The New School Manifesto

[PoliteNewb]

Fans of the game, of course.

Fans of what game? The one you're still in the process of designing? How many people are we talking about?

But let me give you a few links to some actual game mechanics. They should give you a pretty good overview of what we're going for.

Buddy, either your crunch sucks balls or you suck at explaining it. Or both. Probably both. Because that didn't give me any kind of overview. Or even any real mechanics.

Your post on character creation told me exactly nothing. The system you describe, where you have an ability, a skill, and a feat (trait/discipline/advantage/etc) and they all combine to figure your chance of success is exactly like the one used by many, many other systems...including D20! But not only is it bland and unoriginal, you don't describe it in any quantifiable way! What range of numbers are you looking at? Do skills go from 1 to 10, or from 0 to 20? What dice do you roll, and how do you determine success, or degrees of success? What are probabilities like? How easy is it for a starting character, for instance, to kill an average soldier in combat, or break down a door, or swim a raging river? How much variance can there be between capabilities for starting characters? How about between a starting character with some experience? Does it stay on the RNG?
I mean, Hell, you told me there are "attributes", but you didn't even tell me what they are!

Your posts on magic (I read both of them) are even worse. It seems like you're doing a "roll and match" system...but unmatched dice have negative consequences? Are you insane? You are seriously creating a system where having more dice is bad for you. Do you realize that?

[Kemper Boyd]

I think that post about the magic system deal with the thing why rolling the max amount of dice available isn't always preferable: major magic is dangerous and the way to avoid disaster is to prep. You can always cut down on the amount of power you draw (dice you roll) to mitigate possible disasters.

[Username17]

I think that post about the magic system deal with the thing why rolling the max amount of dice available isn't always preferable: major magic is dangerous and the way to avoid disaster is to prep. You can always cut down on the amount of power you draw (dice you roll) to mitigate possible disasters.

I honestly can't even imagine why you thought that was a good idea. It's a pretty bad idea even in Warhammer, and that's a one-shot wargame with a heavy comedy emphasis.

-Username17

[Kemper Boyd]

I honestly can't even imagine why you thought that was a good idea. It's a pretty bad idea even in Warhammer, and that's a one-shot wargame with a heavy comedy emphasis.

I like keeping magic dangerous, when it comes to major effects. It's fitting with a Sword & Sorcery-type approach I'm using.

[Username17]

I honestly can't even imagine why you thought that was a good idea. It's a pretty bad idea even in Warhammer, and that's a one-shot wargame with a heavy comedy emphasis.

I like keeping magic dangerous, when it comes to major effects. It's fitting with a Sword & Sorcery-type approach I'm using.

So... in order to advance your "manifesto" of player empowerment, you are instituting critical failures that make players who attempt to use their abilities periodically suffer random catastrophes?


That is literally the opposite of what absolutely everyone else in the entire world means when they say "player empowerment". Everyone else in the world means that players have things that they can reliably have their characters do without having to suck the MC's cock or risk critical existence failure to do it.

-Username17

[nockermensch]

I honestly can't even imagine why you thought that was a good idea. It's a pretty bad idea even in Warhammer, and that's a one-shot wargame with a heavy comedy emphasis.

I like keeping magic dangerous, when it comes to major effects. It's fitting with a Sword & Sorcery-type approach I'm using.

That works wonders in the source material because the sorcerers there are usually deranged cultists messing with lovecraftian magic. The sword users who are the protagonists need every deus ex machina (like, the blasphemous ritual spell backfiring) to stand a chance.

Every instance of "magic is unpredictable" system I can remember maps to one of the three kinds of game:

1 - magic is Antagonist/NPC only. As seen in the source material (Conan)

2 - magic tea party! As seen in Dungeons and Dragons, the cartoon. When Presto pulls something from his hat, what's written in the rulebook is: "MC gets to invent some outrageous/funny shit that advances the plot." This can work, and even be awesome, but only when it's understood that the everybody, MC included, is in for some fun cooperative storytelling.

3 - bad games with trap options for the PCs.

