Pathfinder Is Still Bad

[Previn]

I normally don't like to cheerlead posts, but Kaelik's post should be required reading for anyone who wants to design a campaign, adventure, or game that has more granularity than FATE.

I went a read it at your suggestion despite having him on ignore, and frankly I'm disappointed I did. I don't know any more about Kaelik's example than what he posted, but it sounds like a poorly written published adventure compounded with a GM that wasn't experienced enough to roll with Kaelik's group's actions.

It can be summed up with: "Railroading is pretty much always a bad thing."

Railroading being bad is not some great new insight.

[Kaelik]

Wow... I made a joking post insulting Previn, and then deleted it because I felt like it was unfair.

Then previn posted that. And I take it back, it was totally fair. Like, ignoring for the moment that the DM FUCKING LET US GET IN WITHOUT DOING THE SIDEQUEST!

Only Previn could defend literally the dumbest possible fucking bullshit sidequest bullshit by saying "Lol just get gud DMs!"

EDIT: also Fuchs.

[Krusk]

Is that guy the only GM in town or what

Nah, we have been a group for like 10 years who rotates GMs. He has gotten worse, but the others have gotten better. Its his run, and I'm basically grinning and bearing it. We rotate who runs for the group every 10-15 sessions or so between 4 of us. I just went, and now he is up. Then two other people will run. They are between us in shittyness. One doesn't know the rules and doesn't mean to be a dick, but sometimes is. One actually knows the rules, but is a dick when he DMs. I'm obviously perfect and make no mistakes. we meet once a month or so, and we are attempting to let his game die off naturally. I've been told by the wife I can't tell him how shitty his game is, or he will cry and she doesn't want that. Instead, me and 3-4 of the players (all but 1) meet every other week for a game I run and its a blast (one of the ones I've gotten some basic help from here on). So thats my "Fun DND" session. His game is more of a social obligation.

[AcidBlades]

Any other reasons why his games are rather shit? You could always just gently give him criticism.

[FatR]

It can be summed up with: "Railroading is pretty much always a bad thing."

I have yet to see a player in an actual game, as opposed to theoretical discussion on the web, who isn't content to ride the rails. Myself not excluded. Playing in a true sandbox, unless that sandbox is as tiny as it is in your average LARP, and you can quickly study all of it, is just too much effort for too little payoff.

What players object to is bad rail design that makes the ride bumpy. "You must get this McGuffin from the depths of Tomb of Horrors" is not likely to raise objections. "You must beat the Tomb of Horrors fair and square, instead of, say, sending an army of expendable mooks to excavate the whole thing, like Gygax' own player did, or teleporting to the treasury and back" probably will.

[Prak]

I had a player complain about being railroaded when he asked a bunch of PCs in a town "Hey, have you seen anyone new around here" and they all gave him sort of a blank look and responded "Well, the lich who runs the town might know, but he has better shit to do. Try to bring him info he doesn't have and maybe he'll give you the time of day."

Seriously. Asking multiple NPCs the same question and getting the same answer from all of them is railroading. I mean, I admit to having a problem with presenting hooks (because I tend to want them to come up naturally, rather than be Hero-Seeking Plot Missiles), but that's the only actual instance of complaining about being railroaded I've personally encountered.

[Whipstitch]

I have yet to see a player in an actual game, as opposed to theoretical discussion on the web, who isn't content to ride the rails.

Such anecdotes don't count much with me given that my own anecdotes indicate that most shitty campaigns die with a whimper rather than a bang due to friendship and common courtesy. When games went sour in my small private school people just plain stopped showing up or stopped suggesting that we ever play D&D in the first place. It wasn't until I was involved with college pick up groups with less established relationships that I ever saw anyone ever just straight up tell a DM to their face why their campaign is bad.

[FatR]

Such anecdotes don't count much with me given that my own anecdotes indicate that most shitty campaigns die with a whimper rather than a bang due to friendship and common courtesy. When games went sour in my small private school people just plain stopped showing up or stopped suggesting that we ever play D&D in the first place. It wasn't until I was involved with college pick up groups with less established relationships that I ever saw anyone ever just straight up tell a DM to their face why their campaign is bad.

