Good design principles

[Draco_Argentum]

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

Somewhat agree. I can't imagine a Starwars PC who can't get on a spaceship. I can imagine a Starwars character who can't pilot a starfighter. Its a question of how integral to the setting a given adventure location/type is.

[IGTN]

Somewhat agree. I can't imagine a Starwars PC who can't get on a spaceship. I can imagine a Starwars character who can't pilot a starfighter. Its a question of how integral to the setting a given adventure location/type is.

If you're going to bput space battles in your game, every character needs to be able to participate in them. A star wars PC who can't pilot a starfighter needs to be able to operate a turret, or repair a shield generator, or something, during the battle.

[Username17]

Somewhat agree. I can't imagine a Starwars PC who can't get on a spaceship. I can imagine a Starwars character who can't pilot a starfighter. Its a question of how integral to the setting a given adventure location/type is.

If you're going to bput space battles in your game, every character needs to be able to participate in them. A star wars PC who can't pilot a starfighter needs to be able to operate a turret, or repair a shield generator, or something, during the battle.

Right. Remember that the PC is R2-D2. C3PO is cohort and wouldn't be a playable character.

-Username17

[CatharzGodfoot]

Right. Remember that the PC is R2-D2. C3PO is cohort and wouldn't be a playable character.

-Username17

Nah, R2 is the DM's self-insertion NPC. C3P0 is (as you indicate) R2's cohort.

[Guyr Adamantine]

Nah, R2 is the DM's self-insertion NPC. C3P0 is (as you indicate) R2's cohort.

Does that mean the DM wanted Padme Amidala to "shine" him?

[Maxus]

Right. Remember that the PC is R2-D2. C3PO is cohort and wouldn't be a playable character.

-Username17

Nah, R2 is the DM's self-insertion NPC. C3P0 is (as you indicate) R2's cohort.

And here I am, grinning and getting an urge to start reading Darths and Droids over again.

[Caedrus]

In-game behavior you want is incentivized, behavior you don't want isn't.

It really is amazing how much people miss this basic one.

[Draco_Argentum]

Another point for the NPCs should use PC rules debate. The chunking discussion applies here too. If the DM has too many options in a combat from having to play a group of complex NPCs they will be less effective. This means that the encounter difficulty is almost certainly going to be less than if the optimal strategy had been used. In other words balance is harder to achieve.

[PhoneLobster]

Another point for the NPCs should use PC rules debate. The chunking discussion applies here too. If the DM has too many options...

But which side of the debate does it fall on?

Complexity is an issue, but what is more complex? Using a the same set of abilities for everything or using two parrallel sets of abilities and doubling the entire ability set that needs to be learned and used. To the point that the GM has to understand both the Fire Sword ability that one of the PCs has AND the Fire Sword ability one of the NPCs has?

Indeed though I can argue complexity against a split parallel system with relative ease (you know, double the rules and all) arguing the reverse is harder.

Because even if you use the same ability sets for NPCs doesn't mean you give NPCs the same amount of abilities from those sets.

So, for the good design methodology of reducing complexity, standardised rules win. Who could have imagined that writing and using an entire separate and parallel system might have been more complex?

[RandomCasualty2]

Complexity is an issue, but what is more complex? Using a the same set of abilities for everything or using two parrallel sets of abilities and doubling the entire ability set that needs to be learned and used. To the point that the GM has to understand both the Fire Sword ability that one of the PCs has AND the Fire Sword ability one of the NPCs has?

Yeah, in many cases you may want to standardize rules, especially when a power is so complex you don't want to write it out twice (like scrying). However, for simple stuff you may want to just make up your own crap, similar to how 4E does its monster's combat abilities. Mainly because the space needed to write those abilities is small, and it gives monsters their own unique flavor (if done right anyway).

The problem with complete standardization is that it starts to increases a monster's complexity and preparation time. PC rules are often concerned with <i>How</i> and <i>Why</i>. The DM doesn't really have much time to worry about that, he just needs to know <i>What</i> and <i>How much</i>. Once you start handing out feats to monsters, skill points and proficiencies to monsters, then you're basically making monsters like PCs and getting into that whole preparation nightmare. And that's more complex in that it's time consuming.

