Fixing the Fantasy of Fantasy Gaming

[Koumei]

However, you could do Lord of the Rings as a beholder. Weird, but true.

Aside from the "LotR is bad and should not be used for D&D" point, which is super-valid, that's kind of funny.

It could TK the ring around so not get corrupted by its touch.
If someone else carried the ring it could train the antimagic eye on it to negate its effects.
If it had the "Disjunctive Eye" feat from Calamari Cookbook then it could in fact just spam that until it gets the 1% and disjoins the ring, all the way back in the Shire.

And then go on a rampage killing all the halflings because it's basically a Dalek.

[PhoneLobster]

It's because 90% access to the adventure is too low. Being the guy who can't continue with the adventure because your centaur fetish was too strong is unacceptable.

And right there is where you are full of utter bullshit.

90% is fine, hell in a group of 4-5 players you could probably run it down to 80% or less.

Because really if 90% access isn't good enough then sorry, even HUMANS are out out out.

Off the top of my head and in regards to an unmemorable movie the worst centaur access in Scorpion King was I think some sort of scene where whatsisface swims through an underwater tunnel (I mean hell, centaurs can swim and I don't recall it as all that narrow a tunnel but whatever).

Thing is quite a lot of humans and by your claims other "OK" races (like useless Willow midget) aren't gonna navigate that tunnel. The party feeble little Human wizard can't hold his breath or even swim, the party Human knight is too big and cant take any of the super heavy gear he NEEDS to do anything on the other side. The party Human bard is an Olympic synchronized swimmer but just refuses to ruin her make up, cat gut instrument strings, and expensive clothes.

Being unable or unwilling to make the scorpion king's narrow tunnel swim is NOT grounds to eject you from anything, it doesn't even eject you from the fucking Scorpion king adventure since you can (and clearly WILL) just go find another god damn route or use some obstacle mitigation tricks.

Seriously. The fucking main characters from your own sample stories have a rate higher than 10% of failure/fall back to assistance from others, fall back to special mitigation/ fall back to alternative routes in the face of various obstacles and plot developments.

Edit: No really this deserves extra emphasis since K's position has become so incredibly stupidly extreme.

What group of characters in actual practice have, or even SHOULD have, a 100% matching obstacle navigation rate?

[shadzar]

However, you could do Lord of the Rings as a beholder. Weird, but true.

Aside from the "LotR is bad and should not be used for D&D" point, which is super-valid, that's kind of funny.

Yup, that is why Nazgul, Ents, Hobbits, Balrog, etc were in the first published D&D product....as well the whole lawsuit brought by the Tolkien estate.

[K]

It's because 90% access to the adventure is too low. Being the guy who can't continue with the adventure because your centaur fetish was too strong is unacceptable.

And right there is where you are full of utter bullshit.

90% is fine, hell in a group of 4-5 players you could probably run it down to 80% or less.

Because really if 90% access isn't good enough then sorry, even HUMANS are out out out.

Off the top of my head and in regards to an unmemorable movie the worst centaur access in Scorpion King was I think some sort of scene where whatsisface swims through an underwater tunnel (I mean hell, centaurs can swim and I don't recall it as all that narrow a tunnel but whatever).

Thing is quite a lot of humans and by your claims other "OK" races (like useless Willow midget) aren't gonna navigate that tunnel. The party feeble little Human wizard can't hold his breath or even swim, the party Human knight is too big and cant take any of the super heavy gear he NEEDS to do anything on the other side. The party Human bard is an Olympic synchronized swimmer but just refuses to ruin her make up, cat gut instrument strings, and expensive clothes.

Actually, a normal party should have no problems. The Sorceress and the Rock make it through the tunnel, so a Wizard and a Knight should have no problems.

The Bard not being willing to swim is grounds for not getting to be in the party. She'd get captured at that point in the adventure and spend the rest of it in the dungeon (though maybe she'd be released for the final fight). Maybe the player would get to play someone's henchmen for the rest of the adventure. (Hey, bad player choices don't get rewarded.)

You see, this is the same stupid crap as "being afraid of dogs" or "not willing to go into a city" that adds nothing to the game other than letting one player hold the narrative hostage.

There is a difference between roleplaying and being a bitch who tries to ruin the play for everyone. Having weird problems does not make you colorful, it makes you someone who should be shunned.