100% of people I play RPGs with only became my friends because we started playing RPGs with each other. Well, never mind numerous PbP and Skype games with people I don't even know (no, forum posts don't really count for the purpose of knowing people).

But if you don't trust my personal anecdotes, try to find just one DnD campaign diary on the net, where players are in a true sandbox, free to choose not only their methods of achieving goals presented to them, but goals themselves. And I mean, not only just at the stage of presenting their character concepts. And the campaign is successful.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I remember getting into a verbal shoving match with someone in my group over an adventure.

We were in a tower that was very technologically advanced, everything that "lived" there were robots who could telepathically communicate with a central intelligence core constantly. This was stressed as being important.

Anyhow, we have to get past a door that was guarded with the password. Where was the password? It was split in 4 pieces of paper in various wastebaskets around the facility. Asked the DM most of the questions that are going through your heads right now. Keep in mind that we were fairly high level and everything we tried to nomally get through doors (gaseous form, my character having an adamantine pick and power attack, etc) was told that it didn't work, the DM literally said we couldn't do anything but find these pieces of paper with one number on it each to get past a security door in a dungeon staffed by robots.

He said that it was because we were "ham-fisted" and "used magic to solve anything". Keep in mind that I was the strongest magic user in the group and I was a multiclassed bard/fighter/dragon disciple. I told him if I wanted to play a JRPG with scripted events like that which can be solved one way and one way only I could do that and I wouldn't even have to shower, put on pants, or kick in for pizza if I didn't want to get pizza. Did not go over well...

Then again, this is the same dude that when he plays he gets massively pissy when he can't solve every single thing by rolling a high enough diplomacy check.

[MGuy]

I had a game of 7th Sea where the Storyteller: Killed the bodyguard I'd paid my points out to get without a roll (along with the carriage driver I'd merely paid money for), which forced us to fight a bunch of wolves and wolf controlling people for reasons I can't even fathom, then made me pay more points to change my bodyguard's status from dead to critical condition, sabotaged the entire group's chance of winning a fight he'd thrown at us that we were able to win then told us after all the group's assets and w/e points were used up that we weren't supposed to win that fight so he kept adding things until we lost, which was to get us all thrown in the dungeons, then subjected my character to torture in an attempt to get him to reveal his real name (though the torturer had no reason not to believe the fake name I gave him), all of that so the Queen could come and give us a soul binding deal to LEAVE THE COUNTRY to go do her bidding. So that shit didn't go over well with anyone.

There are other examples I could use, the Gygax GM I had the first time I went to a shop to join a group of people that weren't all fuckers I already knew. A game of SW Saga where my GM consistently made it clear that the individual choices we made didn't matter and he'd rather make every NPC carry the idiot ball than do something other than put the group into one combat set piece after another. I could go on and on. Bottom line is while I can imagine people who enjoy riding the rails (and I've certainly had people argue very strenuously about how they enjoy it) it isn't fun for me because riding the rails, in almost all the experiences I've had doing it, requires me to accept a lot of stupid in order to keep things moving.

[Blicero]

But if you don't trust my personal anecdotes, try to find just one DnD campaign diary on the net, where players are in a true sandbox, free to choose not only their methods of achieving goals presented to them, but goals themselves. And I mean, not only just at the stage of presenting their character concepts. And the campaign is successful.

http://autarch.co/forums/actual-play/ma ... h%C3%A2tel
http://autarch.co/forums/actual-play/opelenean-nights

I don't really know what "true sandbox" means, so I guess you can try to No True Scotsman or whatever if you want. But I think those both qualify.

[FatR]

http://autarch.co/forums/actual-play/ma ... h%C3%A2tel
http://autarch.co/forums/actual-play/opelenean-nights

I don't really know what "true sandbox" means, so I guess you can try to No True Scotsman or whatever if you want.

Sandbox means abilty to choose your own missions.

