Annoying Game Questions You Want Answered

[Kaelik]

I think I posted F&F the first time when it 90% rough outline. If you want to post it go ahead.

But also, people engaged a lot with my rough outline, and then never again as I've written and rewritten the game several times over.

That doesn't mean that you will face the same fate, maybe my game just sucks, but it's a concern.

[Foxwarrior]

Someone should do an OSSR of how the Tome hype machine worked on the den sometime. I think it has something to do with Username17's fun writing style, but that can't be the whole reason because even his later projects weren't nearly as popular here. Perhaps the appeal to homebrewing, that for a time convinced other denners to contribute Tome content instead of splitting off and making their own RPGs?

[Omegonthesane]

I imagine part of it was that the Tomes first released around the time of 4e and pertained to a system that everyone was already playing and would rather be playing, and were somewhat usable right out the gate besides just having more reason for people to GAF.

Asymmetric Threat and Warp Cult never got enough development to be playable and After Sundown wasn't an adaptation to a system people were actually playing to do better at the thing it was meant for.

[Lord Charlemagne]

Someone should do an OSSR of how the Tome hype machine worked on the den sometime. I think it has something to do with Username17's fun writing style, but that can't be the whole reason because even his later projects weren't nearly as popular here. Perhaps the appeal to homebrewing, that for a time convinced other denners to contribute Tome content instead of splitting off and making their own RPGs?

I've actually been contemplating doing a TOME OSSR. It'd have to be done as primarily an outsiders perspective looking in as I only started seriously lurking in early 2019 and only started posting in 2020, so I wouldn't be able to comment on the hype machine of Tome very well(as I wasn't a participant in it remotely). I've been archive crawling through the Den collecting threads on related topics to the Tomes and saving the threads, so it would be a discussion of my perspective on the material of tome, the writers intentions and opinions on the material, and commentary about the material from those who posted in the various Den threads over the years.

I'm not the most qualified to do it, so if someone else wants to step up to bat, I can send them the stuff I've found that could be helpful. Otherwise, if I do it (no promises), It'd probably be started sometime in August when my schedule should clear up past the crunch I'm currently in and I've had time to write a first draft or something.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

I think I posted F&F the first time when it 90% rough outline. If you want to post it go ahead.

But also, people engaged a lot with my rough outline, and then never again as I've written and rewritten the game several times over.

That doesn't mean that you will face the same fate, maybe my game just sucks, but it's a concern.

I, uh... don't quite have 90% yet. I've got most of the core stuff down - conflict resolution, skills, system fundamentals, items, stuff like that. According to my list, I still need to work on character creation, classes, attacks, abilities/capabilities, and a couple chapters on playing in/running the game. I've been sitting on this stuff for the past few months because my ambition to write games sorta plummeted during this whole pandemic thing. I figure talking about it and examining it a bit will motivate me to work on it more - plus I've been doing most of this stuff in a vacuum this past year and I should probably ask other people if this is completely insane before I start working on auxiliary mechanics.

Everything I've got is still in a fairly primordial state, so would it be best to post about it here in IMHO or over in IMOI?

[Prak]

I think Kaelik was saying that 90% of what he had for F&F was rough outline, not that he had 90% of a game.

We've seen basically every stage of development of a game posted here, save, perhaps, for "fully playtested finished game." After Sundown was as some musing about problems with the World of Darkness and developed from that here on the board until there was a complete (if badly in need of a playtest) game. I've posted my own complete but unplaytested mini rpg here before (Yule Lads), and brought ideas that I wanted some help with development to the board. Sometimes people will just start a thread with a basic premise that they then flesh out stream of consciousness in the first post, sometimes people have the skeleton of a game with some premise flesh laid over them, but nothing really beyond that. I say, if you want to post what you've got, then post it. In general, I think IMHO is for "so I have this idea" and IMOI is more for "So, I had this idea and I've written some system around it," but in general, moderation isn't super heavy handed when it comes to thread topics in specific boards.