[quanta]

A Centaur can't get to the Riders of Rohan. They basically miss the first encounter out of the Shire (the inn) and never even meet up with the Ranger.

Legolas isn't at the inn either. And this is LotR. The centaur can split off all the goddamn time because the book barely even tries to keep everyone together. Seriously, the whole fellowship is in one place for what... half a book? Maybe one whole book? Out of three books. Correct me if I'm wrong.

And the mines of moria are fucking huge if you decide to use movie proportions. So centaurs are a-ok there. And in the forest. And traveling across the plains. Shit, they can have epic footing and be fine hiking up the mountains too. And the centaur can just hop on a flatboat to cross the river (slight modification, but hey, it's not like people couldn't get horses across rivers or something).

Seriously, as long as you don't make Frodo the centaur like in your original example, shit can probably be made fine with minimal effort. Fuck, you can't even replace Frodo with a competent character, like pretty much anyone else in the book who isn't a goddamn hobbit, if you don't want to make massive changes.

Centaurs are way worse in horribly cramped D&D dungeons and king's tombs then they are in LotR. LotR and most movies are relatively Centaur friendly. It just so happens that many D&D adventures emulate... D&D, which probably more often than it should involves hacking and slashing your way through inexplicably cramped and overly labyrinthine dungeons.

[Fuchs]

Don't remind me of characters fearing water. I had one such character in the party once, and the player was too stupid to realize that everyone else thought "Oh, afraid of water? Like B.A. from A-Team? No problem, we'll stock up on the sleeping potions whenever we want to use a ship" when he explained his character. He honestly thought the entire party should forego water travel (and water-related adventures) for his sake.

[PhoneLobster]

Actually, a normal party should have no problems. The Sorceress and the Rock

Sorry, a mere two exceptional characters with appropriate skill sets and with general hollywood action hero skills and plot Armour in a movie aren't good enough examples to cover a broad party mix (of humans) in a typical RPG.

The flat standard truth is that SOMEONE in that party probably lacks the swim skill or the stamina for holding their breath to enable them to navigate that tunnel, and thats aside from equipment and class feature issues.

(and as an aside the Bard's refusal is no less one of necessity than the knight, those fancy clothes and cat gut instrument strings are requirements of her class features demanding she give them up makes YOU the dicky greedy bad GM tyrant)

The reality is that it is standard practice in RPGs and D&D specifically for there to be obstacles that some characters cannot pass alone or without special mitigation.

Water breathing potions are utterly stock standard fare in RPGs precisely because while some portion of your party can make the submerged tunnel swim obstacle SOMEONE in the party just plain can't do it unless they are carrying a get out of jail free card.

So again, no vacillating and no distractions, no waving your hands decrying the one guy who makes a reasonable choice by preference or obscured necessity and ignoring all the guys who just plain can't, back to the question raised, What group of characters in actual practice have, or even SHOULD have, a 100% matching obstacle navigation rate?

Because that ISN'T how we currently play D&D, that isn't how the stories are written or the way the movies play out, and it doesn't in anyway make any sense by means of realism or suspension of disbelief.

The 100% matching obstacle navigation party exists exclusively as the the improbable knot you have stupidly tied yourself into because of your overcommitment to a thoroughly stupid idea.

No really who the fuck thinks every D&D party should all be able to navigate the same fucking obstacles as each other with equal agility and no assistance or mitigation?

Who thinks that? Other than YOU in order to support your argument?

[MGuy]

Again there is no point to this debate at all and for fuck sakes someone quote me because I'm most likely being ignored here.

This shit does not matter. We are talking about opinions here, opinions that will not matter in the end because different groups will do different things and there's not a god damn thing anyone is going to do to change that. What we should fix (if such a thing needs to be fixed) are rules on how centaurs interact with the world in a fashion that makes them acceptable to exist in it and whatever game rules are necessary to place them. As long as centaurs are in your Monster Manual then the choice to allow them to be PCs or not is up to each individual group to decide. the BEST that we could do here is set up rules that functionally handle larger characters (which should be in your Monster Manual anyway as long as Monsters and characters have the same rules applied to them) and keep the ball rolling.

As for guns vs other ranged weapons I believe that we should take another look at how weapons interact with the game in general. Right now the choice for which weapon to use seems to be just looking for which weapon does the most damage and move on. I believe that this is bad for the game and for a setting.

