ADOM RPG

[Omegonthesane]

I don't remember Frank ever proposing that assassins get to make a normal attack now for a super attack later, but the Tome Assassin could study for a standard action to gain its Death Attack damage against any target, and in a 2012 thread about resource schedules his example of attacks which require a warm-up instead of a cooldown was an Assassin who would gain Precision by spending time studying its targets.

[TheCreatorOfADOM]

How complex would you say your game is? How long is a player turn expected to last (does it very greatly between swinging halberds and slinging illusions?), how many rounds is a 'level appropriate' encounter suppose to last?

How long does it take to make a lvl 1, mid levle, max level character? How many decision points are there (attribute, equipment, 'feats', skills, class abilities, etc.)

ADOM RPG being an old school type of game in many respects won't have tons of these things. So combat rounds should be fast (1-2 minutes to resolve one combat round for an average party size and an average encounter probably is a good maximum - faster is always better... naturally this doesn't assume newbie players). 10-30 minutes to make a character (again some experience with the system expected for that estimation) depending on how much you want to optimize. But generally: Preferrably rather fast.

[erik]

To leave the fractional iterative attack rounds on the table, I'm curious how the game is supposed to have 36 levels and claim that each level is relevant.

When things get that granular it's pretty much a treadmill where you get reskinned versions of the same stuff. Is there really room for 36 grades of meaningfully different opponents? You'd have to have an incredibly dense monster manual, or else meaningful opposition is pretty thin at each level- pretty much just class leveled critters.

If you want to make races relevant you don't want to give them more numbers. You want to give them special abilities. Orcs being able to smell gold is way more interesting than being able to hit for extra damage. For the most part the races appear to have that (looking at elf example), so good on ya there, but it does have some numbers that appear to be straight combat bumps.

I'd be concerned about the numerical racial combat bonuses because that's where you wind up getting master races for certain classes like 4e DnD wound up failing because the numbers were so tight that you get railroaded into class-race combos to be relevant vs. level appropriate opposition. In 3e DnD it actually didn't matter as much because there were so many ways to achieve level relevant numbers/tactics that having a maxxed prime stat isn't mandatory. I cannot tell if that's the case here, but something to be vigilant against.

[Zaranthan]

A game with 36 levels could work fine, so long as you designate about half of them as NPC-only.

The players start at level 10, having accomplished some minor feat of prowess that distinguishes them as protagonists we should give a shit about. Single-digit NPCs are mooks and commoners.

The players retire at level 30, having accomplished some major feat of prowess that distinguishes them as historical figures the next generation of adventurers should give a shit about. NPCs higher than that are plot devices and final bosses meant to be ganged up on by 3-5 level 30 heroes at the end of the campaign.

[Emerald]

ADOM RPG being an old school type of game in many respects won't have tons of these things. So combat rounds should be fast (1-2 minutes to resolve one combat round for an average party size and an average encounter probably is a good maximum - faster is always better... naturally this doesn't assume newbie players). 10-30 minutes to make a character (again some experience with the system expected for that estimation) depending on how much you want to optimize. But generally: Preferrably rather fast.

Bolding mine. This is very much an optimistic best-case scenario. Yes, BECMI, AD&D, and the various OSR games generally involve faster combats than 3e, but the kind of estimates you're making would be tough to hit even assuming veteran players with laser-like focus and excellent tactical and dramatic talents.

2 minutes for 4 PCs and 1 monster means 24 seconds per turn. That's just about enough time for the DM to say "Joe, you're up," Joe to grab his dice, declare he's attacking the monster, roll his fighter's attack and damage roll, tell the DM, and have the DM record the damage and report any results. No movement into position, no questions for the DM, no flavor text for any attacks, no discussion of tactics, no picking spells for the magic-user, no reacting to the monster's actions.

Likewise, creating characters in half an hour works only if everyone basically already knows what they're making and is just there to roll 3d6 in order and write stuff down. No pondering what class to choose, no thinking up a good name for your character, no arguing with Dave that you shouldn't have two elf magic-users in one party and he got to play the elf magic-user last campaign, no rolling up stats that are too low for the class you wanted to play and having to come up with Plan B, no asking the DM about what kind of game you'll be playing before you accidentally roll up a cleric in Dragonlance or a magic-user in Dark Sun.


