Good design principles

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Fri Mar 13, 2009 7:20 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote: I mean, really, if someone told you that they wanted to play Lassie who at a certain point in the campaign would switch over to Red XIII, would you let him do it?

I'd strongly consider it. I've played D&D games where I kept switching out characters. In fact, right now, I'm playing a game where I alternate between a good-natured ogre mook, a diabolical gnome bard, an insane ghoul barbarian, and an orc-supremacist human cleric. As the rest of the PCs leave one of these characters behind, they soon encounter another. In a few levels I'll bring the shapeshifting demon into the picture.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Fri Mar 13, 2009 7:23 pm

I'd strongly consider it. I've played D&D games where I kept switching out characters. In fact, right now, I'm playing a game where I alternate between a good-natured ogre mook, a diabolical gnome bard, an insane ghoul barbarian, and an orc-supremacist human cleric. As the rest of the PCs leave one of these characters behind, they soon encounter another. In a few levels I'll bring the shapeshifting demon into the picture.

But see, those were playable characters during each switch. Each of those characters could've held up their own end of the burden of roleplay the entire game. What the Lassie player wants to do is pretty much not have a real character for a portion of the game in return for promising to get a real charater when peoples' patience runs thin.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Fri Mar 13, 2009 7:36 pm

Fundamentally, players should be roughly similar. Players can tell the story of The Lion King so long as the characters are medium to tiny sized and don't have any tech abilities or world-shattering power. Dragon Kings work fine so long as every character is a dragon and a king. Hell, it might even work OK if one of the characters is the storm giant usurper of a dragon kingdom.

Some of this is fundamental to the game system, and some of it can vary on a campaign-by-campaign basis. In a sense it's the old toolkit vs. setting argument.

The most workable solution is probably the oldest: expansions/modules. Build the base game around the human scale: medium though small characters with hands, minds, and voices. Write the assassin vines expansion later.

The one distinction that remains useful throughout is creatures that have classes and creatures that don't.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Mar 13, 2009 7:39 pm

This is all fluff.

No it is not. A laser turret is unplayable. It cannot perform the actions required of a player character to advance the story. It is mechanically incapable of rescuing the princess, climbing stairs, or stealing the admiral's locket. This isn't fluff, it's mechanical. It cannot participate in any part of the story except the shootout at base gate that it happens to be bolted to.

It's a perfectly acceptable part of that scene, but it is mechanically incapable of interacting with any of the other scenes in the story. So making it like a PC is fucking waste of time at best. At worst it's totally breaking the game as its very real and very crippling limitations end up piling compensatory bonuses on it until its impact on the one scene that it will ever show itself in becomes devastating.

A PC is a valid NPC. Some NPCs are valid PCs. It's not "merely a fluff concern" it is a cold solid immutable fact. An object in the game that is appropriate and challenging for a scene has no guaranty of being useful in any other scene. And a Player Character has to be useful in most scenes.

-Username17

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Fri Mar 13, 2009 7:46 pm

Thymos wrote: 1. Daily abilities are shit on both PC's and Monsters. Don't pretend they are ok on PC's, hell, you just named the wizard, who is a great example of why dailies don't f-ing work along side fighters. In fact it seems to be the prevailing opinion that the exact problem you mentioned for monsters is exactly what PC's did.

Well, daily abilities in concept suck because of the 5 minute work day, but in theory they can be replaced with some other kind of limited use ability. Whether that's per adventure or per level or whatever. Now, as you might imagine, any kind of limited use abilities with a longer time frame than "per encounter" become imbalanced in the hands of NPCs, as they need to plan for a single battle. So if you have any resource depletion that transfers from combat to combat, then NPCs as PCs just doesn't work, because the NPCs aren't playing the game where they have to worry about depleting resources between combats.

2. DnD's character generation doesn't even provide Balanced PC's, so your comparison falls flat right here. Yes, monster don't need skill points, yes, they don't need feats. This isn't an argument not to use PC generation as Monster generation, only an argument that we can use half of the PC generation for monster generation. First find a system that makes balanced PC's before saying it doesn't make balanced Monsters.