In turn, I would ask you and certain other people in this thread what do you think railroad means, if "the only way that actually goes anywhere is through the (plot) point X" apparently isn't it. Merely a term for "bad gaming experience"?

But I think those both qualify.

I've checked the second one. I think it would give Kaelik fits, given that the adventure starts with "a natural disaster isolates you from everywhere but where GM wants you to go" and continues with PCs jumping through a good number of hoops in the vain hope to get the fuck away from the dungeon, until players decide to get the hint and get interested in the treasure.

[Blicero]

I've checked the second one. I think it would give Kaelik fits, given that the adventure starts with "a natural disaster isolates you from everywhere but where GM wants you to go" and continues with PCs jumping through a good number of hoops in the vain hope to get the fuck away from the dungeon, until players decide to get the hint and get interested in the treasure.

The whole "natural disaster isolates you" is the campaign hook, not a sudden development that the MC springs upon the players while they are in the process of doing something else. And the PCs do eventually leave the initial dungeon and explore the surrounding area. They leave said dungeon before totally clearing it, so it gets returned to across the course of the campaign whenever they feel like returning. They also have other multiple ongoing plot threads in addition to that dungeon that they develop more or less at their own rate.

I am admittedly not Kaelik, though.

[Prak]

In turn, I would ask you and certain other people in this thread what do you think railroad means, if "the only way that actually goes anywhere is through the (plot) point X" apparently isn't it. Merely a term for "bad gaming experience"?

In general, railroading is used to refer to a game where players are forced down a specific plot line with no choices. This could be something akin to an old-school screenscroller video game, like Sonic the Hedgehog, where you're only real choice is whether to play it or something else, but you're on rails, with limited or no ability to even turn back. A linear dungeon, like, say, something from Skyrim, isn't necessarily a railroad if the players are just given obstacles and allowed to find their own solution, and a complex maze with many paths isn't necessarily not a railroad, because Doom levels required you to get specific keys to get through specific doors even when you were carrying guns that can fire small nuclear projectiles.

A railroad game can be fun, but then pretty much any game can be fun with the right approach, group and gm. But in general, its better to not run railroads, and if you're going to, you might as well just get some beers and play Descent.

[RadiantPhoenix]

This is why you, Mister Cavern, need to tell the players what you want the campaign to be about in advance, so that they can generate characters that will fit into what you want to have happen.

[Kaelik]

I just want to point out that my post had literally nothing to do with railroading, and it was only Previn's dumb "Good DMs fix everything, so only bad people give DMs advice on how to be good DMs" post that even brought up the issue.

We are playing an adventure path, there is no leaving the railroad to a meaningful extent. We definitely killed the necromancer who's thugs we only ran into because we investigate the crypt, and we are now going to exterminate the necromancers co-conspirators who we only found out about from the necromancer.

The issue has nothing to do with railroading, and everything to do with the fact that when you are traveling down the road and come to an obstacle, you should be able to get over the obstacle in whatever way you can, and not be confined to one specific method. In effect, I criticized the module for demanding that the players deviate from the road and take a back road to get there when if they want to they should be able to blow up the goddam traffic jam with their missiles and drive over the wreckage.

[hogarth]

What players object to is bad rail design that makes the ride bumpy. "You must get this McGuffin from the depths of Tomb of Horrors" is not likely to raise objections. "You must beat the Tomb of Horrors fair and square, instead of, say, sending an army of expendable mooks to excavate the whole thing, like Gygax' own player did, or teleporting to the treasury and back" probably will.

I agree with you, but I'm not sure I see a huge difference between "you must beat the ToH fair and square without teleporting to the treasury" and Kaelik's "you must get past the indestructible door in the Whispering Cairn fair and square without teleporting past it".

