The Gaming Den

PhoneLobster wrote: You produce 4E even though it is counter to your position. You dismiss the tables in 3.0 even though they are using the exact methodology you want to apply for your own system. You ignore Feng Shui, you ignore Gurps and basically every fucking point based system ever, you dismiss the inroads 3.x made on this very point simply because it was an incomplete step away from the 2E cluster fuck, which again resembles you proposed system...

I ignore Feng Shui because I don't know the system. I actually specifically mentioned GURPS, Shadowrun and BESM, all point based.

But there's really no point arguing with you because as always, you present nothing other than vague generalizations and you actually design nothing. Not a system, not a basic procedure, not even the skeleton of a system. Instead you just totally don't even read what the other person is saying and just toss insults.

Until you've actually designed something, I'm not even going to bother talking to you anymore. Because seriously, you just make outlandish claims like "Oh yeah, my system is going to be fast." Yet, we all know that if you want to make a character like a PC in Shadowrun, GURPS, D&D3.0 (even 4E), that takes a long time. And you have yet to show me otherwise.

So I'm done with you.

Yeah, any point based system is pretty much definitionally going to take a lot of time. Far too long to make NPCs up on the fly if you want the points to come out right.

Also, the vast majority of point systems are, if they are any good at all, going to charge you points for being effective in one area of the game and charge you more points for being effective in two. That means that point systems are almost universally broken when applied to one-shot NPCs because the NPCs only come into conflict with the PCs during their one shot. So whether the Bank Guard #2 is also a master locksmith or a smooth talking persuader is pretty much meaningless if you're just having a shootout in the bank. But in a game that centers around actions other than shooting fools, that could easily double or triple his cost.

-Username17

Thymos wrote:Why does everyone think Pre-statted tables of vital NPC's and a Monster Manual isn't good enough to run things on the fly.

If you run things on the fly you can't be picky that your prestatted guy (from a list of tables provided by the developer) doesn't have breastplate, and is instead wearing scale. That's ok though because, get this, you can just tell your players that he's wearing breastplate. The guy in the table has a short sword and you said a mace? Doesn't matter.

In my opinion theres a huge difference between a number of monsters that you select from and creating a monster from various tables on the fly.

Hypothetical example: The party starts messing about with a random magic field and summoning and starts fighting a half man, half ... hippo with a ... tentacle coming out of it's left armpit that you haven't prepared. How would you run it?

I can see three ways to do it.
1: Create it using PC rules: create a character with a number of templates, rolling or averaging the numbers. This could take a long time. It really needs pre planning to do this.
2: Use an existing monster, slightly changing it if needs be. Fast, but often there won't be a suitable monster and changing can break CR.
3: Create a monster made up basic abilities from a list of NPC monster abilities and stats by CR. Not all of the stats are needed at the start so if you keep these tables out you can probably start using the monster faster than it would take to find a suitable monster from a Monster Manual.

From your descriptions you would find the closest monster to it. Errr.... yeah. Good luck with that. Especially for beginner DMs.
But lets say that you use a Minotaur since thats another half man half animal. Firstly its unsuitable: hippos are much, much scarier than bulls. They can charge much faster, are much tougher and stronger and can last a long time underwater. I wouldn't be surprised if you added a poison tot he bite. So, it needs to be CR 8 rather than CR 4. Oh no! You need to add Fighter or Barbarian levels to make it suitable which takes a while.
But what about just adding some numbers? Double the hitpoints and add some numbers. Wrong. PCs get new abilities so it needs new abillities to actually be CR 8. And thats still not getting started on the tentacle.

Heres the way I'd like to do it:
You spend 10 seconds deciding on the type of monster and the basic tactics, getting out a piece of paper to make notes. You describe the hippoman coming out of the river towards you. The Ranger decides to fire an arrow at it. You look up on the table for a suitable AC and DR, taking a second or two longer than otherwise. If it hits you find hitpoints on the table and write down the new hitpoints. Then you look up the initiative and start the combat rounds. As you go through the combat you find out new information from the tables.

The important part of this is that you don't need to stop the game for 2 minutes to find a suitable monster and check that it can be used, writing down any differences. The game can continue, with 5-10 second longer pauses during the combat. However, the monsters could end up simplistic and additions made during the combat could make previous happenings ridiculous.

This is only a basic overview and is likely to have imbalances so pre-generating monsters and using stock characters is better, but when using monsters that haven't been prepared this would take less time which is a very good thing if you don't want to take a break before every combat.

PhoneLobster wrote:So rolling a single dice that gives me a rather clear average result of 2.5 in a range of 1-4, and simply estimating a value of "3" as a reasonably close to average result from a range of 1-4, is an "order of magnitude" in difference (especially interesting language considering you are generating results in the exact same range).

Yes, because arbitrary DM ass pull is the same as a prewritten rule.


Hands up anyone other than PL who agrees. Lets see those hands, own up.

Parthenon wrote:Hypothetical example: The party starts messing about with a random magic field and summoning and starts fighting a half man, half ... hippo with a ... tentacle coming out of it's left armpit that you haven't prepared. How would you run it?