[K]

(and as an aside the Bard's refusal is no less one of necessity than the knight, those fancy clothes and cat gut instrument strings are requirements of her class features demanding she give them up makes YOU the dicky greedy bad GM tyrant)

Errr, what?

Bards don't need fancy clothes or instruments. All of their class features can be used with singing.

Oh wait, you are the terrible gimp player who only picks character options that cripple his character. Sorry, I forgot. He's not "roleplaying" if he has a waterproof instrument case or the foresight to use Singing as his Perform skill. Only a tyrant DM would ask him to be good at adventuring.

So again, no vacillating and no distractions, no waving your hands decrying the one guy who makes a reasonable choice by preference or obscured necessity and ignoring all the guys who just plain can't, back to the question raised, What group of characters in actual practice have, or even SHOULD have, a 100% matching obstacle navigation rate?

The good ones? The one's playing fun games with little inter-party conflict because no one is being a selfish prick by "roleplaying" a cripple? Soooo...... all of them, god willing?

It's not a "reasonable choice" to play crippled characters.

Heck, I even had a party where we insisted everyone get Sneak and Hide skills and magic items to boost them. We rocked encounters well outside of our CR range in a module known to be a killer of parties with a DM who insisted on no clerics or other healers because.... you know.... we didn't suck.

But I understand that lots of people have experiences like the guy with the gimp player who thinks his in-character fear is enough to cock-block all water and boat stuff for the party. There is a party out there dragging a bathtub with a mermaid in it, and there is a guy who is a dedicated horseman who refuses to bring his horse into the dungeon.

That kind of bullshit behavior needs to be discouraged. I'd think all the stories from people in this thread would convince you.

[PhoneLobster]

It's not a "reasonable choice" to play crippled characters.

Stop right there. You don't get to say crippled. You get to say "characters that can't over come 10% or less of the obstacles some other party member they travel with MIGHT choose to try and overcome".

Because that is the degree of "crippling" you are complaining about. And it is not one that is actually you know, crippling.

Stop attacking this strawman of the crippled mermaid in a bucket, you haven't taken issue with a single one of my claims that 90% plus of your test adventures/stories are centaur accessible, so you no longer get to use the "cripple" angle because very occasionally being unable to navigate some form of obstacle is not especially crippling, and plenty of actual crippled people would probably be pretty fucking insulted that you are suggesting that a perfectly healthy horse (the original "as healthy as a..." animal) has the same level of disability they suffer from.

Own your words about the 100% obstacle requirements you are setting or apologize and shut the fuck up.

[Fuchs]

Characters who add more trouble than fun for the rest of the players are a no-go. If a character's fear of water is adding fun, go ahead. If it's turning traveling into a chore, drop it.

Call it social contract, peer pressure, or just not being a dick, but when playing a game together, people need to play together.

[K]

It's not a "reasonable choice" to play crippled characters.

Stop right there. You don't get to say crippled. You get to say "characters that can't over come 10% or less of the obstacles some other party member they travel with MIGHT choose to try and overcome".

Because that is the degree of "crippling" you are complaining about. And it is not one that is actually you know, crippling.

Stop attacking this strawman of the crippled mermaid in a bucket, you haven't taken issue with a single one of my claims that 90% plus of your test adventures/stories are centaur accessible....

You know the mermaid in a bucket is actually an example of a character someone had in their game, right? Are you reading this thread where people are telling us about their problems with non-standard characters, or just trying to hate-fuck me with your posts?

I'll repeat my point: 90% good enough is not good enough. The missing 10% is not just some fiddly little problems, it's the whole adventure coming full-stop while people try to figure out how to get your stupid character to the next part of the adventure. It's people stopping and deciding to play Smash Brothers while the DM has to break character while he figures out something plausible at all.

In the worse case, it's the literal end of the adventure because you can't get from point A to point B where the last half of the adventure is. XP gets tallied up, the villains escape, and the DM picks up some new adventure with a heavy heart because everyone's enthusiasm went out of the adventure the instant they break immersion to deal with you and they don't want the DM to just give them success rather than earn it.

That 10% failure rate is you ruining the game 10% of the time, possibly more if you are ruining the rest of the adventure for everyone else or even creating new problems. That's unacceptable.

[K]

Characters who add more trouble than fun for the rest of the players are a no-go. If a character's fear of water is adding fun, go ahead. If it's turning traveling into a chore, drop it.