When designing an "old school" game, don't assume a party of experienced competent players, or even assume an "average" party of 2 veterans and 2 newbies, because it's not just parties of old-school gamers (or some old-schoolers and some people they're introducing to that sort of game) who will be playing it.

Think about how things would work in a party where Alice is playing a magic-user for the first time and always has to read over her spells, Bob likes to ask lots of time-consuming questions about the environment and then lavishly describe his character's actions, Carol knows the rules well and so is really fast on her turn but keeps arguing with the others about what they should be doing, and Dave is always on his phone and not paying attention to things between turns. What would you expect the average turn length to be in that case?

Or, alternately, think about how things would work if Alice, Bob, Carol, and Dave are all AD&D grognards who can internalize any given old-school game game pretty darn well, but they haven't played actual AD&D in years and can only fit in one session per month or so, there's lots of Monty Python quoting between combat rounds, and the DM keeps having to check her work email because she's on call this weekend. Will the party fighter necessarily remember whether it's an odd or even round for his 3/2 attacks in that scenario?

Now, obviously you do want to always keep the veteran AD&D grognard party in mind since they're your ideal audience for this kind of game, but don't fall into the trap of designing for the optimal party or assume that the game will be played in certain ways without playtesting and/or math-hammering things to validate your assumptions.

[erik]

(An aside before I get back to it: ADoMCreatorPerson, please don't feel I'm trying to shit on your product. I don't think I or anyone here has. We discuss game design and I think there's lots of teachable moments and things worth discussing in retro fantasy games. I'm sure that people can and will have fun playing your game, but there's always room improvement.)

You don't need 10 levels to map out mooks tho. If levels are largely to differentiate combat prowess then there's just not that much call for granularity.

If anything one aspect that a lot of the retroclones have gotten right is cutting back the number of levels. The idea is simplicity and often one-off or comedy campaigns. You don't need dozens of levels for that. I've played year+ campaigns in Lamentations and DCC each, so I've had some experience with retroclones of late. They're not my preferred creature but a good friend wanted to run them and we'll have fun despite the systems. DCC does a far, far better job of giving meaningful roles to non-casters, and you can tell the big leaps in power as you level up. The walk from schmoe to pro isn't that long. Whereas in LotFP you suck forever unless you're a caster.

I would say that a lot of games would be enjoyed much more if people got on board with not thinking level 1=starting level, but that's just encoded into how we think. If you don't want people playing level 1 characters then for ghost's sake call it something other than level 1. Like Mook 1. And start hero levels at Hero 1. 4e DnD almost got it right that tiering levels can help people pick where they want to start, but they failed to actually do that. Instead they made a treadmill where you fight the same reskinned creatures for 30 levels of padded sumo. Different tiers should come with different tactical minigame expectations, not just palette swaps on foes. Heroic 10 should have been totally different from Paragon 1, rather than Paragon 1 just being Heroic 11.

[OgreBattle]

ADOM RPG being an old school type of game in many respects won't have tons of these things. So combat rounds should be fast (1-2 minutes to resolve one combat round for an average party size and an average encounter probably is a good maximum

What's the action economy like? D&D3 style Standard/Move/Swift(immediate)?

How does your system handle something like... "I throw sand into his eyes and stab him", or "I swing from a chandelier and swing at the badguy"?

My own personal preference is...

...on one end rules lite systems like FATE Core where throwing sand and swinging is handled by the same mechanics (aspects, fate points), so it's like an improv story telling prompt for the player to see how he uses the points he has to tell an interesting story.

...on the other end a system that handles these interactions with clearly written rules, like throwing sand is an X action that targets Y defense. Though you'd also need to prevent "I throw sand then stab" to always be better than "I just stab" or things play out like an MtG combo.

[pragma]

@TheCreatorofADOM

It's coming through loud and clear to me that you want combat to play fast, and that's a noble goal that I totally agree with. My experience is that combat is not usually anyone's favorite part of an RPG session. Your reasoning for fractional attacks is that they make combat faster because people don't need to recalculate things. I think avoiding recalculation is a winner: my players always dawdle forever adding things up.

However, it seems obvious that having to track what combat round it is and answering the question "is this round even or odd" over and over will make combat slower. I think you'll get better results by making every combat round the same from the player's point of view. I think allowing the fighter a choice of multiple attacks all of which have the same fixed penalty or a single attack with none is an easier way to hit your desired damage per round numbers than alternating numbers of attacks. I think allowing the fighter the choice opens up interesting play decisions for the fighter and also means you can hedge against some complaints fighters might have about the attack penalty.