Basically the idea is that a monster shouldn't have substats in the way that a PC does. A monster just has a bunch of final numbers. We don't really care where his +15 to claws comes from. We don't care if it's all from stength and BaB or if he took weapon focus, or if he has a +2 amulet of mighty clawing. We just care that he's a CR 7 challenge and that his final numbers are acceptable for a CR 7 challenge.

[PhoneLobster]

However, for simple stuff you may want to just make up your own crap

Except that almost all of your post just plain isn't true.

We have really two potential design goals the system could already be meeting for broader reasons.

Either the system is running nicely in line with a minimal design complexity principle and the character generation system is already fast and simple so using it for NPCs is still fast and simple.

Or the system is meeting a certain level of complexity determined to be required for engaging and detailed game play in which case HELL YEAH we care where the components of some +15 bonus comes from cause I happen to have a -15 Natural Armor curse or some crap and it damn well matters.

Also pulling monster stats utterly out of your ass can fuck off as a design principle, it is bad in principle and should go away and die. It took some pretty hard core killing to the cheers of the international gaming community when 2E became obsolete, but clearly someone neglected to cut its head off and ram garlic up its festering ass.

You get two options that are good, "same system" or "different system", "no system" is not an option, "no system" is stupid

[RandomCasualty2]

Either the system is running nicely in line with a minimal design complexity principle and the character generation system is already fast and simple so using it for NPCs is still fast and simple.

PC character generation generally has to be more complex, unless the system is very rules lite. While it's certainly possible to write a very lite rules set which lets you create characters fast and basically amounts to "DM pulls shit out of his ass to explain things", generally we want a more complex set of rules.

Otherwise NPCs using a PC system are not feasable. Choosing feats is a very deliberate and precise act. And to do so, you need to consider all your capabilities and what feats would be best for your fighting style. It's not something a DM is going to be able to do on the fly. Similarly, even just choosing what wizard spells you have prepared is a chore for a high level NPC. It just can't be done in a short period of time while also keeping that NPC up to his expected challenge level.

You just won't be able to pick through a massive list of abilities on the fly and that's precisely what you need to do if you use a system where NPCs are generated as PCs.

And really if I can't design a quick on the fly, NPC in a couple of minutes, then it's too slow and needs to come up with a better way of handling DM improvisation.

Or the system is meeting a certain level of complexity determined to be required for engaging and detailed game play in which case HELL YEAH we care where the components of some +15 bonus comes from cause I happen to have a -15 Natural Armor curse or some crap and it damn well matters.

We may care if there are different mechanics. Like we care what a monster's touch AC might be. But as far as individual components in his main AC, we probably don't really care. So long as we have the information to have it interact with the mechanics that's all we really need.

Also pulling monster stats utterly out of your ass can fuck off as a design principle, it is bad in principle and should go away and die. It took some pretty hard core killing to the cheers of the international gaming community when 2E became obsolete, but clearly someone neglected to cut its head off and ram garlic up its festering ass.

It's not pulling it out of your ass. It's basing it on a table based on CR. And CR is seriously all you care about for monster stats. It's actually a much more balanced system than building monsters as PCs, because that has no guarantee that you'll produce something balanced, and requires much more planning, min/maxing and synergy. Something a DM rarely has time to do on the fly.

You want to look at monsters as challenges, not monsters as characters. And we care exactly how much they challenge the PCs. And that means setting the final numbers as a hard limit. I don't care where it's damage comes from. Maybe its fire breath, or maybe it swings a sword, or maybe its ass is a gas compression cannon that fires hardened turds... I really don't care. What I do care about is how much damage and what effects its attacks can inflict when its all said and done.

4E actually didn't have it too bad conceptually. The problem is that they left the actual status effects a monster can dish out to be pulled out of the designer's ass, which is bad. But it was still better than the 3E system, which was slow and imbalanced as hell.

And yeah, I know your big thing is limiting the DM's power, but in this case you seriously want the DM to have power to improvise, otherwise the players lose out big time, because every adventure turns into a railroad. If the DM doesn't have stats for it and can't create stats for that situation, then you as players literally cannot take that option.

So when you say "I attack the nobleman and his guards." The DM literally may not be able to let you do that, because he hasn't statted them out yet, and there's no way he can create stats on the fly. So basically the only option is for the game to either go full stop while he writes stats or for him to tell you that your PC can't do that. There are literally no other options.