Call it social contract, peer pressure, or just not being a dick, but when playing a game together, people need to play together.

+1

(I call it "teamwork." I know.... it's a foreign concept.)

[Koumei]

Again there is no point to this debate at all and for fuck sakes someone quote me because I'm most likely being ignored here.

There you go.

[PhoneLobster]

I'll repeat my point: 90% good enough is not good enough.

Good. Now I repeat my point. That rate is bullshit and rules out most standard human characters.

Your argument is fail. I win.

[RobbyPants]

Characters who add more trouble than fun for the rest of the players are a no-go. If a character's fear of water is adding fun, go ahead. If it's turning traveling into a chore, drop it.

Call it social contract, peer pressure, or just not being a dick, but when playing a game together, people need to play together.

Yeah. Regardless of what angle you want to put on the issue, once you sit down at a table, this will be key.

I've had the same issues with players all rolling up a bunch of badass loners independently that I have to jump through incredible hoops just to get them all at the same place at the same time, let alone to go on the same adventure. None of them were even centaurs or anything, but they still slowed the session down to a crawl. Barring heavy-handed approaches on my part, the first half of the session was almost always spent on me trying to get them together.

So, if one of the players wanted to play something that made group adventuring even more difficult, I'd be less than enthused.

[fectin]

Actually, if it were some kind of bathtub-mech, that mermaid could be pretty cool. You'd have to do something to deal with the size, but an ambulatory tub makes you Professor X or Iron Man.

That could even turn into a whole campaign, Giant Robot style. Then you also have a reason to stay near home instead of rampaging across the countryside.

[tzor]

If someone wanted to play a commoner, I'd let them, and then laugh when they were killed by a house cat.

...and that's why you shouldn't run games, or even have a say in how games are run. That's some serious Gygax bullshit.

Not running a fun game is a mark of failure as a DM. Note that for future reference.

That reminds me of a game I DMed. (3E) Odd birds that had 1/4 HD that swept down from the sky and pecked you, for like 1 point of damage.

I rolled to hit (20) "He hits and it's a critical ..."
I rolled again (20) "And ... shit ..."

PAUSE

"OK, new house rule, the optional double crit rule is out, I'm not having a bird that does one point of damage kill a PC."

[tzor]

However, you could do Lord of the Rings as a beholder. Weird, but true.

Aside from the "LotR is bad and should not be used for D&D" point, which is super-valid, that's kind of funny.

Yup, that is why Nazgul, Ents, Hobbits, Balrog, etc were in the first published D&D product....as well the whole lawsuit brought by the Tolkien estate.

Gygax took a lot of the races of LotR, but not the campaign world of Toklien. There are a number of things that AD&D did that was of a higher fantasy than LotR and a number of things that AD&D did that was of a lower fantasy than LotR.

[Red_Rob]

I win.

Declaring victory in an online argument. My, thats certainly persuasive.

[Avoraciopoctules]

I'm much more interested in the discussion about firearms vs other ranged weapons because from a design point of view there should be pros and cons giving people actually reasons to distinguish between bows, thrown darts, pistols,crossbows, etc when they are selecting a weapon to use otherwise the weapon list will just boil down to taking the one that does the most damage and moving on.

Then let's talk about guns.


So in my D&D game, I want firearms to be the main ranged weapon. Some adventurers might use bows with a variety of trick arrows, but your average soldier in more industrialized nations has a rifle with a bayonet.

Thing is, I'm trying to make people use regular ballistic weapons when there are also guns that shoot heat rays or lighting, and I want some swordy types to deflect ballistic rounds with their melee weapons. Anyone have ideas? Currently, I'm thinking that ballistic weapons will be mechanically nice due to long ranges and possibly high accuracy, and I'll justify deflecting bullets by saying the guns magnetically throw bronze slugs at visible speeds or something.

In addition, I am trying to keep ranged weapons from getting so good that people use them exclusively. In some cases, this might involve making them take up multiple magic item slots compared to conventional weapons. Still struggling with ideas there.

[tzor]

Guns and fantasy don’t mix well, but not for the reasons you might think. The reason is that damage in most fantasy games is so abstracted that the deadliness of muskets (up until the 20th century) is lost in the mechanics. You know the old saying about how “sticks and stones can break my bones?” Well arrows don’t break bones. Until antibiotics, compound fractures getting diseased and having gangrene set in was the leading cause of battlefield death. Lead balls would break bones. If you were lucky, it would lead to amputations.

