is a good game or not. We've seen enough of those threads here already and I don't want another one. This thread is about good/bad mechanics in general, not a particular implementation of mechanics. So with that being said...

On the subject of glitches, I actually like the idea that sometimes in games you're going to run into odd plot complications that aren't directly listed in the rules. Because that sort of stuff happens in cinema all the time, where the hero succeeds at jumping or climbing, but some item he was carrying falls into the pit. Sometimes an attack misses the hero narrowly but damages something he was carrying. There's hundreds of potential situational complications that I can think of that can't get all directly coded into the rules. Yet I don't want there to be a situation where PCs get too comfortable with blind adherence to the rules over common sense and treat the world like a video game. I don't want a PC carrying around a bag full of alchemists fire in a backpack and being absolutely certain it won't break during a fall or combat, all because the rules don't include for that specific possibility. And no, I don't think those problems can be solved by just adding more and more rules until the game is an unmanageable behemoth. I like mechanics like Shadowrun's glitch system, because I feel that open-ended games like RPGs need some potential for open-ended results and unintended consequences.

Now that being said, Apocalypse World heavily overuses that mechanic which leaves the game too open-ended. Making players feel like unexpected things can happen is good, but having players expect a bunch of random BS to happen to them every adventure isn't. A glitch or two once in a while can make a story interesting, but if almost every roll you make happens to be "You succeed... but..." it's just plain annoying and the entire game is just hoping the GM doesn't screw you over. It's one thing to include glitches in your game, it's another thing to base the entire game around them.

I don't feel the glitch mechanic itself is inherently bad, it's just overused in AW (and likely with very poorly written suggestions on how to use it). From what I heard of his suggestions, AW's designer doesn't sound like a very good DM. But that's not the point, because this thread is about mechanics, not about poor implementations of mechanics. And as a general mechanic, I like glitches and would like to see them implemented (in moderation) in other systems.

[silva]

Cyberzombie, there are a bunch of games that use the concept in a moderate way like you say. Fate core, Leverage rpg and the new Star Wars (Edge of the Empire) are some examples. You should take a a look at those. Oh and Talislanta seems to be the precursor of the concept, perhaps worth a look too.

[MGuy]

The thing is we are talking about a game, not a narrative. IF you want to just write a story you can do that but if you're laying a game and you 'want' rules then you should stick to those rules, otherwise why are you playing with rules at all? If the rules can't support the narratives they are supposed to generate then there is a problem with those rules. If your rules are basically read "let the GM make up the result" then why use them? I understand wanting the hero to 'fail' every now and again but isn't that exactly what failed results are for?

[Cyberzombie]

The thing is we are talking about a game, not a narrative. IF you want to just write a story you can do that but if you're laying a game and you 'want' rules then you should stick to those rules, otherwise why are you playing with rules at all? If the rules can't support the narratives they are supposed to generate then there is a problem with those rules. If your rules are basically read "let the GM make up the result" then why use them? I understand wanting the hero to 'fail' every now and again but isn't that exactly what failed results are for?

RPGs are a delicate balance between story time and board games. Too few rules and the players feel like they have no control. Too many rules and not enough original content and the player wonder why they didn't just play Skyrim instead. If the game is merely a simple collection of hard coded rules, then why not just run that on a computer? Ultimately, if you've got a gaming group together, you have a group of people who chose to play a game with a human DM instead of playing Skyrim.

The strength of Tabletop RPGs is in having rules but also in the ability to go beyond those rules. Whether it's deciding how the king reacts when you put a hole in his tower or ruling on if the tower has taken enough damage to collapse, the DM has to make plenty of rulings. But that dynamic new content is the appeal of RPGs. Having rules that call for dynamic content from the DM isn't a bad thing. It only makes sense that your rules should take advantage of the fact you have a human DM, as opposed to treating the human factor like a design flaw that needs to be overcome.

Obviously like anything it has to be used in moderation though. The big flaw of Apocalypse world isn't using those mechanics, it's using them too often. For an example of not enough dynamic content and too many hard-coded rules, see D&D 4E.

