Annoying Game Questions You Want Answered

[Iduno]

Nice to see Frostburn not only includes equipment but also remembers to make you waste your feats on crap you'll use 0-1 times ever.

FTFY.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Would problems like incredibly specific feats like that be as big of an issue if there was an in-game way of getting them outside of your normal leveling scheme? I guess it comes down to the implementation? I know how hard it can be to formalize that kind of advancement.

[Emerald]

Would problems like incredibly specific feats like that be as big of an issue if there was an in-game way of getting them outside of your normal leveling scheme? I guess it comes down to the implementation? I know how hard it can be to formalize that kind of advancement.

I instituted a downtime training system for picking up new feats (among other things) in my last campaign, where long travel times (weeks overland or a month oversea) between home base and adventure sites were common and the whole campaign went on for over three years in-game, so everyone ended up with a lot of feats; the fighter ended up having more feats than the wizard had spells known, in fact. I was worried initially about everyone training a bunch of synergistic things to hyper-focus in one area, but no one really did that (except the wizard, who'd been planning to go the metamagic-stacking route anyway, and even he didn't get too crazy with it).

What actually happened was that players started to go for those situational feats that they would have ignored otherwise. The fighter had a bunch of tactical feats that were amusing and fun but highly niche, the ranger had a bunch of minor environmental feats from Frostburn and Stormwrack to help with solo scouting and exploration, the druid had a bunch of [Wild] feats that were actually worth burning Wild Shape uses on since he had Extra Wild Shape feats coming out his ears, and so on.

How that kind of system would play out in a group that did all want to just throw together all the strongest feats from some online handbook, I don't know, but you could probably handle that by e.g. tagging feats as either "power" feats or "cool" feats and only let them gain the latter through training.

[deaddmwalking]

It should be possible to grant feats as treasure.

You save the Dryad's grove, she gives you a kiss and BAM you've got 'Faerie Friend' and you get +2 to Social skills for Fey and you probably never care, but you write it down on your sheet and when it DOES come up, you're excited that you can refer back to prior adventures.

[erik]

It should be possible to grant feats as treasure.

You save the Dryad's grove, she gives you a kiss and BAM you've got 'Faerie Friend' and you get +2 to Social skills for Fey and you probably never care, but you write it down on your sheet and when it DOES come up, you're excited that you can refer back to prior adventures.

It was a chore to remember them all, but when I got stuff like this in Living Greyhawk and remembered it was fun.

[Dogbert]

In my experience, groups that spend a lot of time on planning and hate it are more common than groups that spend a lot of time on planning and love it.

If they hate it when why do it? That makes no sense.

What my personal experience has shown me is tables that mix players with incompatible playstyles, poor communication skills, and passive aggression problems. For example, players that love heists and planned assaults mixed in with dragonball players... unless there's actual communication and one side ends up leaving, passive aggression will inevitably build into a Leeroy Jenkins re-enactment (saying the DB players ever even listened to the heisters in the first place).

Also, this is what happens when players wrongly think that bad gaming is better than no gaming, and what happens when irresponsible GMs don't screen applicants to make sure they're going to be a good fit for their table. I have no idea why the Geek Social Fallacies still have any hold on today's society, but seemingly this crap keeps happening or we wouldn't be having this discussion.

[Chamomile]

It's well known in video game design circles that players will seek the optimal path over the fun one, and it is therefore important that the optimal path actually be fun. I have definitely run games where players overplanned to the point where the pace of the game was harmed if I didn't push them to make a decision and get moving. Sometimes there's someone in the party who will give that push instead, but sometimes there isn't. It's not that some of the group were still engaged in the planning session and others were bored. Everyone was getting bored or frustrated, but unless you actually stop and point out to them that they are playing a game and a hilarious failure would probably be more fun than more arduous planning anyway, people will keep grappling with the problem in front of them until it is solved, regardless of whether they're having fun doing it or will have fun at the end of it.

[Iduno]

a hilarious failure would probably be more fun than more arduous planning anyway,

I think there are a lot of Shadowrun (and other game) groups who would argue that the best is doing both.

[Blade]

That's why I like to use mechanisms to abstract the planning. Giving them planning points they can spend to avoid problems works pretty well.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Would someone be able to explain to me exactly what an "action resolution system" entails? I can infer what action resolution is, but the system part is where I get thrown off, because there are presumably lots of actions people can take in an RPG. Every definition I think of is circular and doesn't actually help me. It seems... very broad. I guess that's the point?

[Kaelik]

Would someone be able to explain to me exactly what an "action resolution system" entails? I can infer what action resolution is, but the system part is where I get thrown off, because there are presumably lots of actions people can take in an RPG. Every definition I think of is circular and doesn't actually help me. It seems... very broad. I guess that's the point?

I can't find anyone saying that so I can't really answer your question of what they meant.

[Shiritai]

Would someone be able to explain to me exactly what an "action resolution system" entails? I can infer what action resolution is, but the system part is where I get thrown off, because there are presumably lots of actions people can take in an RPG. Every definition I think of is circular and doesn't actually help me. It seems... very broad. I guess that's the point?

I assume they're referring to stuff like d20 + mods vs target DC, or roll (skill + attribute) d10s and compare the number of dice above 5 vs difficulty threshold - the actual mechanics of resolving success/failure of actions.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

I can't find anyone saying that so I can't really answer your question of what they meant.

It's something Frank said under "Steps of designing an RPG" in this thread. Frank frequently says things that go over my head and after days of trying to figure it out like a koan, I have embarrassingly returned to ask for aid.

assume they're referring to stuff like d20 + mods vs target DC, or roll (skill + attribute) d10s and compare the number of dice above 5 vs difficulty threshold - the actual mechanics of resolving success/failure of actions.