I'm surprised by Kaelik's example, since it seems pretty harmless -- if you have a fundamental objection to running fetch quests for NPCs, then D&D is probably the wrong game for you since that covers approximately 90% of all D&D adventures (in my experience). There's much more egregious stupidity in the same adventure path (Age of Worms):
[*]A bad guy gives your low-level PCs the mission of rooting out a murderous cult. He doesn't offer you any reward or give you any help, and (as far as I know) there's no reason why the low-level town guard couldn't do the same job (since that's what they're paid for, presumably).
[*]Your higher level mentor gives you the job of rescuing his friend. He doesn't help you, because apparently he's a dick who has better things to do than rescuing his friends.

[Kaelik]

I'm surprised by Kaelik's example, since it seems pretty harmless -- if you have a fundamental objection to running fetch quests for NPCs, then D&D is probably the wrong game for you since that covers approximately 90% of all D&D adventures (in my experience).

Probably because you are a fucking idiot who can't read.

[FatR]

I agree with you, but I'm not sure I see a huge difference between "you must beat the ToH fair and square without teleporting to the treasury" and Kaelik's "you must get past the indestructible door in the Whispering Cairn fair and square without teleporting past it".

There is not supposed to be. I agree with Kaelik here, after his clarifications.

He, (if I understand his point correctly) does not mind that his party has to go the Whispering Cairn or else there would be no game. He does mind when his party is not allowed to choose how exactly it enters Whispering Cairn, even though they have plenty of abilties that should let them overcome something like a stone door just fine.

I agree that it is bad when your GM not only sets the current campaign goal, but also forces PCs to go about reaching that goal in a certain specific way. And conversely it is good, when your GM either sets you a campaign goal, and you can reach it in multiple ways, and choose whatever way you like.

I'm surprised by Kaelik's example, since it seems pretty harmless -- if you have a fundamental objection to running fetch quests for NPCs, then D&D is probably the wrong game for you since that covers approximately 90% of all D&D adventures (in my experience).

Well, to be honest I'm using published DnD adventurers because I can't be arsed to write too many statblocks, and because certain ones inspire me with their general atmosphere. But I don't think I've ever used their actual plots. Particularly past about level 5. I've ran Age of Worms until before Whispering Cairn, with Ilthane being the next-to-last boss, because we all agreed that by that point increased mechanical complexity was already making the game not fun, so we finished the game with elimination of the apocalyptic cult and seeming eradication of undead-making worms that served as their superweapon (normal undead in my settings could not and can not reproduce contagiously, so the threat of Kyuss zombie apocalypse was something new), and then helping the rightful mage ruler of the Free City to regain his human form and power - the traitor who puppeteered the cultists was the true final boss. Even before the game went so radically off the rails for out-of-setting reasons, the plot had little in common with the Age of Worms as written, with the game past the third module becoming pretty much one big conspiracy investigation and divination-fest. To think of it, many charlists had to be tinkered with as well, after that...

There's much more egregious stupidity in the same adventure path (Age of Worms):
[*]A bad guy gives your low-level PCs the mission of rooting out a murderous cult. He doesn't offer you any reward or give you any help, and (as far as I know) there's no reason why the low-level town guard couldn't do the same job (since that's what they're paid for, presumably).

If that is the example I think of, well, seeing the same problem I had the town guard trying to uproot the cultists and failing miserably, due to being 2nd level warriors. PCs then got hired as the nearest available group of people knowing which way to hold a spellbook, because the mage who normally oversaw operations in Diamond Lake and served as real firepower in cases when the town guard did not suffice, (in)conveniently happened to be absent.

[Kaelik]

So since we never talked about the racial rules after they were finalized, and I just made fun of Tussock for advocating stupid Pathfinder create a race rules as a the only acceptable race system, I looked up the new rules.

Did you know that if you are an outsider (which costs points) then you can spen 3 race points to get SR 6+level against spells and spell likes with the evil descriptor or cast by evil outsiders?

Or in the alternative, if you are anyone at all you can spend 3 points to get SR 11+level. Yes really. They legitimately cost a lower SR amount against a limited set of spells with a prereq as the exact same cost as regular SR at a level appropriate amount against everything.

Remember that thing K made fun of in their playtest document where you could take Light Sensitivity for -1 points, Light Blindness for -2 points, and then Lightbringer for 2 points and be immune to light based dazzles and blinds, and get some bonus CL on light spells, and get light at will for literally a -1 point cost with no drawbacks at all? STILL THERE!