[Kaelik]

If the game is merely a simple collection of hard coded rules, then why not just run that on a computer?

Because programming every possible campaign anyone would ever run is too much work.

For an example of not enough dynamic content and too many hard-coded rules, see D&D 4E.

No, that is not the problem of 4E. The problem of 4E is that they don't have any rules for actions that don't suck. 4E does not let your characters be interesting, that isn't because too many rules don't let you, 3e lets your character be more interesting by having rules for interesting things.

[Heisenberg]

Edge

Anything that makes any player and/or the narrative itself less of a slave to dice luck at any time is awesome. Also, I like the idea of beads/tokens/little whoso-whatsits that you can hold onto and chip in.

I understand you mean the Shadowrun atribute. I dont dislike the concept per se, but I prefer when it comes meshed with the game premise or themes.

See, I'd say almost the inverse, which is that nearly every game could be improved by the inclusion of an Edge mechanic/"luck manipulation". D&D would certainly benefit. (Action points in Eberron 3E (and I guess the crapile that is D20 Modern) kind of sort of farts aroudn with it, but doesn't commit to going nearly far enough.

Willpower in NWOD (and oWOD? can't remember) is also a less-good implementation of the same concept.

[silva]

Willpower in Vampire felt more interesting to me, even if I dont remember exactly why now. It interacted with/was tied to some other mechanic or function in the game, no ?

[Heisenberg]

You regained Willpower when you...acted according to your character's nature? Or against it? Or something?

[Dogbert]

In all fairness, 4E's only crime was accomplishing its design objectives all too well. Hasbro wanted WoW's second coming, and a MMO was exactly what they got... only without WoW's success.

It's not about the amount of rules, it's about what those rules set out to accomplish. Viking hats far and wide revile 3E because it "disempowers them." And precisely it has the right amount of rules so that when a DM starts dicking around with rule-zero, the players notice immediately. It sets a fair game for both parties rather than preaching that "the GM is God."

[TheFlatline]

You regained Willpower when you...acted according to your character's nature? Or against it? Or something?

Depends on the Vampire game.

In the old vampire you had nature & demeanor, and you gained willpower when you did some abstract behavior linked to each.

Vices & virtues gave you a little willpower for acting good (virtue) and a lot of willpower for acting bad (vice). It was supposed to be this devil's bargain thing but it was pretty shit.

[Sakuya Izayoi]

In all fairness, 4E's only crime was accomplishing its design objectives all too well. Hasbro wanted WoW's second coming, and a MMO was exactly what they got... only without WoW's success.God."

As a tabletop MMO, I find it lacking, but that's compared to Guild Wars 1 and City of Heroes. I've spend more time charopping in CoH than I have in TGs.

You're right though in that they managed to feel like a crappy WoW knockoff. Like Neverwinter, haha. Neverwinter had "daily powers" you'd use several times in a single boss encounter. It's like they made a closed loop out of the human centipede.

[Username17]

You got that backwards. You get a lot of Willpower for being good (virtue) and a little Willpower for being bad (Vice). But you only get the good willpower if you hurt yourself to be good. Merely doing the right thing, or even taking risks to do the right thing, isn't enough to get the virtue willpower. Also, some of the virtue willpower clickovers don't seem particularly virtuous if you aren't seriously into weird Christian herpaderp.

The Natures was way better, but extremely broken. You had a personality quirk that would define an arbitrary event that would regain willpower for you. So you might be a "martyr" and gain back willpower whenever you completely fucked yourself - or you might be a "dreamer" and regain willpower whenever you used your own powers to do something weird. For obvious reasons, the player characters were way more likely to be the latter than the former.

As to silva's tirade, just remember that silva is always wrong and always supports shitty games. So even though Shadowrun 4's Edge is almost exactly the same as Vampire's Willpower but better in just about every possible way, silva supports Vampire's Willpower and disses on SR4's Edge. It helps that silva has never played 4th edition Shadowrun! He used to play 2nd edition as a teenager, and now he likes shitty rules lite games, and he thinks this qualifies him to discuss 4th edition mechanics. It's difficult to believe that silva's positions are his actual positions and not strawmen constructed by other people - but he really seriously is that fucking arrogant and stupid.