[DrPraetor]

In defense of WFRP 2nd ed.:

4 - good games with trap options for the PCs.

WFRP really is an RPG based around Warhammer; the material edge of a high level character vs. a teenager with a sword is not that great - a Force Commander probably doesn't beat an imperial guard squad all by himself, he expects to die. If five thugs show up with swords, even high level characters have to be worried, and you don't really expect to survive a dozen fights. etc.

Paranoia is another RPG for which this sort of approach works well - in that you expect to die. Extra lives help a lot.

[Neurosis]

I honestly can't even imagine why you thought that was a good idea. It's a pretty bad idea even in Warhammer, and that's a one-shot wargame with a heavy comedy emphasis.

I like keeping magic dangerous, when it comes to major effects. It's fitting with a Sword & Sorcery-type approach I'm using.

So... in order to advance your "manifesto" of player empowerment, you are instituting critical failures that make players who attempt to use their abilities periodically suffer random catastrophes?


That is literally the opposite of what absolutely everyone else in the entire world means when they say "player empowerment". Everyone else in the world means that players have things that they can reliably have their characters do without having to suck the MC's cock or risk critical existence failure to do it.

-Username17

Frank, sometimes you don't always magic as hard as you can in Shadowrun because Drain will fucking kill you. That's why you don't always overcast every spell at Force 12, which would be equivalent to "maximum amount of dice" in this situation. I mean, it seems to me that's the kind of thing he's going for, at least at a glance this doesn't seem that different.

[nockermensch]

In defense of WFRP 2nd ed.:

4 - good games with trap options for the PCs.

WFRP really is an RPG based around Warhammer; the material edge of a high level character vs. a teenager with a sword is not that great - a Force Commander probably doesn't beat an imperial guard squad all by himself, he expects to die. If five thugs show up with swords, even high level characters have to be worried, and you don't really expect to survive a dozen fights. etc.

Paranoia is another RPG for which this sort of approach works well - in that you expect to die. Extra lives help a lot.

Well, alright. I think we can put Call of Cthulhu in this bin, too. I mean, there should have a category for "gritty games" where it's understood that heroes die a lot and that sometimes, the "heroic" thing to do is actually cast your biggest spell, because or you'll roll well and succeed or roll bad and fix things with the collateral damage your mishap will cause.

It's a matter of how you sell your game, actually. If you're going for grittiness and brutality; and/or feelings of "war is hell" (like Warhammer) or general hopelessness face impossible odds (like Paranoia or CoC), then a system with catastrophic spell failures can provide lots of flavor.

So yeah, there can be good games with this mechanic, but be upfront about what you're selling.

[Kemper Boyd]

So yeah, there can be good games with this mechanic, but be upfront about what you're selling.

I'll be presenting magic in the game setting as something that's fundamentally unhealthy to practice to the hilt. Do a ritual or banish something, you're probably fine. Try to work with major magicks, it's gonna do bad things to you if you screw up.

All to go together with the idea that a blade is a better tool than magic for most of the time.

[Username17]

So yeah, there can be good games with this mechanic, but be upfront about what you're selling.

I'll be presenting magic in the game setting as something that's fundamentally unhealthy to practice to the hilt. Do a ritual or banish something, you're probably fine. Try to work with major magicks, it's gonna do bad things to you if you screw up.

All to go together with the idea that a blade is a better tool than magic for most of the time.

This is fundamentally incompatible with almost every single thing you said in the original post.

-Username17

[CatharzGodfoot]

Jesus, Frank, "player empowerment" is just a buzz word. You can't expect him to actually empower players!

[...You Lost Me]

Kemper, you're saying "don't be exclusive" and "don't be gritty and dark and low-magic!" in your fantasy world, but you're putting a mechanic down that beats up characters for using their own magical abilities, and its apparently a random chance each time you drop a spell or something.

That's terrible and backwards and I would not play your game.

[erik]

I dunno.

