There Is Only the Adventurer Class

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Kaelik
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Post by Kaelik »

phlapjackage wrote:
Jason wrote:You also haven't grasped the concept of role protection through social contract at all. You still ramble on about role protection through design like a broken record.
And, for the record, I'm on the side of "role protection is stupid in a TTRPG".
I'll reiterate a point I may have never made, but that Lago once said he couldn't find the thread I made it in, but he really liked my point:

Role Protection in terms of "DPS" and "Healing" and "I'm the guy who does overland travel" on a design level is not only not good, it's actively bad. Everyone in the party needs to be able to do most things, and if you try to impose that level of role protection on the design level, you end up ruling huge swaths of parties "unacceptable" which hurts the game when actual humans sit down and want to play specific characters. It's 2e "someone has to be the Cleric" writ large for all the positions in the party.

But thematic and particular role protection is important on a design level. No one else should have the same limitations and benefits of overland travel as whatever class you are writing (or very few classes), or no one or very few classes should have the same method of stealth, or the same method of shooting people to death, or the same method of healing.

The actual particulars are the important role definers. If all DPS classes use the same system, then one of them is going to be the best, and everyone else can just go die (or more commonly, if DPS is the only way to win fights, then someone will do the most DPS, and that person will be the best Fight Winner) and it doesn't matter who that person is, it's bad that they exist at all. Likewise, if everyone uses the same kind of overland travel, then the one with the longest range teleport automatically is the best overland traveler, ect.

In a super ideal D&D like game, all classes would have a method of healing, DPS, status condition infliction, overland travel, stealth, social interaction, extra sensory perception, and tactical obstacle bypassing, but all of them would be different from all the others, with different costs, trade offs, and limitations, so that each encounter would be about the players trying to work within their limits or manipulate the situation to take advantage of the specific strengths of their own specific abilities.
DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?
The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.

That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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momothefiddler
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Post by momothefiddler »

Jason wrote:
PhoneLobster wrote:But it's by no means four times as much work when the PCs are split to four separate combat encounters.
There is a massive difference between having multiple parallel combat encounters and having multiple parallel combat- and non-combat encounters, though. Citing an edge case isn't really lending any more credence to your argument.
(Emphasis added)

This'll be easier for you to understand if you realize that PhoneLobster considers combat the only real part of D&D.

"Integrated minigames", to them, are minigames that give you combat bonuses of some sort as consolation for interrupting your Core Gameplay. PL explicitly claims that kingdom management only exists to give you personal combat gear/abilities, and that talking to a prince should only be directly tied into more or better combat, or else the players have to "interrupt their adventures" to do it. When PL talks about equipment or abilities or whatever "doing things", they explicitly and exclusively mean combat.

What's more, they straight up refuse to believe that anyone else could be interested in anything but combat either.

Feel free to read the whole conversation, starting around here if you want. The rabid claim that splitting the party isn't a big deal makes a lot more sense when you realize that it's coming from someone who got mad at me and called me a liar for saying I like to have cool things in my story that didn't directly improve my combat, and again for saying I like spreadsheets.

Kaelik's briefer explanation about Mousetrap sounds like hyperbole, but it really isn't. I just didn't believe it until I learned it the hard way.
FrankTrollman wrote:If your premise is that the goal of the game is to fight monsters in a damp basement, then everything you do above ground is just hoops you have to jump through to climb back into the hole. But that's a little bit insane. More than a little bit insane.
PhoneLobster
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Post by PhoneLobster »

That's an awful lot of willful misrepresentation for one post, but hey, what else would one expect.

Still on the one hand if it encourages Jason to actually read up on some stuff all the better, and considering some of his posts lately I would actually recommend he read up on a few things myself. Phonelobsters Latest Social System (should now be phonelobsters social system about 3 iterations back, but still the core principles are the same) since Jason seems to claim in another thread to broadly agree with similar design requirements. I really need to write a much updated and expanded version of this ancient thread about wealth resources and dungeon building. But ultimately Mousetrap while far from finished or perfectly accessible is currently more readable than ever and linked in my signature.

But you shouldn't actually need to read the reference material to understand some pretty simple stuff. Separate distinct incompatible minigames are bullshit. They by definition drive gigantic wedges into your game play and by far are a bigger threat of situations that demand a single player take over all game play for an hour or two than any simple physical proximity of characters issues. And on the otherhand, Jason's reading of stuff right here has been less than stellar.
Last edited by PhoneLobster on Mon Nov 28, 2016 10:08 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Jason
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Post by Jason »

momothefiddler wrote:
Jason wrote:
PhoneLobster wrote:But it's by no means four times as much work when the PCs are split to four separate combat encounters.
There is a massive difference between having multiple parallel combat encounters and having multiple parallel combat- and non-combat encounters, though. Citing an edge case isn't really lending any more credence to your argument.
(Emphasis added)

This'll be easier for you to understand if you realize that PhoneLobster considers combat the only real part of D&D.

"Integrated minigames", to them, are minigames that give you combat bonuses of some sort as consolation for interrupting your Core Gameplay. PL explicitly claims that kingdom management only exists to give you personal combat gear/abilities, and that talking to a prince should only be directly tied into more or better combat, or else the players have to "interrupt their adventures" to do it. When PL talks about equipment or abilities or whatever "doing things", they explicitly and exclusively mean combat.

What's more, they straight up refuse to believe that anyone else could be interested in anything but combat either.

Feel free to read the whole conversation, starting around here if you want. The rabid claim that splitting the party isn't a big deal makes a lot more sense when you realize that it's coming from someone who got mad at me and called me a liar for saying I like to have cool things in my story that didn't directly improve my combat, and again for saying I like spreadsheets.

Kaelik's briefer explanation about Mousetrap sounds like hyperbole, but it really isn't. I just didn't believe it until I learned it the hard way.
FrankTrollman wrote:If your premise is that the goal of the game is to fight monsters in a damp basement, then everything you do above ground is just hoops you have to jump through to climb back into the hole. But that's a little bit insane. More than a little bit insane.
That explains a lot...
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