-Username17

[Omegonthesane]

In any case: Unknown Armies has no mechanics that anyone should want to emulate. And I mean that with all due sincerity. There are mechanics in fucking White Wolf games that you might want to steal for a worthier project. Unknown Armies has nothing. It's just a blind alley of epicycles added to Call of Cthulhu.

-Username17

Disagree on one, possibly two counts - if for some bugfuck reason you are compelled at gunpoint to use percentile dice, then allowing flip-flops on rolls is a useful mechanic for making at least one of your skills actually fucking work.

And if by "mechanic" you include the minor/sig/major charge split, and the thing where you can split a big charge into 10 small charges but not the other way round, I'd say that's at least acceptable to emulate and achieves a game design where Big Magic inherently requires more faff than Not Quite So Big Magic. But, I wouldn't call the charge structure on its own decoupled from everything a mechanic.

[tussock]

In all fairness, 4E's only crime was accomplishing its design objectives all too well.

That is the opposite of true. There's volumes about what 4e wanted to do, and how they achieved almost none of it. But here's some off the top of my head.

[*]4e wanted faster combats. It got slower combats. Massively slower, including on a per-round basis. The interrupts alone are crippling.
[*]4e wanted more dynamic movement in combat. It got less movement in combat. The lockdown mechanics are large in number, diverse, and often effective.
[*]4e wanted Defenders to have an awesome lockdown mechanic, so that their basic design principle could function. All their powers assumes it works. But it's not a lockdown mechanic in the first place, and it does almost nothing unless the DM gives it endless handjobs.
[*]4e wanted a non-combat task resolution system that encouraged everyone to join in and take turns. The one it packaged made you fail all non-combat tasks if you did that, and most of them failed even if you tried to succeed instead. The secret to running it, after two years of constant errata, was to never tell players you're using it, and do everything you can to not let them know, because it's horrible and they'll hate you.
[*]They seriously have text saying that +5 DC is worth two levels higher reward for those, when the table shows that +5 DC is eight levels harder. I presume they intended one of those things to be true.
[*]4e also wanted a combat resolution system. It's combat is notorious for not actually resolving against iconic monsters like Dragons, you get just 2-3 hours in and the Dragon leaves in disgust moments before the players do.
[*]4e wanted Fighters to be as good as Wizards. They aren't. Defenders are horrible in part that they can't do their job, and also that they can't do anything else either.
[*]4e wanted the math to just work. The math does not just work. They couldn't even add their fractions correctly to keep the player progressions matching the monster ones.
[*]4e says 4 Minions are a match for a Monster, and 5 Monsters are a match for a Solo. That does not work. It just doesn't.
[*]4e wanted level 4 characters to fight level 2-6 Monsters in level 4 encounters. Their modules are full of level 3-5 monsters in level 5-8 encounters. Obviously something didn't quite work out there.
[*]4e wanted ten (actually 8, because story rewards) encounters per level. But you only get about 5 of those "higher level" fights instead. That is also not working as intended.
[*]4e wanted traps to be part of combat, like another monster. That lasted one module, because the traps forgot to use the combat mechanics. Oops.
[*]4e wanted you to do make-shit-up stunts in combat and stuff. You don't, because the mechanics don't let them work as well as your free stuff.
[*]4e wanted to control power creep by isolating your powers from each other. The other classes powers, mind, are all up in your powers' business. This thing where your shit only stacks with other people's shit, it's still crazy hard on power creep.
[*]4e wanted perfectly described powers with only one possible interpretation. There's more errata than there is book, in part because there was some really interesting interpretations floated around once the customers started reading it.
[*]4e wanted a setting that encouraged people to "tell their own stories". There are no 4e stories. I've checked. There's just players complaining about the combats and DMs throwing around large multipliers to try and fix the math.
[*]4e wanted monsters with hundreds of hit points.
[*]4e wanted players to use rituals (aka, non-combat spells), and set a gold cost to stop the number of uses being infinite. It turns out the cost also stopped the number of uses being greater than zero.