Making NPC stats on the fly is fucking important as hell for game flow, and if you suffer a little bit of imbalance for it, then so be it. If it means letting the DM pull a few things out of his ass, then so be it. Because the ability to improvise is that fucking important.

Without it, you are doomed to be railroaded.

[PhoneLobster]

Look I get it you somehow simultaneously worship at the alter of GM is god while trying to take away tools he can use to represent interesting stories.

You LIKE the 4E monster system where the monsters are all just red video game dots with no real stats or equipment that make random drops and have no utility abilities and no functional re-use of their abilities for increasing the PC creation toolkit.

But it is a bad design principle. As evidenced by their attitude toward all those unique abilities pulled out of asses. It is a step backwards and away from good design and strong reliable tools for enjoyable game play.

4E is the wrong example to try and call for your side of this argument, everything about the supposed balanced monsters is wrong from minion hillarity to padded sumo to missing stats to questionable interaction with the only semi-compatible PC rules set to the mystery equipment happy time the lot.

Like I said "No System" is a stupid option, I didn't think I needed to say "A System That Fails In Virtually Every Respect" is a stupider one.

[Murtak]

There is an important point to what RC says though.

- NPC generation needs to be fast.

If it isn't, GMs will be forced to cheat and just wing it - some will do it once a month, others once a minute, but even with hundreds of pregenerated NPCs in reserve, sometimes you need a new NPC right now. Of course there should still be a system you use to create those NPCs, and I would vastly prefer for that system to be the same you use to generate PCs - but a fast system is absolutely imperative.

[Username17]

But it is a bad design principle. As evidenced by their attitude toward all those unique abilities pulled out of asses.

No it isn't. It's an indifferent design principle. Possibly even good, depending on how it is used. Standardization is advantageous, streamlining is advantageous. Protagonists and major NPCs need lots of detail work on their story details. Laser turrets and lions in cages don't.

Let's consider a system like Champions, GURPS, Warp Cult, World of Darkness or Ars Magica - one where characters have traits that they have to get in order to make them interesting. A superhero has to get themselves relatives or a secret identity that can be threatened, a magician has to select various fairy curses, a vampire has to choose some personal moral failings that the beast can use to undermine their humanity. And so on and so forth. Generating that shit takes time, and when you're talking about a thug with a club that is part of a group of five other thugs with clubs that work for Lady Fantasma you don't give a flying fuck. Skipping that entire segment of "character generation" reduces the standardization somewhat, but you're being deliberately obtuse if you don't see the obvious and ginormous benefit of treating those minor NPCs differently from PCs in that manner.

This isn't some obscure and contingent rule in one game or another that ought to be scrapped anyway, this is the entire concept of "character traits" and I only stopped at five game systems because that happens to be a good chunking number for discussion, not because I even scratched the surface of games that use that kind of rubric. Obviously, it is possible for me to make incredibly long run on sentences on this subject, but I doubt it really advances the point more than I already have.

While I do care to an extent why a tigron has a +15 bonus to claw attacks (such that the game includes methods to negate or replace specific bonus types, the effects of such methods on the tigron should be knowable), I don't care if the tigron feels abandoned by his family or really doesn't like rainy weather. Those kinds of personal details just aren't important because the tigrons are pretty minor throw away monsters, and it is a waste of my limited time to put effort into generating details for these enemies that will never end up mattering.

Main characters get flashbacks explaining why they have the abilities that they do. When the seven red scorpion warriors show up they just start swinging poison blades with minimal or no explanation. That's just the way it works. The game and the story are about the player characters. We cannot, and would not want to provide as much character detail on the NPCs.

So no. Using exactly the same rules for PCs and NPCs is not a good idea. NPCs have a attenuated position in the story, and they should have access to attenuated rulesets to position them there.

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

Protagonists and major NPCs need lots of detail work on their story details. Laser turrets and lions in cages don't.

Once again you take some wierd fantasy of equating fluff work with rules work when NEITHER is required for the laser turrets and such and demand that by using the same ability sets to describe laser turrets and characters that turrets MUST have similarly large sub sets of selected abilities.

