Mechanics that disappoint you in every conceivable manner

[silva]

Yeah, talking swords is a bad idea.

Though semi-conscious swords that give you info perhaps not so much. Ie: a blade that brightens near chaos.

[Mord]

Interesting, so the player would sort of know the entire future of their campaign magic items as soon as they got it. Did that sort of magic item progression mean that people would tweak their character builds specifically to match the item's future forms?

I think it would make more sense for the legend of the magic item to grow as the PC wielded it. Of course the stories would become progressively more epic as the campaign levels kept climbing. In a very real sense, reputation would be power in this context, or alternatively, epic deeds literally create magic items, rather than magic items being required for epic deeds.

Of course, it would take an awful long time and a rotating cast of characters for the buildup of lore surrounding a single item to become something the PCs would ever notice or appreciate. Some kind of roguelike vidya would possibly be the best implementation. Or just a campaign with a high death rate (and/or long time scale/time skips) and a geographically constrained location.

I imagine it would be something like finding your last character's magic sword in the dungeon where he fell heroically, though hopefully a little less humdrum than reclaiming your corpseloot in Diablo. More like if Elendil was your last PC, then timeskip after a few more sessions to your new character Aragorn picking up Narsil.

[ishy]

Or alternatively, your character might have better things to do with their life than go on adventures to find out the story of a sword.

You're understating things.
You're going to have to do an adventure for every party member and whenever they change their sword, another adventure (and perhaps adventures for other items as well).
Instead of playing the damn game you probably wanted to play, you're only busy unlocking what you need to actually start playing the game.

[shadzar]

Out of curiosity, what games do you like?

BD&D, Mentzer preferred, still lots you dont need like Immortals set.

1st edition is you can ever find the game in the poorly organized waste of trees. without most of the optional crap that Gary thinks everyone needs.

2nd, without NWPs, and secondary skills used as a sort of background to decide which NWP things people could do.

IE: blacksmith could start fires, repair armor, make weapons, know that the jail doors are half-barrel hinges so leverage will remove them.

.basically the games that let the player come up with ideas, and the DM not having much but the ability score rolls to have to decide on to use and to say yes or not to the idea depending on how complex or silly* it might be.

*silly being a kender walking up to a gold dragon and staring at it and just talking to it and then using the charisma and such to figure out how it goes and if you have a kender left. was actually shocked when not only did the DM allow the interaction (probably thought the dragon was going to step on me but he failed on hsi dice roll at trying to), and then got a gift form the dragon in the end due to modifiers that gave the kender a gold dragon aid in the future for emergency use only. (though one time he did use the medallion to call the dragon, jsut to have a conversation with it, and the dragon needed the break from his duties with the church anyway since the conversation was about things that would lead to the greater good should the kender accomplish his quest with the party.)

really i don't like things like feats that people try to force to-the-letter rulings of; because many are things that were done before WotC owned D&D, and done BETTER than WotC presented them in a simpler system and without all the restrictions placed on them by rules-lawyers. feats, skills, NWPs, all just become a menu to pick from rather than using your own mind to come up with something for your character to try. this aint no video game where you only have what was programmed for the menu, so those lists MUST go and let the players think for themselves once again and become better roleplayers (role as in assume the life of the character being played), and stop making half-assed games to for video game rejects that want to play a TTRPG. that kind of design and player only creates a TTMMO and such a thing will NEVER be equal to either a TTRPG or an MMO and fail to be either such as 4th edition did.

the decision making skills should be of the humans playing the game, not some list for the designers to make.

[angelfromanotherpin]

You're understating things.
You're going to have to do an adventure for every party member and whenever they change their sword, another adventure (and perhaps adventures for other items as well).
Instead of playing the damn game you probably wanted to play, you're only busy unlocking what you need to actually start playing the game.

Unless 'fantasy action archaeology' is the game. And while that might take some work to do well, it's kind of a neat idea.

[silva]

"Fantasy action archaeology" is not so far from the themes of Earthdawn, so it fits.

I see it working for a Dark Souls game too, where lore uncovering actually central to the game.

[Prak]

I literally do not know how people who complain about that sort of thing write their games. If I handed a player a fabled weapon, I would start putting info drops about the fable into advertises as I wrote them.

Case in point-- I just gave my players a power up in the form of a celestial blessing their iconic weapons in exchange for a pledge to avenge it. I'm going to wait a couple adventures, but I'm going to come back to it and have a task for them come up as an adventure. The next adventure is kind of like that anyway, except it's a character's mysterious origin being expanded upon rather than the story of something they're carrying.

[silva]

Yeah, I hear you. Having personal goals and the opportunity to develop them in parallel to the "group campaign" is something I really appreciate in gaming. But then me and my group are on the sandbox-side of the fence. I can see it being a nuisance for those on the railroad-side of it.