[Kaelik]

I think I posted F&F the first time when it 90% rough outline. If you want to post it go ahead.

But also, people engaged a lot with my rough outline, and then never again as I've written and rewritten the game several times over.

That doesn't mean that you will face the same fate, maybe my game just sucks, but it's a concern.

I, uh... don't quite have 90% yet. I've got most of the core stuff down - conflict resolution, skills, system fundamentals, items, stuff like that. According to my list, I still need to work on character creation, classes, attacks, abilities/capabilities, and a couple chapters on playing in/running the game. I've been sitting on this stuff for the past few months because my ambition to write games sorta plummeted during this whole pandemic thing. I figure talking about it and examining it a bit will motivate me to work on it more - plus I've been doing most of this stuff in a vacuum this past year and I should probably ask other people if this is completely insane before I start working on auxiliary mechanics.

Everything I've got is still in a fairly primordial state, so would it be best to post about it here in IMHO or over in IMOI?

I mostly meant that I had 10% of the game in 2015 or 2016 or whenever I posted it.

Right now I've (publicly posted) the setting and basic mechanics, but I haven't even published the classes or monsters and I'm very occasionally writing the Items section.

I can definitely appreciate the pandemic killing the ability to sit down and create the game though, I've been having similar problems.

[Thaluikhain]

Are physical dice still important?

If, for example, you wanted something more than d4, but less than d6, can you say d5 and hope everyone is using a dice rolling program, or do you have to re-think that?

[Foxwarrior]

When playing physically, I'd like to use physical dice. Physical dice are inherently fun to roll. I haven't played physically in a long time though.

[angelfromanotherpin]

One of the OSR games has had a long print run while relying on some electronic-only dice, but at the same time a lot of customers noped out as soon as they saw those. So they aren't necessary, but it does affect your audience size.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Physical dice as are important as playing in-person: Not required, but it might as well be.

[WalkTheDin0saur]

9 year old me couldn't figure out why D&D had a d3 but not a d5. I'd imagine people could handle rolling 1d10 and dividing by two.

[Thaluikhain]

I thought physical dice would be important, but was hoping to have been wrong on this. Oh well, no d13s or whatever.

9 year old me couldn't figure out why D&D had a d3 but not a d5. I'd imagine people could handle rolling 1d10 and dividing by two.

Huh, I literally had not noticed that before.

[Thaluikhain]

Ok, next annoying question.

Is it a good idea for someone to be able to one-shot kill a peer or near peer? Not by using insta-kill magic or something, by, say, having multiple attacks and hitting with most/all and doing most/all of the possible damage for each. Something unlikely, but possible based on good rolling.

It makes sense to me to be able to one-shot kill a human with a rifle shot, cause historically that happened, if not often. It doesn't seem wise to me for that same human to be able to do about the same to a hero who is notably, but not exceedingly more powerful than a basic human.

(Admittedly, a good answer to this could well be "depends", as this is a bit vague)

[Omegonthesane]

Being able to one-shot peers or near-peers means your setting has rocket-tag combat. That's not objectively good or bad, but it's a setting choice with implications that should be thought through. People are going to care a lot more about stealth and first strike capability if their first action might prevent an equally powerful enemy from taking any actions or vice versa.

Enemies probably shouldn't be able to one-shot protagonists without being telegraphed as being on that level even in a rocket tag setting. That telegraphing could take the form of warning the players that the world really is that dangerous and you shouldn't let random muggers get the drop on you, but if you don't do that then the players will likely walk in expecting to stomp random mooks as if this was a videosgame.

[deaddmwalking]

As little or as much as you want.

People may not be prepared to read through hundreds of pages, but if you want to get feedback on some mechanic and you can talk about it in isolation, good. If every comment is 'well, that's addressed in page 132 of the combat section' it might be better to put the full version together along with the specific feedback you want.

