TNE and Centaurs

[angelfromanotherpin]

PL actually managed to misrepresent me pretty well there, so I'm going to make a point of not pretending that post didn't exist.

Look, you can put centaurs anywhere you want. Anywhere. You can put them in magical realist Manhattan, you can put them in weird science fiction, you can put them in hentai. It's your fiction.

But, thanks to the historical preponderance of centaur use in fiction, they occupy a particular piece of the cultural head-space. So when you introduce a centaur, whether you mean to or not, you are telling people to expect either bronze-age Mediterranean myth or Xanth-style fantasy mashup craziness. And if they don't get either of those things, they will experience dissonance; like the dissonance people experience when vampires sparkle.

So if you don't intend to tell people either of those things, you are better served by not including centaurs.

[shau]

Well, i have seen them used as random barbaric raiders, though in a setting that actually has magic powered space ships and time-travelling dragons.

But really, i haven't seen anyone put in a reason that can't just as easily justify requiring wands for spellcasting. Or telepathic hivemind insectoids if there are any insectoids, or pearly gates heaven, or cerberus, or bearded dwarves who hate elves because of a thousand year old wrong, or tree-hugging elves who act superior to humans and either get owned because they aren't as awesome as they think they are or are considered in the right all the time.

so, what reason is there for actually including them instead of mongols or huns?

What reason is there for any including any race besides humans? You pretty much laid out right there how DnD races don't add to anything, why should centaurs be any different?

The advantage to having centaurs is that if Bill wants to be a centaur he can. If you don't have centaurs, Bill won't be able to play the race he wants to play. Similarly, if the game does not have blunt weapons the game as a whole won't be any worse, there are still plenty of ways to kill people, but anyone who wants to play a guy with a club is going to be upset.

Edit:

But, thanks to the historical preponderance of centaur use in fiction, they occupy a particular piece of the cultural head-space. So when you introduce a centaur, whether you mean to or not, you are telling people to expect either bronze-age Mediterranean myth or Xanth-style fantasy mashup craziness. And if they don't get either of those things, they will experience dissonance; like the dissonance people experience when vampires sparkle.

So if you don't intend to tell people either of those things, you are better served by not including centaurs.

What the hell? No they don't. If you are going to go around asking people what type of fantasy game centaurs belong in, they are not going to answer exclusively bronze-age Mediterranean myth. Nobody knows that's where centaurs come from. Even if they did, no one would give a damn. Its not like people argue that having Medusa as a monster means that you aren't playing a medieval fantasy game. I don't even know what you mean by Xanth-style fantasy mashup craziness.

You are arguing that people must have been experiencing dissonance when centaurs appeared in Harry Potter, and that really needs something backing it up beyond your assertions

[name_here]

Unless you're talking an extremely high magic world, winged humanoids are different. Large humanoids are different mechanically and thus have a good reason for existing even if you can't meet them in dungeons or take them to see the king, actual zerg are not only hive-minded on a civilization scale, they also have weird natural weapons and natural armor, other tauric creatures may have lower halves that you can't ride normally or even be amphibious, but a centaur is a guy on a horse with a shared life total and shared AC if your game doesn't work on hit locations.

But also, not having things that are humans with funny foreheads is kinda a stated design goal, so having orcs isn't in the plan anyway.

[shau]

Unless you're talking an extremely high magic world, winged humanoids are different. Large humanoids are different mechanically and thus have a good reason for existing even if you can't meet them in dungeons or take them to see the king, actual zerg are not only hive-minded on a civilization scale, they also have weird natural weapons and natural armor, other tauric creatures may have lower halves that you can't ride normally or even be amphibious, but a centaur is a guy on a horse with a shared life total and shared AC if your game doesn't work on hit locations.

So if understand what you are saying, a being that is essentially human but roughly 1.5 times the size of a human should be included because he is different mechanically. A six limbed quadruped should be excluded because they aren't really mechanically different?

Can you give some more here? Because I think that being half horse is lot different mechanically than being modestly larger than a human.

[Elennsar]

Its essentially being a human on horseback able to use a longbow and not be dismounted.