I also think combats being fast has a lot to do with monster HP/survivability. I encourage you to double check that your fighter can knock down a monster in a turn or two on average.

[DrPraetor]

I actually *do* like tactical combat in D&D - but not when it drags on forever. You need some interesting tactics and stuff in order to keep it... interesting.

Trips and feints and such do keep combat interesting, but you shouldn't have fifteen flavors of them. Throwing sand in someone's eyes should probably be different from tripping and throwing them, but should throwing sand in the eyes be *mechanically* different from feinting with an offhand weapon?

I say: probably not, and being able to benefit from feints should be a class feature with either a resource cost or some gating that you quickly check before deciding to use a trick attack or just stab.

There's an extensive discourse on this wrt the Search skill (somewhere else on this forum), but exceptional abilities need some room in the game engine for people with super skills to do stuff even when it isn't obvious to a bunch of Doritos-stained couch potatoes how the character is able to accomplish some amazing feat. Otherwise, mundane skills are nerfed even more vs magic.

I like Winds-of-Fate type systems for feints in particular, because then the answer to "do I throw sand in the orc's eye?" is "If my skilled warrior recognizes and advantageous opportunity to do that, maybe" and there you go.

It's all well and good for combat to be quick, but if combat has no meaningful tactical decisions (which do tend to take some time), then the fighter can leave the table and have the RNG play his character, and that's no good either.

[OgreBattle]

It's all well and good for combat to be quick, but if combat has no meaningful tactical decisions (which do tend to take some time), then the fighter can leave the table and have the RNG play his character, and that's no good either.

There's a "slot machine fun" kinda aspect to repetitive but rewarding actions. If attack attack attack is my best course of action but each roll kills an orc still makes me feel like I'm doing something. When attack attack attack only brings a single orc to 50% health, with no option being better, is when most players will feel bored.

[JigokuBosatsu]

Don't forget to stamp your bingo card on the "developer shows up and makes fun of Frank's last name" space!

[Leress]

Don't forget to stamp your bingo card on the "developer shows up and makes fun of Frank's last name" space!

I thought that was the 'free' space.

[TheCreatorOfADOM]

Now, obviously you do want to always keep the veteran AD&D grognard party in mind since they're your ideal audience for this kind of game, but don't fall into the trap of designing for the optimal party or assume that the game will be played in certain ways without playtesting and/or math-hammering things to validate your assumptions.

I totally agree with this point. We definitely are going to be doing wider alpha- and beta testing once the Kickstarter is running. And naturally the engine needs to flow well with far less experienced people - I 1000% agree.

[TheCreatorOfADOM]

I actually *do* like tactical combat in D&D - but not when it drags on forever. You need some interesting tactics and stuff in order to keep it... interesting.

I do agree with this, but...

Trips and feints and such do keep combat interesting, but you shouldn't have fifteen flavors of them. Throwing sand in someone's eyes should probably be different from tripping and throwing them, but should throwing sand in the eyes be *mechanically* different from feinting with an offhand weapon?

...I never felt the need for game mechanics (at least beyond a very general level) to handle this. For me here the difference starts between "roll-playing" and "roleplaying"... and also somewhat the different playing styles of pre-3e and 3e/4e.

We always (during our AD&D 1 & 2) days had lots of things like "I pick up sand and throw it into the orc's eyes", "I swing past the bandit raiders from my tree vantage point and jump onto the leader", "I try to disarm the ..." and so on, though there barely were any rules for it. Once you e.g. haven fallen comfortably in with a general system on how to do attribute/skill checks, it's easy to improv that with some GMing experience.

ADOM RPG being an old-school system at its heart thus doesn't try to provide rules for all that... just encouragement for the GM to be brave and just wing things to keep things fast and furious...

It's a different design approach than 3e and 4e (and maybe even 5e) where people feel the need to spell out so many things in the sake of balance (though balance still doesn't really work AFAIAC and just gets into the way of a great story).

So my personal design stance is: Old school always has been pretty "narrative". The player makes up a clever maneuver and the GM quickly makes up a simple ruling on how to resolve it (or just allows it to work if it was particularly clever and appropriate).

The great thing about this kind of style (with a good GM) is that it even works perfectly with new players because they don't need to understand any fiddly rules.