Same rules set, standardised abilities, does NOT require you to use the same amount of abilities. When a character requires less description a well designed rules set, by definition, uses less of its rules to describe it. You don't need a second rules set to do that indeed adding a second rules set to do that, bloats your ruleset

Having a "shoot laser bolt" ability that is shared by Hans Solo and the Laser Turret X921-43 does NOT require that Laser Turret X921-43 get it's own trilogy and funny haired princess love interest, but you literally fabricated an entire post moaning about exactly that ridiculous scenario! I mean HOW many paragraphs did you wax poetic about Trigon emotions and ninja flashbacks?

You are being a deliberately idiotic dick again Frank so kindly fuck off if you are going to have another of your moments where Centaurs make you cry because they broke your fragile imaginary fantasies.

[Username17]

Once again you take some wierd fantasy of equating fluff work with rules work

Because they are not different things. Your claim that you can seriously just ignore the game and play a different game without changing the game is just ridiculous.

-Username17

[name_here]

Oh, and then there's also the bit where NPCs can take negative traits that don't matter, like a random guard who takes "You suck at fighting ICE", so as to pour more points into something he will actually USE.

[Thymos]

You are straw manning the argument for building PC's and NPC's the same way.

No one is (or should be, if they are they're stupid) that minor NPC's need to be fully fleshed out and have every aspect of them statted up.

I'm personally suggesting that there be a difference between Developers and DMs. Developers create the monsters roughly (not exactly) using PC rules, and also create tables to help DM's run things on the fly (I consider this pregeneration since the stats are already there).

DM's should have the rules available to them to create the monsters the way the Developers do, and they should also have the tables to use when they need to pull NPC's out of their ass.

Frank, fluff and crunch should line up, but they aren't the same damn thing. It's stupid when in your characters background he uses an ability he doesn't have (he should probably be smacked for this too). That has no impact on the rules though, regardless of how stupid it is. We just want fluff and rules to line up so we can have verisimilitude.

Tables make for the fastest NPC generation. I also consider this to be pregenerated, but you guys might not agree. Either way, it's easy to prestat what a barbarian might have for bonuses every level, then put them all into a table. Wait a second, 3.x fucking does this. In the DM's guide. I've used this table, and it works a hell of a lot fucking better than actually pretending to use "fast" rules to create a monster on the fly (cuz when you make shit up, your probably not using rules).

I like one thing that he pointed out. No rules is a stupid concept. I like the idea of developers roughly basing NPC's off of PC's because 1. PC's should have the most attention as far as balance goes, and 2. it should keep NPC's in check (no glass jaws, or worse, the HP bloat of 4e).

Now I'm completely in favor of substituting PC abilities with NPC abilities that would be balanced for a PC to have, even if they can't have them because they are inappropriate for PC's. Even more oddly, I'm in favor of making certain bosses act like multiple characters (like dragons), to make them tougher.

Puzzle monsters are also a different beast. Let's not bring them up.

[Roy]

...More centaur bullshit? What the fuck? Why bring that shit back into it?

[Username17]

You are straw manning the argument for building PC's and NPC's the same way.

No, I'm not.

No one is (or should be, if they are they're stupid) that minor NPC's need to be fully fleshed out and have every aspect of them statted up.

If they are suggesting that minor NPCs don't need to be fully statted up or don't need to every minor detail fleshed out then they are by definition saying that the PCs and NPCs are going to be using different rules. If there is a rule for creating a character's abilities and you don't use it for Rocket Grunt #5, then you are using different rules for one character and another. It's definitional.

And as even you admit, the alternative of not having different rules for PCs and NPCs is stupid. I think the argument you actually want to make is that abilities should not function differently just because a character happens to be an NPC when they use them. And that's mostly true. Not entirely, since of course you're not going to keep track of long term effects of power usages by Rocket Grunt #5.

...More centaur bullshit? What the fuck? Why bring that shit back into it?

No idea. My hypothesis at this point is that Phone Lobster is trying to make me a liar by tricking me into discussing his horse fucking fantasies with him after I promised to never ever do so.

-Username17

[Murtak]

No one is (or should be, if they are they're stupid) that minor NPC's need to be fully fleshed out and have every aspect of them statted up.

If they are suggesting that minor NPCs don't need to be fully statted up or don't need to every minor detail fleshed out then they are by definition saying that the PCs and NPCs are going to be using different rules. If there is a rule for creating a character's abilities and you don't use it for Rocket Grunt #5, then you are using different rules for one character and another. It's definitional.