I really can't find one where PCs are perfectly balanced, which in general should say that we should have DMs go for the simpler and faster method rather than the more convoluted one where the DM has to fix a tax code.

3. If DM's want to generate encounter's on the fly we have MM so they don't have to stat anything up. I don't think good monster creation rules should be created with the intent that DM's can make monsters in 5 seconds. They should make monsters that are balanced, fun to play against, and can be made quickly, but not on the fly. We have pregenerated monsters for running things on the fly.

Pregens just dont' work well for a variety of reasons. While it's fine if you're running a generic dungeon crawl, it falls apart rapidly in NPC heavy campaigns, like if you've set your game in a city.

Part of winging it as a DM means making arbitrary decisions in your descriptions. You probably hadn't thought of the stats for the dwarven guard before you just said "he's wearing chain mail and carries an axe and crossbow." Seriously, you didn't really think he was going to get attacked and just threw in a basic description. But now the PCs say, "hey lets fuck up this guard."

Do you have a generic dwarven guard pregen of the proper challenge level that uses a crossbow and battle axe? I'm guessing you probably don't. I've tried using pregens and I find that you almost never have the pregen that you want. Which means that you're still dicking around with numbers swapping feats and trying to make it work. Also, pregens are almost always horribly min/maxed and thus just get chopped up easy by the PCs.

This is why pregens ultimately fail. The rules for creating specific PC style characters are vastly different, because you have some axe specific feats, and some crossbow specific feats, and you've got a ton of shit that you potentially have to worry about. And you need to be able to breathe life into a description on the fly.

Basically this should work similar to 4Es system where it's just a table based on the monster's type, so you assign them an AC, an attack bonus and a bunch of defenses and you just go with it.

4. Apprently a huge complaint in 2e was exactly that you could not make Drizzt using PC rules. He was a NPC so he got something special.

Well, do we really care that NPC Drizz't looks different on a sheet than PC Drizz't? So long as PC Drizz't and NPC Drizz't are both capable of doing shit that Drizz't does in the books, it really doesn't matter.

The reason I say similar rules for PC's and not exact is because, as pointed out, we don't need to know everything we know about PC's for monsters. We also want to have the flexibility to create puzzle monsters.

Well, we want similar mechanics, we don't necessarily want a similar generation method. We want an attack roll for a PC to be the same as a monster, but we don't necessarily care where all the monsters bonuses come from. A PC may get his from strength + BaB + magic weapon, while a monster may just be 5 + CR. In both cases their attacks work similar, it's just that where that bonus comes from is different. The DM should have a simpler method of calculating these things because they need to be done more often.

You create one PC a session at most, where as the DM is going to create possibly a dozen or more distinct NPCs or monsters. And he needs to be able to do that on the fly. Not by sifting through a huge book of pregens, but just by checking out a table and fast assigning numbers. The transition should be as seamless, so it's not obvious the DM is improvising.

Thymos · Post by **Thymos** » Fri Mar 13, 2009 7:52 pm

I did say that some things are not fluff. Huge weaknesses are not fluff. Puzzle monsters are not fluff.

I'm not actually advocating building all monsters exactly like PC's. I'm advocating building most monsters roughly comparable to PC's.

I probably was being too general when I said that this is all fluff. I was just trying to get my point across.

As far as the Laser Turret goes, I'd agree that it's unplayable as a PC. It's being unable to move is a very real mechanical limitation. I wouldn't treat the Laser Turrent as a Monster either to be honest. It's more like a trap in my mind.

I think there is a very real difference between making monsters like PC's and making monsters as you would make PC's. To be honest, laser turret could probably be made by making an archer and giving it a moderate HP bonus for being unable to move (I wouldn't give it more than 50% more, maybe, it depends on the system). It's unplayable as a PC, but we're using PC rules to make it, not monster rules to make a PC.

Preferably laser turret would be a trap that activates once a turn, does xdy damage, gives a reflex save for half or makes an attack, and can either be gotten rid of by damaging (AC and HP) it or a disable device roll in 3.x.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Fri Mar 13, 2009 7:53 pm

RandomCasualty2 wrote:
4. Apprently a huge complaint in 2e was exactly that you could not make Drizzt using PC rules. He was a NPC so he got something special.
Well, do we really care that NPC Drizz't looks different on a sheet than PC Drizz't? So long as PC Drizz't and NPC Drizz't are both capable of doing shit that Drizz't does in the books, it really doesn't matter.