Naturally such a system doesn't work too well with inexperienced Game Masters. But we GMs all went through this in the old days and some survived and prospered as GMs

So to like ADOM RPG you will somewhat have to feel comfortable and compatible with this kind of style. If it's not yours, it's the wrong game for you

[TheCreatorOfADOM]

I'm curious how the game is supposed to have 36 levels and claim that each level is relevant.

The honest answer is: Relevance comes in difference shades. Basically I have tried to pick up where 3e left off (and was much better than 1e and 2e where you sometimes at best got just HP and maybe a to-hit bonus which was kind of boring).

First of all: ADOM RPG also admits that the sweet spot of the game probably is around levels 1-14 because as elsewhere mentioned here the amount of levels is not that important but rather what happens is important. Taking 36 levels is a reminiscence to basic D&D and paves the way towards the road of Immortality. In ADOM ascension has been an option for a very long time and I wanted to have that in the RPG, too - but not as something that comes too early. So being level 36 (or close to it) is one predicament of that.

What are we doing to make each and every level interesting? We are doing these things:

• You gain around three minor racial abilities at level 1.
• New racial abilities are added (or existing ones improved) at levels 3, 7, 11, 15, 19, 23, 27, 31 and 35.
• You gain a certain number of skill points at level 1. Additional skill points are gained at every even level (2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, ..., 36). The skills use the advantage/disadvantage system from 5e (with a twist for added advantages/disadvantages) so that increasing one level has much more meaning than just adding +5%. Weapon skills also provide greater bonusses at each new level, so actually gaining a skill level is kind of exciting as it has quite a bit of potential to change one other minor aspect of your character.
• You gain an attribute increase of +1 at levels 3, 5, 7, 9, 13, 17, 21, 25, 29, 33 and 26. As skills also use attribute scores for checks this can be significant in several respects.
• Classes gain abilities at different speeds (the sweet spot here being levels 1-14, although there might be later abilities for some classes). Also some existing abilities increase by level so that level has meaning.
• Hitpoints are only rolled for at levels 1-9, for all further levels you get a constant number (between 1-4 and no more CON modifier). This compresses the power scale and escalation quite a bit so that you don't have a need vastly increasing powers and monsters but at the same time smaller bonus remain meaningful. I like this much better than the tradition started in 3e of rolling for HP (and adding CON) for all levels.
• As a minor things: attack bonuses and saving throws also improve over time.

If you want to make races relevant you don't want to give them more numbers. You want to give them special abilities. Orcs being able to smell gold is way more interesting than being able to hit for extra damage. For the most part the races appear to have that (looking at elf example), so good on ya there, but it does have some numbers that appear to be straight combat bumps.

I totally agree with you there. In the example some abilities are related to combat but that's not the case for all races. Usually it's a mixture of things that try to strengthen the theme of the race.

I'd be concerned about the numerical racial combat bonuses because that's where you wind up getting master races for certain classes like 4e DnD wound up failing because the numbers were so tight that you get railroaded into class-race combos to be relevant vs. level appropriate opposition. In 3e DnD it actually didn't matter as much because there were so many ways to achieve level relevant numbers/tactics that having a maxxed prime stat isn't mandatory. I cannot tell if that's the case here, but something to be vigilant against.

I understand this and see the risk. This really is an area that needs some more playtesting. I'm not a stickler for "everything must be balanced" as you can see from my posts.

Just as an example: Trolls probably will be the best fighters by far (huge, extremely strong, robust). So from a numerical perspective it would make sense to play a troll if you want to be a bad-ass fighter. But they also are very dumb, have low Charisma and Appearance, need larger armor (and probably won't find much magical troll armor), are generally distrusted by people, don't fit well into confined spaces, etc. pp. If you are a good GM it will be very easy to not make trolls the simple and only choice for fighters. But again you have to go beyond rollplaying and for roleplaying. If you don't like that ADOM RPG probably is not a good match for you.

This also could be a problem for spellcasters in theory: Elves get more PP (Power Points, the fuel for spellcasting) than other races and thus make for better spellcasters. But they also get something like -25% to experience and -4 CON (if you are playing a Gray Elf, one of the very strong spellcasting raxes) and mostly knowledge- and memory-related abilities. So there is some balacing factor built in.