Vs....no, I'm not sure either. But I do know that centaurs don't add something that we need unless we drum up some cultural or pyschological or otherwise tied-to-being-centaurs thing that isn't exactly the same as a guy who was born into the saddle because Huns/Mongols/the Rohirrim/whatever are just that good.

[name_here]

See, someone who is a human but 1.5 times larger is different. He can make a hole in a shield wall by running at it and swinging his mighty sword that a normal man can barely lift hard enough to splinter shields, but it a giant target and must rely on his thick skin (natural armor or HP) and any armor that fits him instead of his dexterity. That's the general principle, it needs balance work. Furthermore, if you have a large race you can then send the players on the themed adventure Against The Giants without them calling the premise that you're fighting only 8 feet tall people stupid and being right.

Also, including a race simply because someone might want to play one is stupid. There is a vast array of races someone might want to play, even discounting the ones that have LA+5. For instance, i might want to play a race that's a lower tech version of the Galciv 2 Drengin, because they look cool and provide all sorts of neat adventure hooks because the race as a whole is dedicated to enslaving everyone else, even if my Drengin fighter believes in the fundamental equality of all sentient species and opposes slavery. But the thing is, sticking in the Drengin, their eviler cousians, snakemen, lizardmen, winged versions of the lizardmen, glide-equiped lizardmen, centaurs, dyrads, elves, other elves, evil elves, dwarves, kitsune, catgirls, wingless spellcasting dragons, goblins, orcs, trolls, ogres, cyclopses, vampires, sparkly vampires, diskworld temperance vampires, various werewolves, space hippos, atogs, ravnica angels, lionmen, bat people, loxodons, and every other creature that might potentially be playable as races with their own territory, culture, and sometimes mechanics means you have too many races to construct a semi-coherent setting.

[shau]

See, someone who is a human but 1.5 times larger is different. He can make a hole in a shield wall by running at it and swinging his mighty sword that a normal man can barely lift hard enough to splinter shields, but it a giant target and must rely on his thick skin (natural armor or HP) and any armor that fits him instead of his dexterity. That's the general principle, it needs balance work. Furthermore, if you have a large race you can then send the players on the themed adventure Against The Giants without them calling the premise that you're fighting only 8 feet tall people stupid and being right.

Sorry, not buying it. The discussion as to whether or not centaurs are viable has the mentioned fact that centaurs are really heavier than giants. Between that and the fact they have a fast horse body they are in fact more likely to be able to crash right through a shield wall than a giant.

Not to mention the fact that being able to defeat a shield wall is pretty much required for any melee hero. Conan can do it not because he is a giant, but because he is a strong hero and that sort of thing is expected of him.

Also, including a race simply because someone might want to play one is stupid. There is a vast array of races someone might want to play, even discounting the ones that have LA+5. For instance, i might want to play a race that's a lower tech version of the Galciv 2 Drengin, because they look cool and provide all sorts of neat adventure hooks because the race as a whole is dedicated to enslaving everyone else, even if my Drengin fighter believes in the fundamental equality of all sentient species and opposes slavery. But the thing is, sticking in the Drengin, their eviler cousians, snakemen, lizardmen, winged versions of the lizardmen, glide-equiped lizardmen, centaurs, dyrads, elves, other elves, evil elves, dwarves, kitsune, catgirls, wingless spellcasting dragons, goblins, orcs, trolls, ogres, cyclopses, vampires, sparkly vampires, diskworld temperance vampires, various werewolves, space hippos, atogs, ravnica angels, lionmen, bat people, loxodons, and every other creature that might potentially be playable as races with their own territory, culture, and sometimes mechanics means you have too many races to construct a semi-coherent setting.

There is a very valid point here. Settings stop making sense when too many races are available. I admit I lean more towards the everything the players want that doesn't totally destroy the game school. That said, the mere fact that there needs to be a finite number of races does not mean that any particular race should be excluded.

I still think that including something because someone wants to do it makes perfect sense however. When you are making a game that is about entertainment then including things that people think is fun is paramount. To put it in utilitarian terms, a certain amount of happiness is gained by letting Crissa play a centaur. As long as that does not screw up the game to the point where everybody else is having less fun than what was gained by letting Crissa play a centaur, it should be in.