That's what I was figuring, but then he started going on about resource management and skills and action declaration, which is where I started to ask myself questions that led to further questions.

[Grek]

That's talking about the broad strokes of how the 'game' part of your role playing game works. Is there a grid or a board? Do people draw cards, roll dice, move tokens? Do people take turns in a fixed order, or can anyone interject at any time? Is there a story stick? Do people describe their actions and allow the GM to translate those descriptions into 'moves' like in certain bearworld games? Is there a GM at all? How are the 'role' parts of your role playing game assigned, and do these roles change over time? If so, what can cause a role to change?

The general assumption is that you're going to use an established base system, like D20, as that provides solid and well-tested answers to all of those questions. But in principle you could write your own thing, and if you had a good reason to do that it might not even be completely awful.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

How helpful! Thank you Grek, that clears things up. Yeah, I basically am using a base system, I just wanted to be sure I wasn't overlooking anything because putting something onto a blank canvas is really hard. I'd hate to go full retard in step 1.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

One thing that's lamented about 3.5 is its skill system. You have a pool of skill points and you're expected to use them on obvious things like Perception, and less obvious things, like Knowledge: History. While you want things like Athletics and Acrobatics to scale hard with your level so you can jump hard and climb good, you don't want your knowledge or social skills to be like that, because then you can't have low-level sages and aristocrats.

How do you reconcile DCs in a scenario where they do scale like that? Do those knowledge and social skills just always have lower DCs compared to Athletics as you level? Does that make beating those DCs feel less impactful? I'm having a hard time putting this to words.

[DrPraetor]

you don't want your knowledge or social skills to \[scale hard with level\], because then you can't have low-level sages and aristocrats.

That's true!

you want things like Athletics and Acrobatics to scale hard with your level so you can jump hard and climb good,

That's wrong!

While I don't want to presume D&D, consider that a 5th level magic user can fucking fly, and then ask what is a 6th level longjump supposed to be? Even if you're talking about combat mobility - you can avoid attacks of opportunity by flying through the air over your opponent's heads, or by teleporting, or etc..

All the ridiculous wuxia crap you can imagine should show up by 6th level at the latest, and from then on it's marginal utility if not cosmetic. This applies to the rest of the skill list too - there are no lock picking challenges which are appropriate to 13th level characters, and no 13th level "hiding" challenges because then 0th level children can't hide from giants.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

So you're saying no skills should scale much with level?

[Foxwarrior]

In gempunks, jump distance is a stat you can repeatedly double until you're John Cartering your way over squads of Shaolin monks, while flight is so rare sometimes there's a point to riding a giant eagle. The game isn't as crazy as Tome (at least, in a power sense), but it is crazier than the wimpy stuff people in other places play. The guy who can call forth a miniature sun to light up the area for miles around gets nervous when he sees a famous person with a sword.

Anyways, the point is, things like running and jumping scale with investment in athletic classes, while knowledge skills use a separate resource that allows you to have a doddering old woman who knows everything about plants in your party separate from Chinese batman.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

It sounds like one solution to that would be to have different skill categories and different ways of increasing those skills.

[DrPraetor]

So you're saying no skills should scale much with level?

With quibbling at the margins (leadership, for example, or general fightiness), yes.

In a level-based system, you get whole new tiers of power, and at those higher tiers, skills don't scale, they expire. Efforts to maintain the relevance of lockpicking are the most famously insulting - but low level rangers should be able to find food in the desert, and higher level deserts should not require 10th level rangers to find food. Instead, the game needs to graduate to higher level character concepts and to conceptually higher level challenges, rather than trying to reskin challenges from 3rd level as things appropriate to a party with 6th level spells.

Not all games are like D&D - so this isn't a universal principle. But, if it's a game that really wants levels instead of skill-based advancement, then it's generally true.

In a game with skill-based advancement, the skills should scale - but you need to be very careful about introducing things like flight or knock spells that obviate the skill investments of other characters.

[Dogbert]

I have definitely run games where players overplanned to the point where the pace of the game was harmed if I didn't push them to make a decision and get moving.

Me too (especially when I ran Shadowrun). Time Management is a vital skill for GMs. Another important skill is paying attention to when players already have the right plan, since you'd best cut them short and keep them from overthinking at that point -without them realizing- the plan they just made is the right one.

I know there isn't a laziest crutch in a writer's book for pushing a protagonist into action than adding a timer, but coming up with anything that threatens to close the window of opportunity if they don't move becomes sometimes necessary (without incurring in "suddenly, ninjas!" Gygaxian BS, of course).

Would someone be able to explain to me exactly what an "action resolution system" entails?

From where I see it, "action resolution" is the opposite of "conflict resolution" (where a conflict is resolved in broad strokes). Using infiltrating a facility as an example, in an action resolution system you'd have to roll success every step of the way to fool every security system and every guard, every floor of the whole thing, whereas in a conflict resolution system you'd resolve the whole thing in one or handful of rolls at most and then narrate how the whole thing went.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Is it bad to have narrative stuff as mechanical progression rewards?

[Trill]

Care to give an example?

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Like being able to read minds as you level up. Or telekinesis. You know, things that help you advance the narrative outside of hitting shit with a stick. At least that's the impression I get, I read it somewhere else and found the idea puzzling. I thought most forms of progression in level-based games should give you greater control over the narrative?

Maybe a shitty example might help.
Look at a 3.0 Fighter. He levels up and gets fucking nothing to contribute to the story whatsoever - nothing he wasn't already doing.
Then look at a 3.0 Wizard. I really shouldn't have to go any further than this.

Do I have the gist of it, or am I retarded?