Unfortunately for Hasbro/WOTC there are many better RPG as board game games out there that are better than D&D.
D&D has nostalgia and history on its side but as younger players enter the hobby the value of that history has less and less of an impact. It's like the guy who has to have a 70's muscle car because he remembers them from his youth while the younger kid wonders why anyone would want such an old, expensive and inefficient vehicle when cheaper and better vehicles are available.
I sat down to try to read some of the Pathfinder core rules while people were reading over Must be Tuesday, and I was kind of fucking appalled. I've been reading too many indie RPGs; how is this shit acceptable again?
The very first page is a dense block of text a thousand words long and it manages to say close to fucking nothing. They take a half a fucking page to explain Attacks of Opportunity because they can't be assed to predefine useful ideas like out-of-turn-order reactions or character reach.
That fucking book is 600 pages long in two columns of tiny, tiny font. According to my wordcount software it's 433,066 words long. What concepts are so fucking hard to explain that you need 433,006 words to get them across? Don't you think you coulda explained it in less than eight and a half novels worth of text?
I feel less and less bad about MBT being 30 pages long.
You do have to remember that PF Core is the equivilent of both the PHB and DMG in DnD. So a lot of that is items, spells, and one-off stuff like that.
Yes, like the 150 pages of spells. Every single spell devotes a large chunk of words to reiterating fairly common concepts like "This spell affects everything in an area, until you leave the area." or "People are aware they are being affected by the spell." or "This is what counts as a living creature." They could probably cut it down to a quarter of the size if they spend like, five pages defining that stuff once before diving in.
Um. You are correct. There is a lot of superfluous crap. It's also, inherently, a bigger game with a middling idea of what it's trying to be. Are you surprised? You've got, say, a million people out in the world playing the game ~100,000 different ways and all using the "same" rules. It's kind of a cluster-fuck. I've still enjoyed a great deal of it.
I'm just... reeling. I've just finished writing an RPG that's 14,600 words long and in that space I comfortably fit and introduction, action rules, combat, research, magic, monsters, a GM section, optional rules and a character sheet, and I still had a ton of room to put artwork in my pagecount of 30. Yes, it's a game that uses very simple rules and word association for items, skills and spells instead of individually defining everything, but I can't get over the contrast.
The combat rules in my other, much more complex RPG, which covers gunplay, multiple hit locations, ongoing damage, grappling, melee combat, explosives, multiple damage types, cover and ammunition expenditure is still half as long as their explanation for D&D combat rules.
I was way worried about writing too little, but now I'm pretty positive everyone else is just writing too much.
Eh, that's a dangerous road to walk down (assuming you are right, or wrong, based on another entirely different product). I'm quite certain the games posit to do different things. You might find it vastly more informative to go read OD&D 1974, and then think about how that was basically someone in your own position of writing a small "indie" game... when Arneson and Gygax were basically inventing the genre. That which has come before.
It took years of people changing the product based on their vast variety of interpretations before it became Pathfinder, which is essentially a game that half of it's cruft is carry-overs from an older game that itself was trying to please a hundred different audiences at once.
And while you're at it, read Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser and some Jack Vance. The stories, characters, and settings Gygax and Arneson were trying to emulate dynamically might be revealing about what the game originally was. But then look at how fantasy was propagated off of things they did and the stories and such that informed those players and so-on and so-forth.
I sat down to try to read some of the Pathfinder core rules while people were reading over Must be Tuesday, and I was kind of fucking appalled. I've been reading too many indie RPGs; how is this shit acceptable again?
Because Pathfinder is a rehash of D&D from 2000, neither of which were aimed at gaming newcomers.
^ Can confirm this is 100% true. The way I learned D&D was basically through oral tradition, and even running a game now most of the guys know what they are doing and just use the books as pricey feat/spell/item indexes. The only total noob that we have was basically taught by us and not the book.
Actually Playing Pathfinder after learning, D&D, AD&D, 2nd, 3rd, 3.5 and 4th, has made me a wreck when it comes to remembering rules. Every spell I recall is apparently a 2nd edition version....
Yeah, I can still play 3.5 from memory. Which would seem to me to be a good reason to write your updated editions concise and easy to understand, so veteran players could actually figure out what you'd changed!
That diff exists, but why alienate gamers that already want what you're selling? Paizo had a captive audience handed to them. They slapped some bandaids on and kept releasing content.
What are people's experiences with the World of Darkness RPG system?
I had to roll 7 dice 9 times to work out if my character could research something.
I'm currently in a campaign but it feels excruciatingly slow as other members want to stuff around with random spells and the GM isn't confident enough to shove them on towards doing something versus messing around. If I could compare it to a video game, it would be like showing somebody how to play Mario and the person starts up the game and just jumps in the same spot repetitively because it seems better than not doing anything but pressing the forward d pad seems too dangerous.
Am I just playing with mentally challenged people or is this due to the system itself?
A lot of my campaigns usually break down to the majority of the party endlessly trying to figure out what we are going to do without any actual movement of any sort in any direction unless me or my friend Tom goes "I'm doing this shit, I'm rolling the dice right the fuck now!" Granted World of Darkness does nothing in the terms of tools to force the action or force players into any action which means it's all on you guys and the DM. I've had good games with it but I'm pretty sure the crew I had those with can have good games with pretty much any system.