[Stahlseele]

"Fantasy action archaeology" is not so far from the themes of Earthdawn, so it fits.

I see it working for a Dark Souls game too, where lore uncovering actually central to the game.

"You were named after the dog?"

[Laertes]

I think it would make more sense for the legend of the magic item to grow as the PC wielded it. Of course the stories would become progressively more epic as the campaign levels kept climbing. In a very real sense, reputation would be power in this context, or alternatively, epic deeds literally create magic items, rather than magic items being required for epic deeds.

Of course, it would take an awful long time and a rotating cast of characters for the buildup of lore surrounding a single item to become something the PCs would ever notice or appreciate. Some kind of roguelike vidya would possibly be the best implementation. Or just a campaign with a high death rate (and/or long time scale/time skips) and a geographically constrained location.

I imagine it would be something like finding your last character's magic sword in the dungeon where he fell heroically, though hopefully a little less humdrum than reclaiming your corpseloot in Diablo. More like if Elendil was your last PC, then timeskip after a few more sessions to your new character Aragorn picking up Narsil.

This is fucking badass. I approve. We ran a game of L5R that passed through five campaigns by three different GMs, which had stuff like this in it.

Off topic, but how would you mechanise something like this, I wonder?

[MGuy]

I went the "Your deeds make your items magical then legendary" route. It ended up being quite popular.

[momothefiddler]

In GURPS... Thaumatology, I think?... there's an option for "enchantment through deeds", where you have your specific named sword and it earns character points at the same rate as you (or some fraction of the rate - point is it's directly proportional).

Elsewhere this gets codified as a per-character option instead of a per-campaign option through the Named Possession (something like that) Perk, which specifically says that if you have multiple Named Possessions, the character points get split - your equipment doesn't advance faster than you do.

I quite like it, though, as with most of Thaumatology, I haven't had much chance to play with it.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

"Fantasy action archaeology" is not so far from the themes of Earthdawn, so it fits.

I see it working for a Dark Souls game too, where lore uncovering actually central to the game.

Wait wut? I watched a comprehensive LP of Dark Souls 1 and am playing through it myself now, and that is complete bullshit. Dark Souls has a total excuse plot meant to get you out there chopping up zombies and demons. There are a lot of people who love the setting lore for the world, but that's because the lore is put just enough out of the way that you have to work to get any reasonably coherent idea of what's going on (Which lore-hounds love), and it's all just vague enough that people can spend a lot of time using their imaginations filling in the details.

And that's great. I admit I like the lore too, and for the reasons above. But it ain't fucking "central to the game". The game is written assuming you're going to go put an axe into someone's head in a moment.

[darkmaster]

Or die, a lot. You know.

[silva]

Desdan, perhaps I didnt express myself properly. What I meant to say about Dark Souls is that, differently from most other games out there, if you dont read the lore (and dont get the items that come with the lore) you wont be able to make much sense of the world and how it operates.

So, yeah, anyone can pretty much ignore all text in the game and finish it up anytime. But for making minimum sense of the setting, lore-hunting through items is essential.

[Laertes]

Desdan, perhaps I didnt express myself properly. What I meant to say about Dark Souls is that, differently from most other games out there, if you dont read the lore (and dont get the items that come with the lore) you wont be able to make much sense of the world and how it operates.

So, yeah, anyone can pretty much ignore all text in the game and finish it up anytime. But for making minimum sense of the setting, lore-hunting through items is essential.

...what?

Perhaps I'm missing something, but this seems to be another way to say "if you ignore the setting then you'll miss the setting; if you study the setting then you'll end up studying the setting." Or, as Randall Munroe put it, "the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club."

What would a game without this noble property be like, pray tell?

[silva]

Laertes,

Differently from most videogames out there - which explains/establishes/develop their settings mainly through cutscenes and dialogues - Dark Souls makes heavy use of items descriptions for doing so. Each item tells a story, color a piece of the world, or suggests something else (or some mistery) about it. Some even combine like a multi-part tapestry to explain whole plot arcs of the world (like the plot to kill the gods in DkS1, or Aldia´s experiments for creating dragons in DkS2).

In other words: in the Souls series the items tell stories, literally. Thus my belief that Earthdawn "magic item" mechanic would fit a tabletop version of DkS nicely.

[Laertes]

...then that's meaningless. Item flavour text can be hot-swapped for any other item flavour text without any change to the game. You may as well say that Magic: the Gathering is a game about spells telling stories because the cards represent spells and they have stories on them. If it doesn't inform what the character does in a real and meaningful way, it's just spraypaint.

[silva]

By that logic, any setting flavour is meaningless. Be it tabletop or videogames or whatever. If all the players want is "kill things and take their stuff", then all fluff is irrelevant.