[Schleiermacher]

I'm looking for an old post (I think it was about SAME) where Username17 maths out why a certain margin of Soak bulge makes you take half as much damage, compared to a mirror match, in his homebrew combat mechanic. I thought it was linked in one of the IMOI community materials threads, but now I can't find it again. Does anyone have any idea what I'm talking about?

[JigokuBosatsu]

If you're going to have wacky dice for your PDF or online only game, you should at least do something like those RAND corporation tables in the back of the Lone Wolf books so you can generate die rolls with your finger.

[Schleiermacher]

Does Spelljammer in any way address how enormous its setting is? You're flying around dealing with multiple Crystal Spheres, aka planets, each of which is at least a whole D&D setting unto itself, and often multiple (Krynn, Toril etc. both have multiple continents on them each of which is a setting in its own right.)

Planescape has portals and belief=reality to play with, so you can just focus on the notable landmarks and everything else is infinitely large uninteresting hinterlands, but Spelljammer seems to slam right into the inescapable fact that space, even scaled-down Sword & Planet-space, is really big.

[deaddmwalking]

Does Spelljammer in any way address how enormous its setting is? You're flying around dealing with multiple Crystal Spheres, aka planets, each of which is at least a whole D&D setting unto itself, and often multiple (Krynn, Toril etc. both have multiple continents on them each of which is a setting in its own right.)

Planescape has portals and belief=reality to play with, so you can just focus on the notable landmarks and everything else is infinitely large uninteresting hinterlands, but Spelljammer seems to slam right into the inescapable fact that space, even scaled-down Sword & Planet-space, is really big.

No. You're supposed to treat all of Krynn like Mos Eisley; it's a place where you land, taken on cargo, and leave. If you instead opt to adventure on Krynn, you're playing a Dragonlance campaign and not a Spell Jammer campaign. Since the Dragonlance default campaign doesn't have space farers, you're already in a weird place. From Spelljammer's perspective, you visit Krynn, some major NPCs make a cameo appearance, then you fly to Greyhawk and deliver Dragonlances to help defeat Iuz the evil. Most of the adventure happens during the journey.

[Thaluikhain]

Yeah, it's a total mess. The elves have their big, mutli-system elven fleet. Which means that when Verminaard tries to conquer Silvanesti, he's got a limited window before he has to worry about hordes of well-equipped elves descending from the skies.

Takes very little thought at all before Spelljammer either falls apart, or destroys the other settings which were not designed with Spelljammer in mind. I sorta liked the computer game, though.

[Thaluikhain]

Ok, so gnolls are gnome/trolls (and thus hyenas), and driders are half drow and 2/3 spider, but I can't think of any other popularish monster like that of the top of my head. I'm guessing there's be more along that line, but D&D just forgot about them over the years?

(Excepting werewolves and owlbears, of course, as those are different. Hey, just given me the idea of owls that turn into bears during full moon)

[Lord Charlemagne]

Ok, so gnolls are gnome/trolls (and thus hyenas), and driders are half drow and 2/3 spider, but I can't think of any other popularish monster like that of the top of my head. I'm guessing there's be more along that line, but D&D just forgot about them over the years?

(Excepting werewolves and owlbears, of course, as those are different. Hey, just given me the idea of owls that turn into bears during full moon)

Centaurs
Chimera's
Lammia
Lammasu
Medusa maybe?
Any merfolk
Minotaur
A lot of the snake people vary in their snakiness

There are plenty of popular monsters that are part A & part Z, albeit a lot of them have more mythological origins that Gnolls, Owlbears, & driders (albeit there have been plenty of dog/hyena people & spider-people monsters throughout various myths & stories too, they just tend to be more obscure).

[angelfromanotherpin]

I think he specifically meant combined creatures with portmanteau names.

[Thaluikhain]

Yeah, meant combined monsters with combined names.

Which would still include merfolk and kinda the minotaur as well, I guess.