What are people's experiences with the World of Darkness RPG system? … Am I just playing with mentally challenged people or is this due to the system itself?
Classic World of Darkness: great setting and premise, terrible dice mechanics, and rules that overpromised and underdelivered. That said, I love Mage: the Ascension and want to try that setting with a different system (Fate Core is a possibility). Vampire: the Masquerade promised brooding, personal horror, seduction, and politicking and and instead delivered superheroes.
I don't have an opinion on New World of Darkness. I hear they cleaned up the rules—at least, you now merely adjust the number of dice rather than both that and the target number—but their new Mage didn't sound like anything I wanted.
I will be starting a campaign as a GM for the first time ever! Will probably botch the entire thing, shall report on any hi-jinks and related situations.
I'm sick of my party inviting me to a game, refusing to give me reasons to do the things they want me to do in game, and then kick me out of the game for it.
Sorry for x2 post, but I need to add this quote, and it didn't come up until just now:
"I made a combat system. I made some things that compliment the combat system". -- the GM
Doesn't sound like you're running a role playing game, then. It sounds like you're running a combat game. If it was a role playing game, there would be mechanisms for role play.
I'm sick of my party inviting me to a game, refusing to give me reasons to do the things they want me to do in game, and then kick me out of the game for it.
If the pre game discussion doesn't bring up the nature of the game that it going to be played, something is wrong. And if the nature of the game is clear, then by playing the game you agree to play same game as everyone else on the table.
What are people's experiences with the World of Darkness RPG system? … Am I just playing with mentally challenged people or is this due to the system itself?
Classic World of Darkness: great setting and premise, terrible dice mechanics, and rules that overpromised and underdelivered. That said, I love Mage: the Ascension and want to try that setting with a different system (Fate Core is a possibility). Vampire: the Masquerade promised brooding, personal horror, seduction, and politicking and and instead delivered superheroes.
If everything goes as planned and nothing terrible comes back from the final proofreading sessions, my RPG Must be Tuesday will be going up for sale tomorrow in PDF format! Many excites!
Just put a group through Dread last night and it was the fucking business. The instability of the tower was to make even my lame ass story seem scary and I'm pretty sure this game had some of the most clutch Jenga pulls I have ever seen in my life.
Just put a group through Dread last night and it was the fucking business. The instability of the tower was to make even my lame ass story seem scary and I'm pretty sure this game had some of the most clutch Jenga pulls I have ever seen in my life.
I hear Dredd is like that too, except the winner gets to throw the loser to the ground.
Comments
D&D has nostalgia and history on its side but as younger players enter the hobby the value of that history has less and less of an impact. It's like the guy who has to have a 70's muscle car because he remembers them from his youth while the younger kid wonders why anyone would want such an old, expensive and inefficient vehicle when cheaper and better vehicles are available.
The very first page is a dense block of text a thousand words long and it manages to say close to fucking nothing. They take a half a fucking page to explain Attacks of Opportunity because they can't be assed to predefine useful ideas like out-of-turn-order reactions or character reach.
That fucking book is 600 pages long in two columns of tiny, tiny font. According to my wordcount software it's 433,066 words long. What concepts are so fucking hard to explain that you need 433,006 words to get them across? Don't you think you coulda explained it in less than eight and a half novels worth of text?
I feel less and less bad about MBT being 30 pages long.
The combat rules in my other, much more complex RPG, which covers gunplay, multiple hit locations, ongoing damage, grappling, melee combat, explosives, multiple damage types, cover and ammunition expenditure is still half as long as their explanation for D&D combat rules.
I was way worried about writing too little, but now I'm pretty positive everyone else is just writing too much.
It took years of people changing the product based on their vast variety of interpretations before it became Pathfinder, which is essentially a game that half of it's cruft is carry-overs from an older game that itself was trying to please a hundred different audiences at once.
And while you're at it, read Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser and some Jack Vance. The stories, characters, and settings Gygax and Arneson were trying to emulate dynamically might be revealing about what the game originally was. But then look at how fantasy was propagated off of things they did and the stories and such that informed those players and so-on and so-forth.
Can confirm this is 100% true. The way I learned D&D was basically through oral tradition, and even running a game now most of the guys know what they are doing and just use the books as pricey feat/spell/item indexes. The only total noob that we have was basically taught by us and not the book.
Pathfinder is longer then fucking Homestuck.
I had to roll 7 dice 9 times to work out if my character could research something.
I'm currently in a campaign but it feels excruciatingly slow as other members want to stuff around with random spells and the GM isn't confident enough to shove them on towards doing something versus messing around.
If I could compare it to a video game, it would be like showing somebody how to play Mario and the person starts up the game and just jumps in the same spot repetitively because it seems better than not doing anything but pressing the forward d pad seems too dangerous.
Am I just playing with mentally challenged people or is this due to the system itself?
I don't have an opinion on New World of Darkness. I hear they cleaned up the rules—at least, you now merely adjust the number of dice rather than both that and the target number—but their new Mage didn't sound like anything I wanted.
"I made a combat system. I made some things that compliment the combat system".
-- the GM
Doesn't sound like you're running a role playing game, then. It sounds like you're running a combat game. If it was a role playing game, there would be mechanisms for role play.
http://samhaine.wordpress.com/2011/12/19/dont-waste-your-tass/
If you like light RPG systems, d6 dice pools, and/or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, you might get a kick out of this.