[Elennsar]

Not to mention the fact that being able to defeat a shield wall is pretty much required for any melee hero. Conan can do it not because he is a giant, but because he is a strong hero and that sort of thing is expected of him.

Assuming that relationship in power between the hero and the shieldwallers. Giants can safely assume that with normal soldiers. This may or may not be true of heroes. (Aragorn, for instance, cannot do it...not alone at any rate.)

I still think that including something because someone wants to do it makes perfect sense however.

The problem is that if we set up a world that's sort of like (and I'm not proposing this for TNE, I'm using it as an example) Arthurian Britain, adding centaurs would hurt the setting. Not because you can't pull something out of your ass to justify how we have hybrid monsters almost anywhere with monsters, but because part of what we all agreed was part (and was not part) of Arthurian Britain was that hybird monsters like that don't exist.

And if we added them into begin with, it wouldn't be Arthurian Britain.

So between that and the various ways centaurs are peculiarly impractical, unless someone has some wickedly cool fact about centaurs that is somehow different than horse riding humans that has been overlooked, the joy for the equinephiles of playing a centaur is not sufficient to justify including centaurs in every game designed here ever.

[Bigode]

I will remind you that Frank sees no problem in Centaurs as monsters. The horse inside situation you mentioned can still happen.

The GM can, you know, not place creatures in places they can't enter. BTW, if they aren't PCs, there's no pressing need to be able to put them anywhere.

So if understand what you are saying, a being that is essentially human but roughly 1.5 times the size of a human should be included because he is different mechanically. A six limbed quadruped should be excluded because they aren't really mechanically different?

I see the centaur apologists actually wanting to take most relevant differences ... out.

[name_here]

Sorry, not buying it. The discussion as to whether or not centaurs are viable has the mentioned fact that centaurs are really heavier than giants. Between that and the fact they have a fast horse body they are in fact more likely to be able to crash right through a shield wall than a giant.

No, they actually kind of can't. centaurs are cavlery to pretty much all intents and purposes. Cavlery vs. shield wall head on didn't work at hastings until the cavlery faked a rout and got the shield wall guys to break formation. Big dudes with swords vs. phanlax (shield wall with spears) worked well enough for the gauls that the romans stopped using the formation because they got their asses kicked.

Not to mention the fact that being able to defeat a shield wall is pretty much required for any melee hero. Conan can do it not because he is a giant, but because he is a strong hero and that sort of thing is expected of him.

True, but non-heroic giants can do it, because they swing their weapon of choice hard enough to break the shield. However, heroic giants still have to deal with low dexterity, despite being able to swing hard enough they have to unstick their weapon from the wall when they miss.

There is a very valid point here. Settings stop making sense when too many races are available. I admit I lean more towards the everything the players want that doesn't totally destroy the game school. That said, the mere fact that there needs to be a finite number of races does not mean that any particular race should be excluded.

I still think that including something because someone wants to do it makes perfect sense however. When you are making a game that is about entertainment then including things that people think is fun is paramount. To put it in utilitarian terms, a certain amount of happiness is gained by letting Crissa play a centaur. As long as that does not screw up the game to the point where everybody else is having less fun than what was gained by letting Crissa play a centaur, it should be in.

The thing is, virtually everything on that list is somthing someone likes to play. So why is any given race on that list a more valid choice for inclusion than any other? We've got a near-infinite supply of potential creatures that we can include, so if we include somthing it needs a better reason than that somone would like to play it.

Also, we actually ought to have the rules required for handling centaurs because i'm pretty sure mounted combat and where mounts can and cannot go will have rules, and that is everything you need to make your own centaur race if you care. That's not a reason to include them in our setting, but seriously nothing is stopping you from making centaurs if you feel you're up to balancing them. However, since we want a setting included in the game, we really have a highly finite number of creatures even if we're making them mono-cultural.

[PhoneLobster]

There is a very valid point here. Settings stop making sense when too many races are available.

Actually, not really.

See first of all big piles of races really hasn't been a problem in anything except outraging Frank's imagination. So we lose track of elf of the week, it doesn't significantly harm game play. Alien of the week may be cheap and pulpy but it is far from non-functional, just ask the Trekkies .