And with that out of the way, one of things 4e wanted and got right was removing most of the penalties from player choices and using all bonuses instead. Which was an idea Munchkin d20 joked about in 2001, and it turned out to be popular enough to use in the proper game.

For Example, rather than giving a Dwarf a penalty to Cha, give them a bonus to Wisdom. Charisma is still "lower", just without making the choice one that ... eh, I hate it as a grognard, but it's popular.

[Dogbert]

That is the opposite of true. There's volumes about what 4e wanted to do, and how they achieved almost none of it. But here's some off the top of my head.

Tussok. You see, there are two kinds of objectives: The ones they tell the customers to be the objectives, and the actual objectives. It's like how Paizo said Pathfinder was going to "fix all of 3.X problems" or how V20 was "only intended to be a limited edition."

Even if the former WotC employee who posted on RPG.net how Hasbro executives told the by-then DnD division's head "WoW or else" was lying, 4E is too consistent in its direction and function as to not be obvious in its nature.

[MGuy]

That is the opposite of true. There's volumes about what 4e wanted to do, and how they achieved almost none of it. But here's some off the top of my head.

Tussok. You see, there are two kinds of objectives: The ones they tell the customers to be the objectives, and the actual objectives. It's like how Paizo said Pathfinder was going to "fix all of 3.X problems" or how V20 was "only intended to be a limited edition."

Even if the former WotC employee who posted on RPG.net how Hasbro executives told the by-then DnD division's head "WoW or else" was lying, 4E is too consistent in its direction and function as to not be obvious in its nature.

Consistent? You do know they redid the rules a bunch of times right? Before throwing in the towel and making a whole new "thing".

[MGuy]

The thing is we are talking about a game, not a narrative. IF you want to just write a story you can do that but if you're laying a game and you 'want' rules then you should stick to those rules, otherwise why are you playing with rules at all? If the rules can't support the narratives they are supposed to generate then there is a problem with those rules. If your rules are basically read "let the GM make up the result" then why use them? I understand wanting the hero to 'fail' every now and again but isn't that exactly what failed results are for?

RPGs are a delicate balance between story time and board games. Too few rules and the players feel like they have no control. Too many rules and not enough original content and the player wonder why they didn't just play Skyrim instead. If the game is merely a simple collection of hard coded rules, then why not just run that on a computer? Ultimately, if you've got a gaming group together, you have a group of people who chose to play a game with a human DM instead of playing Skyrim.

The strength of Tabletop RPGs is in having rules but also in the ability to go beyond those rules. Whether it's deciding how the king reacts when you put a hole in his tower or ruling on if the tower has taken enough damage to collapse, the DM has to make plenty of rulings. But that dynamic new content is the appeal of RPGs. Having rules that call for dynamic content from the DM isn't a bad thing. It only makes sense that your rules should take advantage of the fact you have a human DM, as opposed to treating the human factor like a design flaw that needs to be overcome.

Obviously like anything it has to be used in moderation though. The big flaw of Apocalypse world isn't using those mechanics, it's using them too often. For an example of not enough dynamic content and too many hard-coded rules, see D&D 4E.

I'm not sure what you think you're saying here. Too many rules and players will more likely just be too lazy to figure them out/follow them. Too few rules make the game easier to figure out. That's the real and consistent dynamic between more rules and less. 4E, which I'm sure you must not have played, had a bunch of combat rules and not much else. 3E had rules for most of the things you could want to do in a game and there was plenty of room to do most anything you wanted with it. You 'have' to, when writing rules for things, keep in mind that humans are playing. Whenever you make guidelines instead of exact rules (like for how bluff is supposed to work) you're doing just that. However, there's a big difference between making a guideline that: allows GMs to easily generate certain numbers where players can make decisions and calculations based off of that knowledge, and having mechanics that specifically suggest that for every roll success or failure is not only arbitrary but can be trumped on a whim.

Personally, the thing that makes *World's mechanic particularly distasteful is the fact that your actions, and the roll involving them can have consequences that are COMPLETELY independent of your success/failre, and of the action taken and even the situation because lulz. I say this as a person who GMs most of the time. I don't like that shit.

