Necro: Design: Too Much In The Kitchen?

[hogarth]

If teleportation is part of my character vision then it is a problem if the MC disallows it, just like it would be a problem if he told me I couldn't play a gnome when I really wanted to. I'm not saying this is never warranted, but in general the MC should be more accommodating than the players.

I don't know what to tell you. In my experience, it's way easier to find a replacement player who will agree with the GM's vision than it is to find a replacement GM who will agree with a player's vision.

[Cyberzombie]

I think the problem is the players knowing there are other options that they aren't being allowed to pick.

A setting with 4 flavours of magic would be fine, but because they are aware there are other options all they see is the things they aren't allowed to do. No-one bitches that their mage can't stop time or teleport in Shadowrun, because it's never been an option. Have the option and take it away and you get bitching, just like when 4e shipped without half the classes people "expected" from the 3e PHB.

At the very least it's better to set alot of the extra material as optional where you have to ask the GM. Nobody really expects that Magic of Incarnum will be allowed in a game, yet everyone expects the PHB wizard will be.

It's never a good idea to set it up such that core material gets removed, because that leads to a lot of player bitching.

[Drolyt]

If teleportation is part of my character vision then it is a problem if the MC disallows it, just like it would be a problem if he told me I couldn't play a gnome when I really wanted to. I'm not saying this is never warranted, but in general the MC should be more accommodating than the players.

I don't know what to tell you. In my experience, it's way easier to find a replacement player who will agree with the GM's vision than it is to find a replacement GM who will agree with a player's vision.

In my experience it is much harder to find a replacement GM than replacement player period, so I'm not sure this is evidence of anything. I still think that in a kitchen sink game like D&D the GM should, within reason, adapt the setting to player choices.

[hogarth]

In my experience it is much harder to find a replacement GM than replacement player period, so I'm not sure this is evidence of anything. I still think that in a kitchen sink game like D&D the GM should, within reason, adapt the setting to player choices.

I thought it was obvious -- it's much more important to have a GM who's excited by the setting than it is to make every player excited about the setting; a GM who's lukewarm on his own game is not going to last very long, in my experience.

[TiaC]

Many games do this sort of thing. No one finds it weird that a game like GURPS has both rayguns and fireballs and you rarely use both.

[tussock]

GURPS has a thing called Tech Levels. Stuff from TL 6 is just plain better and cheaper than stuff from TL 5, on down the chain, and magic damage is mostly balanced against TL 3.

Rayguns are TL 8 or 9, so any game with them obviously doesn't also use too many pointy sticks or fireballs to attack people with, and doesn't expect steel plate armour to stop anything military, and thinks horses and sailing boats are rich men's toys. But that's like writing a dozen strictly tiered games into the same book and telling people to pick a tier.

It's like playing D&D at 3rd level instead of 8th. And in general that's how you limit complexity for system newbies without removing people's character concepts. Just tier off all the good stuff, from everyone. Let the GM set shorter chains, not less chains.

[shadzar]

Am I wrong?

Bloat will always be a problem, and the idea that has come out of WotC that "everything is core" has people believing that any published book must be allowed at all times in all games, and the strength of D&D has been lost to where it is no longer kitchen sink games, but garbage disposal games.

"Player entitlement" is a problem created by whoever is teaching it and thinks that always getting what you "want" makes for a good game.

If you can limit the amount of things there are to choose from and have competent people playing that accept these limits then you can have a more cohesive and fun game within the theme.

so long as things such as "player entitlement" exist that makes people think that anything they want the DM should "SAY YES!" to will make for continued garbage disposal games of lackluster value and quickly drifting off to do something else when they get boring from always getting what you "want".

[Foxwarrior]

It's interesting to rediscover this thread after the experiences I've had in the past year. It's fun to think about the consequences of widespread portal technology, fun to use the same game engine to play games in settings where there are no portals, and fun to write descriptions of secret cults of people who choose to have their brains replaced with those of people they capture.