This is totally apropos of nothing, but I sat down and worked out that Drizzt could have a decent approximation with Tome rules: Fighter 9/Barbarian 5-6/and then something else for a level or two (maybe Fighter again). Then the rest is feats (which you'd have to make a couple. Some kind of Active Defense/parrying feat, at least). There's still a kink--when Drizzt rages, his Dodge bonus apparently goes through the roof. Which isn't exactly how Rage works.

Entreri, however, is way to tangled to sort out.

Tsuzua · Post by **Tsuzua** » Fri Mar 13, 2009 8:10 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:
This is all fluff.
No it is not. A laser turret is unplayable. It cannot perform the actions required of a player character to advance the story. It is mechanically incapable of rescuing the princess, climbing stairs, or stealing the admiral's locket. This isn't fluff, it's mechanical. It cannot participate in any part of the story except the shootout at base gate that it happens to be bolted to.

It's fine that it can't do those things if those things aren't part of the game. If all the PCs are laser turrets with human-like AI you could have some adventures of fighting invaders, trying to trick the wandering robots into doing stuff for you, and trying to figure out if Bob the Repair man really is the repair man and won't disable your tracking system. Sure it's extremely different and incompatible with the RPG standard of "you're all bad dudes who rescue presidents from ninjas and you go around being awesome" but it's got the potential for an fun one-shot. What matters is how does a certain PC interact with other PCs. A laser turret doesn't work if everyone else is a bad dude and a bad dude wouldn't work with a bunch of laser turrets

However, monsters and NPCs should be able to have abilities, powers, and weaknesses PCs don't have. Puzzle monster vulnerabilities, the ability to keep dungeons from collapsing, and the unique brain in the jar that can mind control people in an otherwise mind control free game are all things that can make for cool scenes in a game but wouldn't be worthwhile or would be overpowered in the hands of PCs.

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Fri Mar 13, 2009 8:13 pm

Maxus wrote: This is totally apropos of nothing, but I sat down and worked out that Drizzt could have a decent approximation with Tome rules: Fighter 9/Barbarian 5-6/and then something else for a level or two (maybe Fighter again). Then the rest is feats (which you'd have to make a couple. Some kind of Active Defense/parrying feat, at least). There's still a kink--when Drizzt rages, his Dodge bonus apparently goes through the roof. Which isn't exactly how Rage works.

Yeah, I mean pretty much if you're playing Drizz't as a PC, then you should make him with the PC rules. I don't really see why people would want to play NPC Drizz't, because in pretty much all cases, the PC Drizz't should be better anyway, since PC rules should generate an altogether more interesting character.

It's bad if somehow the NPC Drizz't is more appealing than the PC Drizz't.

Thymos · Post by **Thymos** » Fri Mar 13, 2009 8:18 pm

Well, daily abilities in concept suck because of the 5 minute work day, but in theory they can be replaced with some other kind of limited use ability. Whether that's per adventure or per level or whatever. Now, as you might imagine, any kind of limited use abilities with a longer time frame than "per encounter" become imbalanced in the hands of NPCs, as they need to plan for a single battle. So if you have any resource depletion that transfers from combat to combat, then NPCs as PCs just doesn't work, because the NPCs aren't playing the game where they have to worry about depleting resources between combats.

To be honest I'm not actually a fan of the concept of "per encounter," I like abilities that recharge based on actual time. Anyways, abilities and such where you can blow your entire resource intended for multiple combats in a single combat are usually unbalanced anyways, for both PC's and NPC's. To use Mana in Rpgs as a resource that both PC's and NPC's have access to, there is a good reason the "blow all your mana" spell doesn't exist. If it's not balanced for a NPC then it's probably not balanced for a PC either. I'm actually working from the direction of not giving overpowered abilities to either side. I don't want wizards wasting all their spell slots in one encounter on the PC side, and I don't want Medusa's with insta death gaze on the NPC side.