Still a world with say, no more than four distinct sentient races. That could work and there are ways in which it might be cooler. Those are primarily wanky "our role play is more authentic and artistic than yours" ways, but I can dig that attitude.

The problem there though comes in WHICH four distinct races?

We want to provide what players want. So when four players sit down and say "Naga", "Robot", "Teenage Mutant Turtle", and "Mobile Intelligent Bee Hive" and those are the only four races in the world and we focus on them and make them special that is totally cool.

But everyone else other than those four players is going to be all "er... can't we trade out the turtles for orcs/dwarfs/humans/centaurs/land-sharks.

So highly limited races makes a good game/setting. ONE good game/setting. It does not make a toolkit that is any use to any group other than those same four silly buggers.

Centaur does not belong in everyone's game. It however DEFINITELY belongs in the common toolkit, along with a lot of other cool stuff.

I admit I lean more towards the everything the players want that doesn't totally destroy the game school. That said, the mere fact that there needs to be a finite number of races does not mean that any particular race should be excluded.

I still think that including something because someone wants to do it makes perfect sense however. When you are making a game that is about entertainment then including things that people think is fun is paramount.

Toolkit. It solves this problem and many others. Provide the resources for players to be provided with what they need for their specific game/setting/campaign.

Building a toolkit so fragile and delicate that there is NO choice in available races and campaign elements and where you need to FORCE the players into goblin warrens for 25% of all adventuring for it to function...

That is a blatant failure to provide anything of any use to anyone other than the lucky few with exact matching interests and the blatant ass kissers who would worship any old shit Frank spews out.

Hell the whole argument where you MUST adventure in very specific proportions of very specific environments... I don't see how that is any good even to the people who like the flavour of the specific setting...

[Avoraciopoctules]

The guilt/morality of dealing with centaurs versus horses seemed to be getting a bit off topic, so I made a separate thread.

http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=49229

[Elennsar]

Why are people so set on a toolkit? If we need a toolkit that damn badly, we can gather the various "buildin' and balancin'" threads together in a pdf, organized in a way that's vaguely readable, and sell it.

Its not an appealing concept for actually having something that we can then play with if we're interested after building, however, which I presume was one of the goals of TNE...having something we actually can use and want to use.

[name_here]

If anyone at all can make a toolkit for producing balanced races reliably in any arbitrary configuration of enviroments, tactics, and other races, i will be very impressed.

The thing is, balancing to specific proportions of specific enviroments is the only way to actually balance races/classes overall. Of course, said proportions of enviroments will not show up in gameplay outside of published adventure sets, but balancing to 100% plains is going to seriously fuck up anyone with distance powers if the gameplay goes to a goblin warren, and balancing without regard for enviroments just does not work if powers interact with the enviroment at all.

[PhoneLobster]

goals of TNE...having something we actually can use and want to use.

Yes. Exactly, a Toolkit.

Otherwise "we" won't and can't use it.

[virgil]

Yes PL, Frank will somehow actually build something as fragile as you claim. When a DM says he's running Vampire, do you smack him in the face with your member because it's not 'toolkit' enough to handle giant insects (a horror movie classic) or zombies and that they had the gall to say that werewolves and Frankenstein's monsters were different systems?

[PhoneLobster]

The thing is, balancing to specific proportions of specific enviroments is the only way to actually balance races/classes overall.

You have effectively declared it impossible to balance anything ever. Congratulations you have demonstrate a complete disregard for the most basic of requirements of a functional cooperative RPG.

If players say "fuck the goblin warrens" we do NOT get to say "Get in the damn goblin warrens or the game fucking breaks".

That is just plain not an option.

Meanwhile you present it as an immutable requirement.

[PhoneLobster]

Yes PL, Frank will somehow actually build something as fragile as you claim.

These are Frank's claims I am repeating here. Not my own. He was the one to declare Centaurs as game breakers. Remember that. He says he can't include them without breaking his system. Not me.

When a DM says he's running Vampire, do you smack him in the face with your member because it's not 'toolkit' enough to handle giant insects (a horror movie classic) or zombies and that they had the gall to say that werewolves and Frankenstein's monsters were different systems?