Mist elves are even more powerful spellcasters - but all their hitpoint rolls are halved because they are a very frail race. And there are more disadvantages.

So I understand the sentiment and my general response is that ADOM RPG requires a GM willing to play both on the strengths and weakness of every character race.

On the other hand I do not believe in truly being able to numerically balance all this. If you look at the hundreds of thousands of playtesters of 5e and the large WotC team behind it and then at the number of loopholes and "bugs" that still exist in the system it IMHO becomes clear that all this numerical balancing/damage ratio/juggling/etc. is only part of the answer.

HERO system for decades has tried to be balanced and it still is possible to build all kinds of killer characters. So I personally strongly vote to put more responsibility on the Game Master and not rely too much on some imagined system balance (although I agree that one has to be cautious all the time to not build obviously overpowered combinations into the system lest the fun of playing will be ruined... no argument on that

[TheCreatorOfADOM]

@TheCreatorofADOM

It's coming through loud and clear to me that you want combat to play fast, and that's a noble goal that I totally agree with. My experience is that combat is not usually anyone's favorite part of an RPG session. Your reasoning for fractional attacks is that they make combat faster because people don't need to recalculate things. I think avoiding recalculation is a winner: my players always dawdle forever adding things up.

100% agreement (obviously )

However, it seems obvious that having to track what combat round it is and answering the question "is this round even or odd" over and over will make combat slower.

Just out of curiosity (and in no way meant to be inflammatory): Have you actually played in a campaign with fractional attacks? I'm asking because according to my personal experience (and that of all my groups during the past decades) the mechanic might sound cumbersome in theory but in practice we never ever had any problems with that (which still might just be us, but I'm really wondering).

I'm asking because I'm also wondering why you don't find things like spell or abilities durations ("three rounds") at least as cumbersome. You have to account for all that, too.

My experience is:

• The GM always knows what kind of fraction is next. If combat rounds were to take an hour, you probably could forget about that. As they usually in my games last minutes or much less, it's not hard to keep that in mind (and you always can make marks on a sheet of paper if you need that).
• Players always are concerned about utilizing their advantages. So they won't forget for their characters either. They might try to cheat on you but I never played for long with players that tried to cheat. Violate this once and you no longer are a member of my group because I'm playing for fun and don't need that shit.
• Monsters don't have fractional attacks (so it's not even a matter to have in play).
• NPCs might have fractional attacks but usually in my campaigns you never fought too many high-level NPCs at once so it barely came up as a challenge.

I think you'll get better results by making every combat round the same from the player's point of view. I think allowing the fighter a choice of multiple attacks all of which have the same fixed penalty or a single attack with none is an easier way to hit your desired damage per round numbers than alternating numbers of attacks. I think allowing the fighter the choice opens up interesting play decisions for the fighter and also means you can hedge against some complaints fighters might have about the attack penalty.

As I mentioned elsewhere I understand and like the thought but I'll have to test the progression more. Moving from one to two attacks effectively doubles your power in one fell swoop and it does not quite feel right for me. Using modifiers might be an alternative for more than one attack but then you are back to subtracting numbers (which never is good as people are even slower at that than when adding numbers).

I also think combats being fast has a lot to do with monster HP/survivability. I encourage you to double check that your fighter can knock down a monster in a turn or two on average.

In ADOM RPG you can customize a fighter that (s)he e.g. could specialize on wielding a two-handed weapon for 2d12 points of damage per hit (which takes a while to get to, but you can get there). With two attacks per round and decent Strength (say 16 for +2) you might cause as much as 4d12+4 points of damage (not considering criticals, magical items and other bonuses) per round. For an old school game where monsters usually don't come with hundreds of hitpoints this should be more than enough to make your fighter a decent foe.

And it's obvious how dangerous fighters can get also versus spellcasters... 4d12+4 of potential damage against a 12th level wizard with 9d4+3 HP (plus CON modifier, maybe another +9) is... serious. And it's obvious that wizards shouldn't go into melee

[TheCreatorOfADOM]

What's the action economy like? D&D3 style Standard/Move/Swift(immediate)?

Basically one action (which could mean multiple chance to hit for melee or ranged combat) and one movement. No grid, no fiddly rules, most of the details left to the GM. There are some free actions (like speaking or some special abilities of classes or races) and that's it.

How does your system handle something like... "I throw sand into his eyes and stab him", or "I swing from a chandelier and swing at the badguy"?