That isn’t covered in fantasy games, and perhaps it is best that it is not.

There is a reason why a musket was very inaccurate. The very cause of this inaccuracy (the wider barrel) was one of the reasons why it was faster to load. Since you generally used muskets in formation (this is another problem with man to man fantasy systems, even arrow combat was often done in mass formations, not as one archer one target situations as we do in most fantasy rule systems) accuracy was not an issue. If you didn’t hit “your man” you might hit the man next to him.

Breech loading firearms have a chance to fail. There was a civil war battle musket that was found with 10 loads in it. Apparently, the musket misfired and in the fog/noise of war the poor buy kept reloading and pulling the trigger until some bullet eventually found him. The chance of failure is significantly dependent on relative humidity and who wants to keep track of that in a fantasy world?

(OK, that is a rhetorical question. Yes there were some 1E idiots that would keep track of that detail. “Let’s roll for today’s weather …” It was a different era in many ways, what would you expect from people who still haven’t invented skills?)

The rifled barrel (long ranges) requires late 19th century, early 20th century technology. Fantasy muskets were crude, inaccurate, loud things that made a whole lot of smoke. This made them ideal for formations but for little else. Attempts to give them range (the Kentucky rifle of the 18th century) made them unwieldy and difficult to load. (Great for deer hunting … since one shot kills the deer.)

And if you think that’s bad, consider that the basic use of the canon in the 18th century was actually more like bowling … the canon ball bounced down the field of battle and basically smashed whoever was in its path.

Sticks, stones, and muskets … too much for simple HP to handle.

[MGuy]

I contend that it is because people don't pay attention to the minor details you've pointed out (and were pointed out earlier) that rifles and such can work in fantasy. Since no one pays attention to these details the only hassle you'd have is deciding on how the rifles were statistically distinguished from long bows and cross bows.

[tzor]

The problem is you can easily get into the fallacy that the musket was the uber weapon that killed armor when this was never the case. Even when accuracy was improved, as the British found out when they discovered that even though their rifles could kill the guy charging at them with a wicked weapon, it didn't stop the fatally wounded man from reaching them and chopping off their heads before they died.

[PoliteNewb]

Breech loading firearms have a chance to fail. There was a civil war battle musket that was found with 10 loads in it. Apparently, the musket misfired and in the fog/noise of war the poor buy kept reloading and pulling the trigger until some bullet eventually found him.

I've heard of the same incident, but it's normally attributed to the fact that some people find it hard to shoot other human beings, and if placed in a big group where no one can tell if they are shooting or not, sometimes don't shoot. The "poor boy" in question probably just kept loading, raising his gun, pretending to shoot, then loading again.
(source "On Killing", Dave Grossman)

The rifled barrel (long ranges) requires late 19th century, early 20th century technology.

Wait, what? Rifled muskets were the default by the American Civil War (mid 19th) at the latest. Rifles were used by individuals as early as the 17th century, and were widely used by individuals and specific military units (sharpshooters, etc) by the 18th.

Attempts to give them range (the Kentucky rifle of the 18th century) made them unwieldy and difficult to load.

Early rifles were capable of fair accuracy out to 200-300 yards, or even further (400-500 yards for man-sized targets). Wikipedia cites a confirmed headshot at a measured 250 yards by Daniel Boone in 1778.

Loading was somewhat slow (slower than a smoothbore musket, anyway), but wikipedia cites 1 minute, and I think it was faster with patched balls.

The problem is you can easily get into the fallacy that the musket was the uber weapon that killed armor when this was never the case.

I believe (though I have no links at present) that even early firearms did penetrate armor much better than arrows, or even crossbow bolts. Later plate harness could make you pretty invulnerable to arrows, but even a heavy breastplate was not always proof against a musket ball.

Even when accuracy was improved, as the British found out when they discovered that even though their rifles could kill the guy charging at them with a wicked weapon, it didn't stop the fatally wounded man from reaching them and chopping off their heads before they died.

Are you talking about the Moro Rebellion in the Philippines? Because that's hardly typical, and many of the anecdotal cases are exaggerated besides. In most cases, if you shoot a man with a large caliber flintlock, he's not going to reach you and chop your head off. He's probably going to be busy screaming and bleeding.