However, what I've come to realize is that all that mucking about with making settings as exotic but coherent as possible is creating a great solution to the wrong problem. What matters more to a campaign as a whole is that the players' character-building choices result in them having a limited but interesting toolbox to work with, and it's also terribly amusing to see the different wacky characters players can come up with: if a game is at least a little bit focused on letting players make special snowflakes to amuse each other with, it should definitely support characters like Vampire Golem Witches.


At the time, I listened to all your observations, and ended up not taking any of the advice given, but I think Drolyt and Red_Rob got the closest to showing me the secret:

Anyways, players like options. Assuming you intend for this system to be used for long running games the options the players select are going to have a huge impact on the game. Given this I think the best solution would be to let the players pick whatever they want and then whittle away at the parts of the game the players didn't pick so you can focus on the stuff that matters to their characters, plus whatever other things you want to throw in.

[K]

Options are probably the single most misunderstood problem in game design.

Too few and the game is constrictive and boring. Too many and people bounce off the material. It's not even a consistent problem because different players have different tolerances for options. Some people really do need to play something with a handful of options and the others need to dumpster dive (DnD's Fighter vs Wizard, for example).

[OgreBattle]

Perhaps use the MtG system of organizing options, tell people games with everything allowed will be wackier than setting specific

[deaddmwalking]

I think the best solution is to offer a handful of customization options, but allow people to 'deep dive' to alter each of the selections available to them. Ie, you can play a 'template character' that has all of the features based on a couple of early choices (a little like the 2-weapon or ranged Ranger) but then have more choices beyond the default.

[OgreBattle]

Exploring the MtG idea further...
Part of it is telling people "That's how everyone plays" and get people to play campaigns in rotation. Like here's the new setting, how did YOU play it compared to everyone else? Share on our forums/reddit etc....

You've got the 'Core Rulebook' that gives the mechanics, game master stuff, character creation (class, skill, etc, though this rotation gets more out of distinct classes). It's rarely 'updated', but instead viewing a new book as errata it's like getting a new core set.

Then that cycle (1-3 years?) gives you setting specific adventure path books, maybe 1-3. So players go from low level adventurers, then mid level conquerors, and fight at king or god tier at the end of the cycle.

It's an MtG multiversal setting so you also have "Crazy Go Nuts Vintage" where every book is on the table and bullshit god wizards dominate... but that's what you already tell players that setting is about.

[Foxwarrior]

I guess I was planning to do that as well, in the form of one fantasy [collection of systems, spells, items, and monsters], one cyberpunk [collection of systems, technologies, items, and vehicles], and so on. And yes, combining them is both possible and amusing. I was just still attaching a lot of importance to the idea that "maybe some people will want to run a cyberpunk game without bioprinting or cyberbrains", "maybe some people will want to run a fantasy game without portal networks" (and be able to concisely tell the players in advance what parts aren't present in this setting), when I should have been more worried about making a default setting and incorporating lore into the stat blocks to amuse first-time readers.

[Mord]

When it comes to offering different players different levels of options within the same game, I rather like Sentinels of the Multiverse's approach: all heroes play by the same rules, but some hero decks are very straightforward - play card, card does thing, end turn - while other hero decks require a lot of planning ahead, forethought, and paying attention. The villains also run the range from "dumb beatstick" to "we need a computer to adjudicate this."

There's a real perceptible gradient of increasing complexity as you go from playing as Legacy to Ra to Tachyon to Absolute Zero (and from there to crazy bullshit like Argent Adept and Nightmist who are probably not even worth the trouble). At my table I force AP-prone players to stick to complexity 1 heroes.

A combat-heavy RPG could benefit greatly from offering multiple classes with the same flavor but different complexity profiles. The Fire Mage is a perfect example of letting people have the flavor and fighting style of a wizard while still being effective in combat, without the complexity and potential for pulling off ultra-power moves of an actual capital-W Wizard.