Mostly by GM fiat. There is a simple and fast variant of the 5e advantage/disadvantage system similar to 5e (but advantages/disadvantages can pile up).

So for the examples I (as the GM) would rule this:

• If you want to throw sand into the guys eyes make an opposed check of your DEX versus his INT. If you succeed he will be at disadvantage (-1D) on all checks for the next 1d4 rounds and all others will have advantage (+1A) on him for that time. On a critical success I'd double the time and be done. If you fail you have achieved nothing and he is attacking you at advantage (+1A) because you were busy scooping up sand and playing around with it.
• For the Chandelier: Make an Acrobatics check at disadvantage (-1D) because the chandelier might not be perfectly positioned for the optimal swing. If you succeed you will have baffled the badguy so mucht that you attack at advantage (+1A). If you fail, you will be at disadvantage (-1D) and on a critical failure you'll probably run into the wall and be stunned for 1d3 rounds.

So: Pure GM fiat and on the spot interpretation. But based on a simple and standard very easy mechanism to resolve rolls.

[deaddmwalking]

I'm glad you've decided to pursue your passion. Making a game and sharing it with the larger community is a laudable goal. Obviously there are going to be people that enjoy your creation and others that it is not intended for - this is a place to discuss not only games, but also theory craft. In that vein, I want to respond to a couple of your points:

So my personal design stance is: Old school always has been pretty "narrative". The player makes up a clever maneuver and the GM quickly makes up a simple ruling on how to resolve it (or just allows it to work if it was particularly clever and appropriate).

One reason I enjoy talking about games at this site is the destruction in my mind of this as any sort of defense. A good GM will make ANY system fun for players. In fact, a good GM will make NO system work - that's the magic of a good GM. The rules for the game are supposed to support someone who struggles. If the game is going to require a good GM to be able to run these kinds of things on the fly, I hope you spend some page space on illustrating the types of rulings that you would consider appropriate.

Colorfully, the Den often talks about 'fellating the GM'. Rather than a literal description (usually) it does reference a very real tendency for people to agree with like-minded people. If I'm the GM and you're my best friend, I'm more likely to find your suggestions 'particularly clever and appropriate'. Good rules help reduce the partiality that a GM can't help but show. Bias is built in to human relationships - clear rules help address that.

If you are a good GM it will be very easy to not make trolls the simple and only choice for fighters. But again you have to go beyond rollplaying and for roleplaying. If you don't like that ADOM RPG probably is not a good match for you.

Personally, I think that 'roleplaying' is easier if there is robust mechanical support for it. If I describe throwing sand in my opponent's eyes or other clever tactics and they don't change the combat, then there is no REAL incentive to do it - it's just a matter of flavor. While I might describe my actions in colorful detail, making the game more fun for everyone else, this is a group game, and not everyone might reciprocate. Some people will adopt their role like they're in an improv play - others struggle. I think better games make an effort to encourage shy players to participate in the game more fully. Mechanical prompts can be helpful in achieving that.

Regarding XP penalties, I don't think they're good for the game. I think they're difficult to justify within the metaphysics of the game world, and creating big differences in character levels creates its own problems.

[TheCreatorOfADOM]

(An aside before I get back to it: ADoMCreatorPerson, please don't feel I'm trying to shit on your product. I don't think I or anyone here has. We discuss game design and I think there's lots of teachable moments and things worth discussing in retro fantasy games. I'm sure that people can and will have fun playing your game, but there's always room improvement.)

No offense taken. We are exchanging arguments and I think we all have to agree that there are very different playing styles out there.

You don't need 10 levels to map out mooks tho. If levels are largely to differentiate combat prowess then there's just not that much call for granularity.

I agree. I probably could limit the game to 10, 15 or 20 levels as well without too much loss but it's just a personal preference to be able to much more slowly advance on and on and on if you like that kind of campaign. So the amount of space expanded for 16 more levels is not that huge that I consider this a problem. Rather I enjoy having the option to adventure for much longer if want to.

If anything one aspect that a lot of the retroclones have gotten right is cutting back the number of levels. The idea is simplicity and often one-off or comedy campaigns. You don't need dozens of levels for that. I've played year+ campaigns in Lamentations and DCC each, so I've had some experience with retroclones of late. They're not my preferred creature but a good friend wanted to run them and we'll have fun despite the systems. DCC does a far, far better job of giving meaningful roles to non-casters, and you can tell the big leaps in power as you level up. The walk from schmoe to pro isn't that long. Whereas in LotFP you suck forever unless you're a caster.