I really can't find one where PCs are perfectly balanced, which in general should say that we should have DMs go for the simpler and faster method rather than the more convoluted one where the DM has to fix a tax code.

I have to say that I like Feng Shui a lot, and loved using the PC generation method to make non-mook NPC's. It worked out really well for me (even when these NPC's I made were 10' tall zombie monsters, the brawler, or whatever the tank class is called, handled it wonderfully).

Basically this should work similar to 4Es system where it's just a table based on the monster's type, so you assign them an AC, an attack bonus and a bunch of defenses and you just go with it.

Maybe I'm odd, but I consider that pregeneration. You have all the numbers worked out ahead of time, and can just use them on the go.

Well, do we really care that NPC Drizz't looks different on a sheet than PC Drizz't? So long as PC Drizz't and NPC Drizz't are both capable of doing shit that Drizz't does in the books, it really doesn't matter.

Actually Drizz't apparently had some crit special abilities to let him do stuff in the books that PC's did not get access to, so they couldn't do the same thing.

I think I need to point something out. I think DM's should have some quick and easy numbers worked out ahead of time by developers for them to use when making NPC's or monsters.

I think developers should work those numbers out by finding out what a comparable PC could do. The reason I want them to do this is because I also think 1. PC's should be the most balanced and playtested part of the system, and 2. If an ability is no good for a monster because it's too strong than it's probably no good for a PC for the same reason, and vice versa. I don't want monsters with oodles and oodles of hit points, and I don't want monsters with glass jaws. I want monsters comparable to PC's.

I'm also just laying down principles, of course we are going to have exceptions, these are only general rules that I like.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Fri Mar 13, 2009 9:00 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:No it is not. A laser turret is unplayable. It cannot perform the actions required of a player character to advance the story. It is mechanically incapable of rescuing the princess, climbing stairs, or stealing the admiral's locket. This isn't fluff, it's mechanical. It cannot participate in any part of the story except the shootout at base gate that it happens to be bolted to.

-Username17

In short, it's a fighter.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Fri Mar 13, 2009 9:33 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:No it is not. A laser turret is unplayable. It cannot perform the actions required of a player character to advance the story. It is mechanically incapable of rescuing the princess, climbing stairs, or stealing the admiral's locket. This isn't fluff, it's mechanical. It cannot participate in any part of the story except the shootout at base gate that it happens to be bolted to.

The viability of a laser turret as a character depends on the story you are telling. For many stories, you are correct that it is an inappropriate PC. For the scenario I provided earlier, it is.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Fri Mar 13, 2009 9:46 pm

Murtak wrote:Goal:There should be as few absolutes in the world as possible.
Best Practice: Immunities should only go to entities which do not interact with the element in question. (Automatons are fine with mind-affecting-immunity, oozes are immune to crits. But golems should not have spell immunity.)

I think that one is all goal and no practice since it's something that concievably could be used or not on a case by case basis without severely impacting quality.

Similarly..

Personally I would even say that monsters should be built using the exact same system. That way, if your players want to play as giants, all the rules already exist.

Again I think this is all (or almost all) goal and less design principle. There are reasons you could go either way in a specific system.

But it touches on a couple of principles, like say...
Minimal Complexity/Standardised Rules: By using the same rules across as wide a swathe of material as possible you reduce the work you need to do to create rules and the work people need to do to understand and use them.

Meanwhile in purely goal based territory Frank is having his centaur meltdown again based on a strawman, again.

Using the same system to build Cerberus as you use to build Humany McHumanPants the entirely playable human is not in and of itself a bad thing and neither does it absolutely require Cerebrus to be playable.

It's a standardised system with many benefits for ease of use, comparability of power levels etc...

And IF Cerberus happens not to have some limitations (either accounted for within the system or by pure one of a kind strawman fluff) that means he is weighed and balanced for play at some level right off the bat.

And if he DOES have some set of restrictions that makes him NPC only he is still weighed and balanced as an NPC right off the bat and NO ONE WAS HURT IN THE PROCESS.

On that front it's pure win. You can even create any sized set of NPC only powers and restrictions you care to create and its STILL pure win because when those labelled traits appear on an NPC you know either A)He cannot just be flipped to a PC role and B)Exactly which traits have to be messed with to do so.