Magic backlash isn't a deal-breaker for me. I have played a fair share of Deadlands games and having bad things happen to you for excess power use isn't at all uncommon there, and death is really easy to come by. I still have lots of fun. I don't think of Deadlands as low-magic per-se despite the threat of backlash. It is plenty gritty and dark however.

[Judging__Eagle]

I vote for more cheesecake pictures. The era of the chainmail bikini was too short for my taste.

It's a silly hobby. Don't get all worked up about it, and especially don't be a prude.

I've been archiving photo references for stuff like this. Using photos of Sunshine girls as reference images for drawing monster grrls of species within my setting being the goal.

I also plan on doing the same with boys, and gender ambiguous people. Cheesecake of everyone, for everyone.

[Username17]

Cheesecake of everyone, for everyone.

That is a manifesto I can get behind.

Magic backlash isn't a deal-breaker for me.

Of course it isn't a deal breaker. Some people like to play "low magic", "gritty", "dark" games where players die constantly due to character ability malfunction and critical hits and fumbles. That's a fine way to play, especially for one-shots.

It is, however, one hundred percent incompatible with the "manifesto" written up in the original post. The original post said all that stuff was badwrong and should not be a part of the game. And he admitted that he's putting it in his particular fantasy heartbreaker. Apparently because he can't take his own advice. Either that or because his manifesto is full of lies. I don't even really care which.

-Username17

[erik]

I think he's only stated things about 98% incompatible with his manifesto, but I do give the everyone benefit of the doubt, probably to a fault.

I was mostly responding to YLM's comment about the game being horrible full-stop based upon the description. I'd still rate the game worth a look-over if there were hint as to mechanics (and said mechanics were not unforgivable as presented), but as far as the manifesto... yeh.

"I am hungry and will resolve this by eating some salmon and potatoes tonight" is a far more compelling manifesto. Certainly the only things that are given a hard stance in there are either obvious (have fun!) or oblivious (no cheese for you! no gritty low magic... but gritty low magic?).

[Blasted]

...or like every second heartbreaker out there, it's created without considering the implications of design choices. Incompetence over malice and all that.

[TheFlatline]

\
In both Call of Cthulhu and Lions of the North, you fight the baddies.

Bullshit. In CoC you fight the people who worship the baddies, the lackies of the lackies of the baddies, and you run away from the real bad guys. Who actually aren't bad guys, just aliens who don't have a human moral code of ethics or behavior. (I always had a problem with Lovecraft, I never found it very... horrific)

So far you're not doing very well here. Saying that "dark" and "gritty" should be avoided but that you did Lovecraft is flat hypocrisy.

Your "manifesto" seems to be a throwback. You're not breaking free of tropes, you're moving back to ideas that were moved beyond decades ago. It's not forward thinking, it's backward thinking.

When someone says "fuck dice we don't need them for conflict resolution" and then show me a system that ditches dice, I'm going to pay attention to their ideas even if I disagree with them, because they're at least thinking outside the box.

[TheFlatline]

Wow... I followed the link to the magic blog...

So let me ask a question: When you "create rain" (especially useful for ships at sea you say), does that result in a corresponding drop in air pressure, which is typical of stormy/windy weather (which is what ships would actually want)?

If so, how does that interact with the level one power, where tying fucking knots gets rid of wind?

Can I really, seriously cancel out a level two effect with a level one power? And once you become a storm, can 10 people tying knots what... destroy you? Capture you forever? Why fucking EVER use that spell then?

Not to mention that every single power needs it's own unique, appropriate "backlash" chart. Unless you're leaving that to DM fiat/screwage, which is lazy and broken "design" because PCs have absolutely no way to gauge risk/reward. If I tie a knot to calm down a zephyr and my fucking head risks exploding, I wont' do that. But with DM Fiat, I won't know if that's possible unless I ask my DM ahead of time "are you going to explode my head if I fail this enough?"

And this "dice matching" system... I'm trying to see when it will work *period*. What size die? Oh let me guess, the higher the spell level the bigger the die and the more matches you need to make the spell go off. So top end spells I'm throwing D20's and need 5 matches to make the spell go off right?