It would be nice if Fighter were legitimately a class designed to be easily operated to a certain baseline level of effectiveness, instead of just being a bullshit garbage class. Imagine you designed two classes that hit things with swords but were intended to be at differing levels of complexity: Fighter and Mystical Swordpoker. Then you could say something like, "the world's best player of Fighters is only 10% more effective than the world's worst player of Fighters, but both of them can contribute to level-appropriate challenges," as well as something like "the world's best player of Mystical Swordpokers is 200% more effective than the world's worst player of Mystical Swordpokers, so the worst player is dead weight to the party whereas the best player can sometimes wipe a whole level-appropriate encounter by himself if everything is lined up perfectly."

[...You Lost Me]

Nightmist

not even worth the trouble

How dare you.

[Mord]

I'm not saying she can't be effective, just that I don't feel like putting in the effort needed to get there. Pearls before swine.

Your silence regarding Argent Adept speaks volumes.

[Foxwarrior]

I see, so what you're saying is, Mord, that a kitchen should be so packed there are several different ways to fill each role with varying levels of complexity?

[Mord]

That depends on what the "kitchen" has become in your metaphor. I was responding mostly to K and deadDM regarding the availability of mechanical options available to the player in their character build.

There's no intrinsic reason that having low-complexity (few build options) and high-complexity (many build options) class variants available to fill the same combat role should have any bearing on how much conceptual stuff goes into your setting. You could fluff the options to both fit inside a narrowly-defined conceptual space without too much trouble.

So, if your "kitchen" is "the space of all mechanical options available to a player when writing shit on a character sheet," then yes, I suppose I am advocating a packed kitchen. However, if your "kitchen" is "the space of all memes available to a player when formulating their creative contribution to the collaborative story told through your game," then no, the pantry can be as barren as you like.

Going back to Fighter and Mystical Swordpoker, you don't need to invent "Magic of Azure Pokeyness" to explain the Mystical Swordpoker's abilities and then wedge the Magic of Azure Pokeyness into your setting. You can just say "the Fighter is a guy who is pretty good with a sword" and "the Mystical Swordpoker has received training in the Swordpoking Academy" and this can be enough to explain why one has fancier moves than the other.

Talking Game of Thrones, you could choose to model the Mountain as having the class "Big Motherfucker" and Bronn with the class "Mercenary." And then you could write the contents of those classes - their special moves, perks, numeric progressions - such that they both kill things with swords, but the player of the Big Motherfucker makes fewer choices at character creation, level up, and in combat because his class abilities boil down to "has a lot of HP" and "his normal attack does bonus damage" whereas the Mercenary has to worry about positioning and which enemies are currently engaged and the terrain he's standing on to use all of his special situational tricks. We didn't have to add literally anything to the setting to make both the Big Motherfucker and the Mercenary work, but we did have to add enough levers and knobs to the system to give the Mercenary something fiddly to interact with to allow the complexity of his various options to be meaningful.

Layering increasingly outre templates onto a character, a la the Vampire Golem Witch, is certainly one way to stake out a little mechanical and narrative space for that character. However, the tags "Vampire", "Golem", and "Witch" all carry both narrative and mechanical connotations and a player might be interested in either or both for any given piece of that abomination. Maybe a player wants a Vampire Golem Witch because they like the narrative idea of an unliving construct that draws power from blood and fucks goats for Satan; or because they want immunity to fatigue, a 4d6 Blood Suck attack, and an imp familiar; or a little of both.

[OgreBattle]

What element makes cyberpunk and medieval big fellows and fire mages all fit together


Say in MtG it’s color pie and mechanics, a cyber samurai is a higher white mana cost than husky swordsman

[Foxwarrior]

Well, it's a points-ish system, so spellcasting and hacking ability can be priced with the same resource, that's not actually that complicated. The thing that makes it all fit together though is probably the players being somewhat capable of optimization, so they realized that the fireball spells and such are way less useful when you can just buy a rocket launcher, and stuck to the teleportation and time control and mind control stuff.

Medieval big fellows can hold big guns.

Yes, admittedly combining the two settings is a bit less balanced than using just one.