There is still the alternative goal of keeping NPC design separate from the ground up, and there are various potential benefits in individual character generation time or complexity savings, more targeted design of NPC only abilities etc... but it's a close enough call to go either way.

Well I say it's a close enough call to go either way, but it's not exactly 50/50 since when you start looking at design principles, like ease of use, intuitive design, reduction of complexity, standardised rules, etc... the whole "Same modular character generation rules set with some additional NPC only elements" comes out with a clear lead.

So I would expect the majority of systems with good design principles behind them to go down Murtak's path on this goal and relatively few to go down Frank's. But the one's going down the more restrictive and proscriptive path aren't necessarily horribly wrong in their goals or principles, they just have used their design principles to select narrower less widely desirable goals.

Murtak · Post by **Murtak** » Fri Mar 13, 2009 9:48 pm

So what does it take, at the minimum, to have a playable character?
- Sapience
- Ability to communicate with the other player characters (and preferably with at least a part of the world)
- Ability to influence the setting/story

Anything else?

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Fri Mar 13, 2009 10:00 pm

So what does it take, at the minimum, to have a playable character?
- Sapience
- Ability to communicate with the other player characters (and preferably with at least a part of the world)
- Ability to influence the setting/story

I gave a list of things earlier.

But expanding on that, I also think that characters should not be inherently offensive to the other players and should not be disruptive (like the Forsaker). The party is also only able to go to the locations the least-mobile player can go, so this means that you can't have Godzilla or Little Nemo in your group unless everyone is willing to just visit the locations Godzilla and Little Nemo can go.

Ideally, player characters should also have a sense as good as eyesight and hands with opposable thumbs since so many adventures are human-centric. Though I find it much less irritating to have to have to open doors for Red XIII or point Toph in the right direction than find somewhere else to treasure-hunt because the Hulk can't fit into a damn house.

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Fri Mar 13, 2009 10:05 pm

Thymos wrote: To be honest I'm not actually a fan of the concept of "per encounter," I like abilities that recharge based on actual time.

I actually think basing things on actual time is a big mechanical mistake, because actual time rarely means much in terms of an RPG.

Because that sort of thing just leads to the 5 minute work day, and restricts what kind of stories you can tell simply because you have to always worry about aligning your ability reload based on a fixed time table.

It's better to actually handle ability refreshing based on story or mechanical units instead of real time. Because you want to be able to tell all the following stories:

-A group invades a king's castle and clears it out in one day.
-A group goes through a 2 month trek through the lost jungles encountering battles from time to time, but never two in one day.
-The entire adventure is the exploration of some old ruins that may take several trips back to town.

You can't really tell all of those with real time based abilities, not without running into 5 minute work day problems. Because real time abilities have to make assumptions about how often the PCs are going to stop and rest. If abilities refresh "every 5 minutes" you assume your'e not going to have two fights right in a row. Or if you get all your powers back each day, that's similarly bad, because you just don't know how many battles you'll have per day. And that stuff should always be up to the story to decide, not the rules. No rules set should tie the DM's hands behind his back and say "You must have 4 encounters per day, or the rules are no longer balanced."

That sucks.

And the way you avoid that is by having refresh units in game terms, not real time. Things like per encounter, or per adventure, or even per level mean something and are much harder to circumvent via 5 minute workday tactics. They also work reliably for all kinds of story arcs, regardless of the time taken. And for an RPG, that's good, because sometimes we want to tell stories about month long journeys and other times we want to tell stories about an adventure that happens on one chaotic stormy night.

I have to say that I like Feng Shui a lot, and loved using the PC generation method to make non-mook NPC's. It worked out really well for me (even when these NPC's I made were 10' tall zombie monsters, the brawler, or whatever the tank class is called, handled it wonderfully).

I'm not really familiar with Feng Shui. If it's a fast generator then maybe it might be ok.

The key thing is not so much that PCs and NPCs have to be different for the sake of being different, but that generating NPCs needs to be fast. Generally however, the more rules you have the slower it is, and PCs need more rules to create characters. So it lends itself to separate methods.