So at a minimum you need 2 dice to roll to match. Low-end, you're talking about rolling 2D4, which is a 1-in-16 chance of the spell going off and a 15-in-16 chance of something moderately bad happening to you. The odds of 3D4 are... hell I dunno, but the odds of something moderately bad happening to you are actually slightly less but it's more reliable that you're going to have a fuckup and... fuck I give up. I don't even know how to begin to calculate the odds of a spell going off properly with this system (partially because we don't have the numbers and partially because WTF?) and I'll bet 100 dollars that you don't either, which means you're not designing, you're pulling shit out of your ass.

[erik]

Hot damn I love wolfram alpha.

Probability of 3d4 having doubles. 0.5626.
Triples: 0.0625
probability of any matching on 3d4: 0.6250

So I guess 3d4 does have better odds of success than failure.

Also 2d4 matching is 25% chance, not 1/16. An easy way to picture it: once you roll one die, then you have your number and with the second die you have a 1/4 chance of matching it.

I suppose if I really wanted to play a game with a matching dice system I could print out tables of probabilities to give me a notion of what I was in for.

[edit: I went down the magiclinks too. Kind of hard to find much useful information.

They do mention possibly rolling 8 dice without a match... I'm gonna guess they are using d10's. Which is balls for matching anything reliably. Even 7d10 has a 6% chance of total backlash (7 backlash dice where none match) and a doubles are 68.8%... except that is still 4 fucking backlash dice after the successes cancel out 1 of the 5 fails.

4d10 will have a 50% chance of total failure (4 backlash), and a 45% chance of a double with 3 backlash dice remaining after canceling one.

So while the math is doable, I am guessing it was not done. =-(

[edit 2: oops, it is each matching die *beyond the first* eliminating backlashes... so damn. editing my numbers where I mention backlash amounts/probabilities. Now I wonder if I might be able to make a math proof showing that the more d10's you add, the more backlashes you are likely to get, making casting a really, really shitty proposition, and in effect making you worse the more skilled you are.]

[TheFlatline]

Hot damn I love wolfram alpha.

Probability of 3d4 having doubles. 0.5626.
Triples: 0.0625
probability of any matching on 3d4: 0.6250

So I guess 3d4 does have better odds of success than failure.

Also 2d4 matching is 25% chance, not 1/16. An easy way to picture it: once you roll one die, then you have your number and with the second die you have a 1/4 chance of matching it.

I suppose if I really wanted to play a game with a matching dice system I could print out tables of probabilities to give me a notion of what I was in for.

Yeah I realized that about 10 minutes ago that my math was off.

It still makes my head hurt to include penalties like that in a basic dice resolution mechanic.

[erik]

Heh, I edited in more. Basically my conclusion is in agreement with yours in that I don't think they did the math.

[hyzmarca]

I like keeping magic dangerous, when it comes to major effects. It's fitting with a Sword & Sorcery-type approach I'm using.

So... in order to advance your "manifesto" of player empowerment, you are instituting critical failures that make players who attempt to use their abilities periodically suffer random catastrophes?


That is literally the opposite of what absolutely everyone else in the entire world means when they say "player empowerment". Everyone else in the world means that players have things that they can reliably have their characters do without having to suck the MC's cock or risk critical existence failure to do it.

-Username17

Frank, sometimes you don't always magic as hard as you can in Shadowrun because Drain will fucking kill you. That's why you don't always overcast every spell at Force 12, which would be equivalent to "maximum amount of dice" in this situation. I mean, it seems to me that's the kind of thing he's going for, at least at a glance this doesn't seem that different.

Drain is a resource cost. Instead of MP or spell slots or ammunition you pay damage to cast a spell. If you have good stats you can reduce that damage with a roll.

That's fundamentally different from a backlash rule where bad things randomly happen to you if you use your powers.

[Blasted]

Hot damn I love wolfram alpha.

That's awesome. I've been using other statistical software for modeling this crap and all along I could have just typed it in to the interwebz. That's made my day.