[Cyberzombie]

Personally, the thing that makes *World's mechanic particularly distasteful is the fact that your actions, and the roll involving them can have consequences that are COMPLETELY independent of your success/failre, and of the action taken and even the situation because lulz. I say this as a person who GMs most of the time. I don't like that shit.

Like I said earlier, I don't defend the *World system at all. I like glitches as a mechanic because variety is the spice of life, but *World is the equivalent to eating a giant block of cinnamon.

[Sakuya Izayoi]

Personally, the thing that makes *World's mechanic particularly distasteful is the fact that your actions, and the roll involving them can have consequences that are COMPLETELY independent of your success/failre, and of the action taken and even the situation because lulz. I say this as a person who GMs most of the time. I don't like that shit.

Like I said earlier, I don't defend the *World system at all. I like glitches as a mechanic because variety is the spice of life, but *World is the equivalent to eating a giant block of cinnamon.

People weren't criticizing the concept of glitches themselves. WFRP3e did glitches very well, with explicit effects caused by the multiple axis dice results, and tables (cards) for special complications like spellcasting perils. And its followup, Star Wars EotE, has been criticized for adding the bears back in.

[tussock]

That is the opposite of true. There's volumes about what 4e wanted to do, and how they achieved almost none of it. But here's some off the top of my head.

Tussok. You see, there are two kinds of objectives: The ones they tell the customers to be the objectives, and the actual objectives. It's like how Paizo said Pathfinder was going to "fix all of 3.X problems" or how V20 was "only intended to be a limited edition."

Fair call. But if you want to check my spoiler again, those things they wanted do mostly fall within the realms of "being like WoW". And they are still failures at that. Class balance, treadmilling, formulaic social interaction, .... OK, WoW does have some shitty long grinds against solo bosses, but those battles do actually resolve.

Even if the former WotC employee who posted on RPG.net how Hasbro executives told the by-then DnD division's head "WoW or else" was lying, 4E is too consistent in its direction and function as to not be obvious in its nature.

I'd want to see the quote. It's not that I don't believe you, it's that I think it may be confused whispers about how D&D had to be a 50 million a year business, and how that was tiny compared to WoW, which is just like D&D anyway.

Because if 4e's modelled on anything it's the 3e minis game. Because the head designer was the head designer of the 3e minis game, and he thought it was better than D&D, and it sold better than 3e books, so why not?

Turns out people bought the minis for their RPG sessions, and almost no one actually played the minis game, and also the RPG minis market was now well saturated. LOL.

One thing they got right was the digital subscriber model for the character builder. Making it just hard enough to design a PC that you want the assistance, then making you pay $120/annum to get it, forever, in little bites you hardly even notice. Clever exploitation of the market. Especially with all the other shit they promised and never delivered on for the same money. Evil, but entirely legal.

I wonder if it didn't hurt the rest of their business of course, drive people to the more open Pathfinder online support. Taking Dungeon magazine off Paizo clearly wasn't smart in retrospect, even though it did nearly kill them for a year or so.

[TheFlatline]

You got that backwards. You get a lot of Willpower for being good (virtue) and a little Willpower for being bad (Vice). But you only get the good willpower if you hurt yourself to be good. Merely doing the right thing, or even taking risks to do the right thing, isn't enough to get the virtue willpower. Also, some of the virtue willpower clickovers don't seem particularly virtuous if you aren't seriously into weird Christian herpaderp.

You're right on recollection. All I remember was that the system was designed so that you generally recovered most of your willpower by engaging in your vices, and that they were generally anti-social and destructive to a game group.

It's like nWOD went out if it's way to make sure people didn't play.

[silva]

I remember Earthdawn magic items were activated as you discovered about their history. So, if you find out that rusted sword is in fact the sword of Ugrulk Manslayer, you gained a bonus for using it against humans. And if you find out it was used to slay the Archpriest of Ao, then you also gain bonus agains followers of Ao.

Dont remember if it worked exactly like that, but its awesome anyway. Really evocative.