Major villains may also be able to be constructed using the PC method, or something similar, if you want to make them recurring characters that show up a lot. I'm okay for instance with Shadowrun's primary runner NPC system when designing major characters. But your average corporate security officer should just be able to be created on the fly with some guidelines.

Maybe I'm odd, but I consider that pregeneration. You have all the numbers worked out ahead of time, and can just use them on the go.

Well no, it's not really. It's a list of easy numeric guidelines for monsters. Basically you care more about the final numbers than the substats to get there.

What I want to eliminate is calculation. A DM shouldn't be saying "Ok this monster has weapon focus and a +1 sword and has 12 aberration levels for 6 BaB and then has 22 strength for +6..."

It should just be a simple CR + X formula that's over and done with, so the DM can get back to DMing.

I think I need to point something out. I think DM's should have some quick and easy numbers worked out ahead of time by developers for them to use when making NPC's or monsters.

I think developers should work those numbers out by finding out what a comparable PC could do. The reason I want them to do this is because I also think 1. PC's should be the most balanced and playtested part of the system, and 2. If an ability is no good for a monster because it's too strong than it's probably no good for a PC for the same reason, and vice versa. I don't want monsters with oodles and oodles of hit points, and I don't want monsters with glass jaws. I want monsters comparable to PC's.

I mostly agree with what you've said.

Balancing PCs amongst each other should be top priority, and monsters can then get fit into that based on how much challenge they give those PCs.

Though I do think that monsters with glass jaws are sometimes ok if you're just looking for a puzzle monster. The massive hit point scores definitely should be avoided, and 4E showed us why.

SunTzuWarmaster · Post by **SunTzuWarmaster** » Fri Mar 13, 2009 10:15 pm

I talked to someone that role-played a plant for a campaign. Seriously. A plant. I think that this defines the minimum playable character. Said plant was a mutant plant.

- Empathy - ability to express general agreement or disagreement to fellow players in character.
- Motility - the ability to move (even if it is very, very slow). You have to be able to move by yourself, but you can be carried most of the time. Some sort of legless zombie/robot also falls into the category of "shitty, but still functional" mobility.
- Ability - character must be able to participate in most, if not all mini-games. Said plant could change someones mind if it concentrated long enough, and force people not to attack by calming them. In this way it could play the social and combat minigames. It played the stealth minigame very, very well.

I think that this is probably the minimum needed for a PC. In this manner R2D2 is right around the minimum needed for a character.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Fri Mar 13, 2009 10:17 pm

- Empathy - ability to express general agreement or disagreement to fellow players in character.

This is not enough communication to support a player character.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Fri Mar 13, 2009 10:20 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:The party is also only able to go to the locations the least-mobile player can go, so this means that you can't have Godzilla or Little Nemo in your group unless everyone is willing to just visit the locations Godzilla and Little Nemo can go.

This one is just plain wrong. It isn't a design principle, it isn't even a design goal. It's a in game gentleman's agreement not to split the group in game play.

Even if everyone is the same size the only thing preventing "perfectly normal sized Nemo" from leaving the group to make everyone's life hard with split adventuring is a gentleman's agreement not to.

Assuming your game play etiquette and the GM's confidence in dealing with it accept splitting your group no one cares if when the split happens Nemo gets in his one man submarine and has sub sea adventures on a coral reef that no one else can.

You are mistaking "can go where others can't" with "can't go anywhere that overlaps where others can go". That is big enough to be a design goal and limitation, so Nemo the salt water fish who cannot go on land WILL be an issue with the all Aliens from the Alien Nation TV series party but otherwise you are fine.

Because otherwise groups either do or don't split anyway, just because and groups will skip some adventures and have others instead because of shared limitations, pure whim, or just because and having a vampire that forces you all to adventure at night is somewhere just short of utterly meaningless since you might well do that anyway or might well have characters that arbitrarily piss off anyway.

It's like the "I have enemies that regularly attack me" character weakness. Adventures always happen, traits that influence where they happen are no less negligible than traits that influence who they happen against.

edit: I would like to add a proviso. The valuing of abilities to go where others can't should be similarly low to their negligible influence on the game and the devaluing aspect of them requiring a compatible style of play to use.