So basically the power race that everyone will take is a race with +6 to one ability score, -2 to a physical and mental stat (so Str/Cha for casters!), SR 11+level, Darkvision 120ft, bonus on light spells and immunity to light based spells that blind or dazzle, and healed by negative energy damage. Because that thing that Dread Necro's have to spend a feat on, everyone can get that for free and get a racial bonus point. Since heal and harm are the same level, and Cure light and inflict are the same level, but negative energy damage exists at all in the universe, this is basically just a net positive and you buy wands of inflict light wounds instead (or lesser vigor still works if you are BACKWARDS COMPATIBLE).

OH RIGHT. Almost forgot while making the power race, I didn't read most of the skills section, because fuck those things, but for one race point you can choose any two skills and have them as class skills for all classes. Or, for one racial point, you can have Stealth and Perception as class skills for all your classes.

That's right, one of their abilities is literally just one of the hundreds of choices you can make with another ability. There might even be more examples that I missed where you can spend one RP point to get Ride and Handle Animal as class skills, or something equally as dumb. Goddam.

[Sergarr]

Why did they even make a custom-race generator, anyway? Was that, like, the thing that people were actually asking for, or was it one of those "lol pathfinder" things that just don't make any sense, like "balancing" fighters/non-magic classes and wizards/magic classes by nerfing fighters and buffing wizards?

[virgil]

Same reasoning that goes behind the feat point buy systems. Or the construction systems for building your own class

[Ice9]

Piazo loves to put point numbers on things. Balancing those numbers? Not so much. That's sort of their whole design philosophy, come to think of it - every detail should have mechanical representation, and whether those mechanics are balanced or even worth remembering is not important.

Which has started to make PF char-gen increasingly unpleasant to me. So many little details to dumpster-dive, and the intended pay-off is just being able to Voltron-together tiny bullshit bonuses until you have big numbers at the thing you want. Anything that seems actually significant is probably just something they haven't gotten around to errata-ing yet.

There still are some tricks that seem fun to try, but the grind of picking all the racial/trait/archetype/etc options for a new character (or the lingering irritation if I don't bother), kills my enthusiasm for building one.

[Dean]

Critiquing the costing inequities of Pathfinders race builder is missing the forest for the trees. At no point are you given direction to how much points something may cost, how many points a race can be built on, or how what occurs when one spends more or less points on a race.

There are vague statements that different races are "Advanced" or "Monstrous" and that means they should be built with more points and from different pools but no strong guidelines are actually given. The entire book is a farce, it is nothing. Abilities cost Mc'Points and some cost more Mc'Points and some less but you're never told your budget of Mc'Points so it is LITERALLY a book where everything is made up and the points don't matter.

[Kaelik]

Critiquing the costing inequities of Pathfinders race builder is missing the forest for the trees. At no point are you given direction to how much points something may cost, how many points a race can be built on, or how what occurs when one spends more or less points on a race.

There are vague statements that different races are "Advanced" or "Monstrous" and that means they should be built with more points and from different pools but no strong guidelines are actually given. The entire book is a farce, it is nothing. Abilities cost Mc'Points and some cost more Mc'Points and some less but you're never told your budget of Mc'Points so it is LITERALLY a book where everything is made up and the points don't matter.

Well I, unsurprisingly, have bought zero Pathfinder books, so I'm looking at the SRD, which states that standard races have 1-10 points, and that advanced monsters have RPs of 11-20 and get +1 ECL from levels 1-5. So if the book lacks the tremendously important quantification of what points mean, someone got it from somewhere.

I mean, technically, this means if you are creating a character at level 11 you might as well, be that same race from before with See In Darkness instead of Darkvision at all, and +2 to all physical scores, -2 to Cha, and +10 Int.

Also I forgot to mention, you can totally just be small with no speed penalty at all at no cost, so you will never again meat a Wizard who is as tall as a normal human.