In ADOM RPG the first 9-12 levels are a huge progress for all the classes. You'll go from nobody (or a little somebody) to hero over the course of these levels. Afterwards progression slows down for several reasons... but you can continue playing for a long while before being left alone by the system.

You reminded of one important design principle I hadn't even thought of verbalising so far: Neither me nor my games ever have been focussed on one-shots or very short campaigns. I'm coming from the "eternal campaign" school were you play characters for years and years and they grow over a long period of time (both as characters and power-wise). So that's my focus. Which again might not be useful to everyone.

I would say that a lot of games would be enjoyed much more if people got on board with not thinking level 1=starting level, but that's just encoded into how we think. If you don't want people playing level 1 characters then for ghost's sake call it something other than level 1. Like Mook 1. And start hero levels at Hero 1. 4e DnD almost got it right that tiering levels can help people pick where they want to start, but they failed to actually do that. Instead they made a treadmill where you fight the same reskinned creatures for 30 levels of padded sumo. Different tiers should come with different tactical minigame expectations, not just palette swaps on foes. Heroic 10 should have been totally different from Paragon 1, rather than Paragon 1 just being Heroic 11.

I just can voice my agreement to this. It's not easy to do but basically you kind of can alter the power curve for the characters easily in most level-based systems (and definitely in ADOM RPG) and you mentioned it: If level 1 means you are barely competent, then start your hero characters at level 3, 6, 9 or whatever... you are the GM. You can do it!

[JigokuBosatsu]

Don't forget to stamp your bingo card on the "developer shows up and makes fun of Frank's last name" space!

I thought that was the 'free' space.

Nah, "developer responds to everyone with lengthy individual posts" is the free space.

[phlapjackage]

Don't forget to stamp your bingo card on the "developer shows up and makes fun of Frank's last name" space!

I thought that was the 'free' space.

Nah, "developer responds to everyone with lengthy individual posts" is the free space.

Make sure to leave room for the "roleplay not rollplay" declarations

[Username17]

I thought that was the 'free' space.

Nah, "developer responds to everyone with lengthy individual posts" is the free space.

Make sure to leave room for the "roleplay not rollplay" declarations

The Roleplay not Rollplay square is on the lower left of my bingo card. It's in a line with "Declaration that needlessly complicated mechanic is fine because the developer can't remember an instance of it slowing down play" and in the other direction it's in there with "Appeal to nostalgia by reviving long deprecated mechanics." But the "Evidence Asymmetry: Demand refutations with evidence for assertions made without evidence or refute without evidence assertions made with evidence" is unfortunately in a different line.

But it is kind of interesting to see the flailing. So far there's been very little evidence of development going on. All of this sounds like someone looking at 5 editions of D&D and trying to remember which mechanics came up during the times they had the most fun - which probably has more to do with the musical tastes and school schedules of their friends than it does with what any of the mechanics actually do.

-Username17

[Judging__Eagle]

Coming in as someone who:

-First played 1980's AD&D as a freeform (no dice, no char sheets, not even rulebooks; available during game) experience when in grade 4 (~7 y.o.)

I can say that "pure roleplay" experiences are... actually fucking limited as hell. Without the rules to know what's possible, the players are always hamstrung by the notion of "Mother May I?".

Even if the player has an original idea, the DM will likely quash it due to their own biases that they've learned from the rules (e.g. this game was largely a larp & if we found anything on the ground we could claim it was treasure/items in the game. I found a piece of spiral metal electrical conduit & claimed it was "a lighting sword", but the DM kept insisting it was a "Thundering Sword"; which felt like a cognitive dissonance then, and still does now, I didn't want a sword that thundered; I wanted a sword made of pure lighting)

-Played 1990's AD&D2e as a full rulebook + "any splatbooks we bought & brought to the game table" + "whatever homebrew rules you can make up"

This was my first foray into homebrewing classes. In this case a custom Fighter Kit that would amount to "Surveyor-Commander of the Extraplanar Empire"; it wasn't great, but HAVING RULES meant that I had "some" sort of springboard into making content that was interesting to me.