Also, Dark Souls items lore actually inform gameplay, or at least explains it. I.e: if you enter Aldia´s mansion without reading items descriptions, you wont make any sense of it, why the place is like that, or even your purpose there. Youre pretty much playing a "clean all levels" 8-bit action game at this point. (which is not really a problem if its all the player wants)

[Stahlseele]

items tell stories . . "that one time, i had a wielder who was so bad at swordplay, that he got me imbedded in a tree when taking a swing at an enemie . . i really enjoyed seeing that one die because of his incompetence"

[Laertes]

By that logic, any setting flavour is meaningless. Be it tabletop or videogames or whatever. If all the players want is "kill things and take their stuff", then all fluff is irrelevant.

Precisely. Which is why a good game needs flavourful mechanics rather than just a coat of paint on top of something generic.

Also, Dark Souls items lore actually inform gameplay, or at least explains it.

There is a massive chasm between those two things, and I'm puzzled that you don't see it.

If something informs gameplay, then it's something which the player must bear in mind during play, and which they have to weigh up when making decisions. For example, in Simcity 4 the traffic simulation model informs the decisions the player makes about where to place zones. If they ignore it, their city will do badly. Likewise, in Vampire: the Masquerade the clan a character belongs to informs their starting disciplines and therefore the things they're good at. If they ignore it, their character will be bad at the things they would like to be good at. This doesn't mean the players have to make the optimal choice, but the mechanics make the choices flavoursome and interesting.

If something explains gameplay, then it's something which is added afterwards to give meaning to the bare-bones mechanics, but can be ignored entirely if the player doesn't care. For example, in Half Life the enemies are graphically designed as marines and aliens inside a scientific complex. They could be terrorists and robots inside a tomb complex and the player decisions wouldn't be different. Likewise, in Legend of the Five Rings a character with Agility 3 and Kenjutsu 5 who belongs to the Bayushi family is mechanically identical to a character with Agility 3 and Kenjutsu 5 who belongs to the Akodo family (assuming for the sake of argument that neither has relevant school techniques). This set dressing does not factor into the player's decision making.

This doesn't affect my enjoyment of all four games mentioned above. I have lost countless hours to all four and would highly recommend them. It's just that they have massive differences in the way they approach the informs/explains dichotomy.

I haven't played Dark Souls, but if it's possible to, in your words, ignore all the fluff and play it like a "clean all levels" 8-bit action game, then in my opinion the game could be described as having no flavour at all.

[Maxus]

The fluff sneaks up on you. Most of the items have a description in there somewhere, and pieces of gear can give clues for what stuff's weak to and why things are the way they are.

For a basic example, the Black Knights are miniboss enemies when you first see them. They're strong, tough, have great weapons. Get a piece of the gear, turns out they're the "Black Knights" because they were all in a pyroclasm when someone tried to fool around with the First Flame or something.

Black Knights themselves are actually weak to fire, but their shields have a different description and block, like, 95% of fire damage.

So I can -kinda- see where 'informs gameplay' comes.

But mainly, I did like the setting. It's got this achingly lonely quality to it in places. You against the world and you can win by being smart and careful and knowing exactly what you can do. Rather like Shadow of the Colossus in a few places.

[Dogbert]

Is there a point in trying to endear a player to a +1 weapon he'll upgrade as soon as he's lvl 6?

While Midnight and Ultimate Psionics have rules for Rayearth-like weapons that level up along with its owner, they're the exception, not the rule... and expecting a player to stick with a +1 sword the whole game is unrealistic to say the least.

[erik]

Is there a point in trying to endear a player to a +1 weapon he'll upgrade as soon as he's lvl 6?

While Midnight and Ultimate Psionics have rules for Rayearth-like weapons that level up along with its owner, they're the exception, not the rule... and expecting a player to stick with a +1 sword the whole game is unrealistic to say the least.

Nobody wants you to stick with a +1 sword. The +1 sword is an abomination that should be expunged from the records. It doesn't even make sense. I think the point is getting rid of the +1 Longsword and instead having, Sting the spiderbane relic of a past age and the like.

Having tiered '+' bonuses on equipment is a shitty way to run things and I think qualifies as a mechanic that is entirely disappointing. Having interesting items that you can improve your proficiency with on the other hand, is rather keen. Having [tag] abilities rather than raw +X bonuses is far more interesting.


"A sword by itself rules nothing. It only comes alive in skilled hands."

[Drolyt]

Is there a point in trying to endear a player to a +1 weapon he'll upgrade as soon as he's lvl 6?

No, but the idea of upgrading your magic items is kind of weird. I mean, how often do characters get new swords (for example) in fiction? Excalibur, Durandel, Hrunting, Kusanagi, Stormbringer, Narsil/Anduril, The Green Destiny, The Sword of Omens, Arondight, Tessaiga, Nothung, so on and so forth, characters tend to be associated with one sword throughout most or all of their careers. If games actually reflected the source material then endearing a player to their magic items would make perfect sense.