That is spurious total bullshit and you know it.

It also is a description of a total clusterfuck series of "separate" games and bears almost no relation to the use to which people have used, and want to use D&D. Hell it bears no fucking relation to the use to which people have attempted and want to put White Wolf games to, so I think you've really failed with your example there.

TNE isn't "Vampire, the Frankening" it's billed as D&D. The god damn fantasy adventure toolkit game.

[name_here]

We can't do that, it's true. it is equally true that if we have abilities that are of different effectiveness in different terrain types, we cannot balance the game unless it has a predefined set of terrain types that will be faced or everyone has the same power level in every terrain type.

So no, we can't actually balance TNE, because we do not want to balance the 4E way. The most balanced game with distinct factions in existance doesn't actually make them all equally powerful on the various maps that exist to be played on. Zerg work better on small maps than large ones, and there is no way to actually solve that without fundamentally altering the way the game works and removing the distinctness of the factions.

[Elennsar]

I propose a poll. How many people want a toolkit, how many people want Frank Trollman's World of Dorkness, and how many people want a team (lead by Frank? Probably.) building TNE?

Because at this point, PL, you are using "people" to mean 'me and a couple other equally stubborn people".

[shau]

No, they actually kind of can't. centaurs are cavlery to pretty much all intents and purposes. Cavlery vs. shield wall head on didn't work at hastings until the cavlery faked a rout and got the shield wall guys to break formation. Big dudes with swords vs. phanlax (shield wall with spears) worked well enough for the gauls that the romans stopped using the formation because they got their asses kicked.

Are we really going to this level with tactics? Calvary/shield wall/something are in a rock/paper/scissors relationship? All that you described was a sundering charge, which centaurs are plenty capable of.

The thing is, virtually everything on that list is somthing someone likes to play. So why is any given race on that list a more valid choice for inclusion than any other? We've got a near-infinite supply of potential creatures that we can include, so if we include somthing it needs a better reason than that somone would like to play it.

What other reason is there to include something than that someone would want to play it. We can make a whole game where everyone is a human in the adventurer class. Or even the fighting man class. We don't because people have other concepts they want to play and it would be fun for them to play. We can't take out everything we don't need because we have to take out everything.

I think Phonelobster really has the best idea with the toolkit plan. Even if we build around X number of races and classes people will want more. Pretty much every DM I have ever had has a list of houserules that add or subtract material and people love creating their own classes if the WotC boards are anything to go by. Could we have an engaging, consistent setting with rules that make it easy to graft new parts onto it?

[Elennsar]

As Frank has pointed out more times than I can count, "consistent setting" and "DMs can easily graft stuff on" are MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE!

Would that it weren't true, but unfortunately, by the very definition of a consistent setting, adding new stuff always upsets things at least a little bit because the factors that added up one way without it have an entirely new variable in the mix, which throws previous calculations off.

[virgil]

He was the one to declare Centaurs as game breakers. Remember that. He says he can't include them without breaking his system. Not me.

I suspect his claim is that centaurs would break essentially any system, not that his system is so fragile that centaurs would break it. Ever so slight of a difference.

TNE isn't "Vampire, the Frankening" it's billed as D&D. The god damn fantasy adventure toolkit game.

Blech. That Vampire example was not thought out properly, at all. Gonna have to admit that was crap. I do have a different point though...

Since when did D&D become a toolkit game? Was it when it was its own genre gathered soo much bloat that the only way to handle it was for people to decide to call it a 'toolkit' just so their minds could handle the Rifts-level kitchen-sink? I wonder if it was ever truly designed with 'toolkit' as the goal.

[Elennsar]

Considering it ever truly designed in the first place is seeming like a great case for optimism as a form of delusional behavior, no offense.

[name_here]

No, we can't, because you can't cleanly add a race to a setting, so there's no way to have a consistant setting and graftable parts.

Rules-wise, it's doable but toolkits do not lead to balance, and we want balance. Ultimately, we can stick in guidlines for balancing things, but not a fool-proof toolkit, because such a thing does not exist unless all the tools are identical.