-Played 2000's 3e

For some reason I insisted that I'd play a spear-using ranger; with dual punching daggers. Basically demonstrating that D&D is a wargame; and if you want to "do your own interesting thing", you'll be punished like hell by the game's mechanics b/c they weren't able to accomodate anything outside of its strictly defined roles.

-Bought, ran, & played ~2005's 3.5e

This was the real golden age of the game for me.

No longer was I intellectually, and game-mechanically, insulted by the AD&D rule of: "if you roll under your attribute on a d20, Auto-succeed". Instead I was insulted by a million subsystems that only cared if you were wargamed enough to succeed at arbitrary checks, and didn't reward any over-success or near-misses.

Ironically, I felt a lot less comfortable homebrewing anything for 3.5e, because of its many moving parts. Ironic because about 90% of the content released by WoTC & 3rd Party publishers was probably worst than something I could have used from wiping my ass.

Fortunately, the Internet had made D&D forums, and WoTC's official forums into a relatively big deal; and I found out about Frank Trollman & Kieth Kaczmarek's total-replacement project for classes of Martial Arete: "Races of War". I soon after looked up their other related projects (Dungeonomicon, Tome of Fiends, Tome of Necromancy; and it's inspiration The Necromancer's Handbook (a guide on how Necromancy actually works in D&D)). These allowed me & everyone who's joined my gaming group to fix issues that had been plaguing D&D since it's 1974 release.

Circa 2006-2010 my gaming circle was being introduced to the [Tome] style of D&D that Frank & Kieth were outlining. Allowing even players who are totally new to the hobby to be able to play the sorts of characters in games that are beyond the scope of most official or 3rd party products.

It was my exposure to the BBBoy version of TGD back in 2007 (or 2006?) that eventually led me to realize how one should go about designing anything:

Decide on what the described/narrative results will be like first; then decide how the (game) mechanics will achieve that goal.

Pretty much anything that's a game that's been posted on TGD has had Frank give it an unbiased opinion; which looks at the mechanics & how they will play out narratively. Doesn't matter if you want a Kitchensink Fantasy American Western, or a Mind-Control Erotic RPG; Frank will tell you where your mechanics are good, or where they can go suck a barrel of cocks.

To somehow claim that Frank Trollman is someone not going to elevate the intellectual level of any discussion on D&D is so disingenuous as to be a level of ridiculous that it should be patented; if there weren't an incessant stream of game designers from Skip Williams or the Paizo/Pathfinder development crew; to people like [Shitmuffin] or other trash-tier game writers also trying to patent the same argument.

For the large part, they leave in a huff, often bemoaning when they discover the exact same problems within their work that Frank had long ago pointed out (e.g. the Paizo 'playtest' for Pathfinder being marketing, not a playtest); and at worst are so lacking in actually intelligent arguments that they "best" they can do is leverage their position of employment to ban someone who uses actual quotes from the rules you wrote, while you retort with how you "Feel" the rules should really work.

Truth be told, I barely bother with any threads on TGD until Frank has posted; and for the large part, I can skim most posts in the threads that go for multiple pages. What I can't ever skim is even a single one of Frank's posts; those essentially demand to be deeply scanned just to get the barest understanding of his explanations.

[erik]

Jesus, Eagle. Suck Frank's cock any harder and you're gonna leave a permanent mark.

I used to think that I enjoy Frank's posts as much as the next guy, but apparently not as much as every next guy.

[Mord]

And naturally the engine needs to flow well with far less experienced people - I 1000% agree.

Naturally such a system doesn't work too well with inexperienced Game Masters.

Unfortunately neither "doublethink" nor "having your cake & eating it too?" are on my card.

It's a different design approach than 3e and 4e (and maybe even 5e) where people feel the need to spell out so many things in the sake of balance (though balance still doesn't really work AFAIAC and just gets into the way of a great story).

I'm not a stickler for "everything must be balanced" as you can see from my posts.

Elves get more PP (Power Points, the fuel for spellcasting) than other races and thus make for better spellcasters. But they also get something like -25% to experience and -4 CON (if you are playing a Gray Elf, one of the very strong spellcasting raxes) and mostly knowledge- and memory-related abilities. So there is some balacing factor built in.

In seriousness, what do you think "balance" is?

It seems to me that when you use the term with negative connotations, you mean something like "too many rules." But you also use the term with positive connotations, in which case you seem to mean "costs are proportionate to benefits".