Frank, if you write up a D&D wizard and fighter one uses different character creation rules than the other. Heck, strictly speaking, if you build two different fighters they use differing rules. By that definition you can not built more than one character using the same rules.

[RandomCasualty2]

There is an important point to what RC says though.

- NPC generation needs to be fast.

If it isn't, GMs will be forced to cheat and just wing it - some will do it once a month, others once a minute, but even with hundreds of pregenerated NPCs in reserve, sometimes you need a new NPC right now. Of course there should still be a system you use to create those NPCs, and I would vastly prefer for that system to be the same you use to generate PCs - but a fast system is absolutely imperative.

Yeah speed is much more important than having universal systems. I'm really not actively against a system that makes NPCs as PCs so long as I can stat up an NPC in a couple of minutes without flipping extensively through the book. I shouldn't have to add up points or buy items or do anything excessively mathy. Because once you've made it so you can't generate NPCs on the fly, regardless of how elegant the system is, or how great it is that you happen to use the same system for both NPCs and PCs, it's a matter of selling your dick for condom money, because the system has lost a great deal of potential flexibility.

Now I generally say that I'm opposed to using the same system because I don't think it's possible for your to have a PC design system that is both extremely fast and also detailed enough to produce a variety of interesting characters and abilities. It's possible that someone may prove me wrong on that, but right now, I just don't feel that such a thing is possible.

And even if you did have that system, there are still abilities that just don't make sense for NPCs. If any of the PC characters have abilities based on resource depletion, like daily spells or what not, then the NPC paradigm gets all screwed up when you use them and NPCs get much more benefit because they can go nova with no worry as to the next combat. Most of the time for them, there won't be a next combat, and even if there is, you dont' care if the PCs happen to be dead. So even if you used the same basic system, NPCs would have to get fewer deletable abilities. So in effect, you'd need a "PC wizard" and "NPC wizard" class at minimum. Otherwise the NPC wizard ends up being more powerful simply because he doesn't have to worry about resource conservation.

Now you can get around that too by just having no resource depletion beyond an encounter. Then PCs and NPCs have the same concerns, because everyone is on the level of a single encounter.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Great, so we want a character creation system that's modular enough that you can do only the parts you care about ('lazy evaluation'). Even then, it would be nice if portions you thought you wouldn't care about could be evaluated quickly, and if doing so doesn't require that you change parts of the character that you've already determined.

Another important issue is that although it's OK for PCs to become more complex as they increase in level, having the same thing happen with NPCs is bad, because you don't want NPC creation time to increase as a function of level. You've already got more to worry about what with more complex characters and their heightened capabilities.

4e didn't have it entirely wrong. If an NPC is purely a combat encounter, it should have only combat abilities. If it's a high-level NPC which (as a PC) would have a fuckton of combat abilities, it should only have a useful subset of those abilities (unless you can pick them very quickly, and keep track of them). Similarly, you don't need a shopkeeper or diplomat to have combat powers unless you have 'that kind of party'.


All that side, what would be a good amount of time for the creation of a single combat challenge by a reasonably proficient DM? 30 seconds? 1 minute? 5 minutes? I'm leaning towards extreme speed (30 seconds), but I'm not sure if that's realistic. Do we care as much about how long it takes to whip up a noncombat encounter?

[RandomCasualty2]

All that side, what would be a good amount of time for the creation of a single combat challenge by a reasonably proficient DM? 30 seconds? 1 minute? 5 minutes? I'm leaning towards extreme speed (30 seconds), but I'm not sure if that's realistic. Do we care as much about how long it takes to whip up a noncombat encounter?

I would say creating a single monster should take about 1-2 minutes. So if you've got a complex encounter with 3-4 monster types, you're looking at around 4-8 minutes. That way at absolute worst, the DM has held the game for only a five minute break if he has to prepare an encounter on the fly, or a particularly fast DM may be able to make the stats on demand.

As for noncombat, I don't think there's going to be any real system for a noncombat encounter, as most of the noncombat encounters tend to deal more with descriptions and personalities of NPCs, and take storytelling ability and creativity rather than just rules savvyness. Once you have a basic idea for a noncombat encounter, it's pretty easy.