Being able to breath underwater and have sub sea adventures is almost entirely worthless, either some subset of characters have it, and it's no different to a normal party split, or all of them do and its no different to a regular adventure.

So it should be given out almost for free.

Murtak · Post by **Murtak** » Fri Mar 13, 2009 10:20 pm

RandomCasualty2 wrote:I'm not really familiar with Feng Shui. If it's a fast generator then maybe it might be ok.

The key thing is not so much that PCs and NPCs have to be different for the sake of being different, but that generating NPCs needs to be fast.

30 minutes for players new to the system, including explaining the rules and terminology (tested repeatedly). About 5 minutes if you know the system and have an idea of what kind of character you want. I love that game. I may have to flesh out the fantasy part some more, just so I can play Feng Shui Fantasy instead of D&D.

Ganbare Gincun · Post by **Ganbare Gincun** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 2:16 am

Psychic Robot wrote:
FrankTrollman wrote:No it is not. A laser turret is unplayable. It cannot perform the actions required of a player character to advance the story. It is mechanically incapable of rescuing the princess, climbing stairs, or stealing the admiral's locket. This isn't fluff, it's mechanical. It cannot participate in any part of the story except the shootout at base gate that it happens to be bolted to.

-Username17
In short, it's a fighter.

You beat me to it!

Draco_Argentum · Post by **Draco_Argentum** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 5:12 am

Avoraciopoctules wrote:The viability of a laser turret as a character depends on the story you are telling. For many stories, you are correct that it is an inappropriate PC. For the scenario I provided earlier, it is.

Which has no bearing at all on the topic at hand. Just because something could be a PC in a game doesn't automatically make it relevant to what a PC is in a particular game.

The PCs all have to be able to go on the same adventures is a design goal. This could be the laser turret rpg or it could be D&D. Those two have mutually exclusive sets of appropriate PCs. The important bit is that they are different games with different rules for PCs. All of the PCs in either game go on the same adventures even though the PCs from different games go on different adventures.

PL is talking about a relaxed version of this constraint where the PCs can all go on some subset of adventures together but can't go on all of the same adventures. Thats pretty reasonable. There does need to be that mutual subset for all possible PCs though. If your game allows two PCs who share no potential adventures then you have a problem.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 8:01 am

They have to share the specific subset of adventures of whatever is likely to be the specific adventures actually used in the campaign. Which means that the game has to make some assumptions about what the likely adventures in a campaign are going to be. D&D characters have to be able to go into caves. Star Wars characters have to be able to leave their home planet. Champions characters have to be able to walk around in cities. And so on.

-Username17

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 8:44 am

FrankTrollman wrote:They have to share the specific subset of adventures of whatever is likely to be the specific adventures actually used in the campaign.

So... the adventurers have to be able to go on the adventures that they go on? You've stated nothing.

Which means that the game has to make some assumptions about what the likely adventures in a campaign are going to be. D&D characters have to be able to go into caves.

Indeed it does. And most of those caves are really big because they contain ogres, trolls, giants and other things larger than a horse.

It ALSO contains a great deal of potential for encounters in other places including a large amount of material for the great outdoors.

It is not unreasonable to expect any one game, even of an all human party might focus anywhere up to exclusively on caves or the outdoors.

Certainly in order to support any sort of reasonable range of variable 50-50 cave/outdoor campaign you need enough material to support some slightly more limited range of 0-100 or 100-0 cave/outdoor games.

So if you don't have enough outdoor and large cave encounters to satisfy the incredible extra large Hulk then your game, the goals you set for it and your design principles are pretty sucky.

Especially considering the D&D indoors and in caves material that actually focuses on smaller than human sized critters is actually of a somewhat smaller minority than the larger than humans sized ones.

I mean need I remind you, "Dungeons & Dragons" The game by its very opening definition is about indoor places big enough to fit fire breathing dinosaurs inside of.

baduin · Post by **baduin** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 10:03 am

The centaur war again?

http://www.sff.net/people/DoyleMacdonald/d_bride.htm

As for dragons, they always lived in dungeons and caves. They are flying snakes, you know.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_dragon