In 4e, look for a level 8 brute-type - there's a few of those in the MM. Drop anything inappropriate, and add a Reach 2 trip attack as a minor action (p42 vs Ref, hit: prone).

In my ideal game, I'd press a key on my lap top, and select
* level: 8
* role: brute
* origin: far realm
* attack: poison (minor)
* special: grappling
review the auto-generated stats and tactics, make mental adjustments (like underwater breathing) and run it.

In Feng-Shui:
- Select an archetype (Abomination)
- Select attribute increases (Body+5, Reflexes+2)
- Recalculate skills due to attribute increases
- Select skill raises (Martial Arts +2, Info: Cooking +6)
- pick create shticks (Iron Grip, Inevitable Comeback, Foul Spew, Poison)

Done

Draco_Argentum wrote:Yes, because arbitrary DM ass pull is the same as a prewritten rule.

No, taking a 1-4 off screen damage roll and declaring it dealt "10,000!" HP damage, that's a number out of your ass. Even 5, isn't a number within the bounds of the same rules system.

But anything actually between 1-4, especially 2 or 3, that is operating within the limits of the same rules system and simply replacing the off screen rolls with assumed averages or reasonable possibilities.

I mean what the hell are you suggesting is the alternative here? Off screen events WILL be arbitrary to some degree, rolling for them is quite unacceptable, arbitrarily deciding the results within the bounds of potential results that couldhave been generated by formal resolution within the normal rules is the CLOSEST you can get to determining the results of off screen events with any kind of fairness, consistency and utility. And it gains those qualities exactly because you are deriving those results based on the same rules system as the on screen events.

Pulling "3" out of your ass is still pulling a number out of your ass. It may be from the same range and it may be the most probable number or average number or whatever it is you need, but its still just as arbitrarily ass pulled.

Parthenon: Your kidding right?

You obviously made this portal. You should have made whatever custom monster that was going to come out ahead of time. If your stupid enough not to have made this ahead of time (in anticipation that players were going to do this, even if you didn't have it planned that they would mess with this), then grab a Monster that is of the right CR that doesn't violate expectations too much. Your stupidity is costing you the luxury of having the perfect monster. So first grab the right CR, and then find an appropriate Monster, There are tables in the back of the MM listing monsters by CR I believe.

Your finding the monster to substitute backwards. Your suggesting we find something fluffwise that's similar. What you should be doing is finding out what your desired challenge is, and then find the monster from that challenge list that mechanically represents your monster best with the fewest violations of what expected abilities are.

Not to mention you have no excuse for doing the smart thing and having a monster in the MM, or something that can perfectly use a statblock in the MM come out instead of what the table tells you to.

Murtak wrote:In Feng-Shui:
- Select an archetype (Abomination)
- Select attribute increases (Body+5, Reflexes+2)
- Recalculate skills due to attribute increases
- Select skill raises (Martial Arts +2, Info: Cooking +6)
- pick create shticks (Iron Grip, Inevitable Comeback, Foul Spew, Poison)

Done

My main argument against the Feng-Shui system is that Feng-Shui doesn't seem to be a game many of us play, and I rarely see it cited as being an awesome system.

Now I don't know what the drawbacks to Feng-Shui are, but I figure they must exist, otherwise we'd all be playing it.

So while the system does seem simple enough for NPC design, I'm curious if it creates fulfilling PCs as well. Because the stat block you just listed actually seems fine for a monster or NPC, but for a PC I think people would get bored of it rapidly.

Feng Shui has a character development system that makes you want to become an hero. It creates some of the best one-shot adventures and even two-parters that I have been involved in, but people don't really play campaigns of it. Nor should they.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:Feng Shui has a character development system that makes you want to become an hero. It creates some of the best one-shot adventures and even two-parters that I have been involved in, but people don't really play campaigns of it. Nor should they.

So what's the problems with it?

It just doesn't scale well at higher skill levels?

Like why couldn't we just slap an XP system on it and play that way?

It's weird. The way your create characters is incredibly awesome.

It's also really bad for advancing them.

It has an xp system where you buy ability increases. It's also really hackneyed, and there really isn't much you can do about it because of the character creation.

I'd honestly suggest downloading a pdf or buying it. You will have a hard time finding a better system for oneshots.

Seconded. Character advancement in Feng Shui is atrociously bad. I'm sure you can still have great campaigns, but characters will advance at visible different rate, without rhyme or reason and your local cyborg will eventually flip out, again without reason other than "he's a cyborg".

As to why Feng Shui isn't played - lack of material would be my guess. A couple of years ago I actively tried to get something, anything else other than the base book for about 6 months. No go. Nothing, not even a DM screen. And that leaves you with either creating the campaign world from scratch (or the from 20 or so pages of fluff in the base book) or replaying action movies. Not that there's anything wrong with action movies, but those rarely last longer than a couple of sessions.

Eh, I've ran a Feng Shui game that lasted multiple sessions. It went fine. The game system worked perfectly.

Then again, we didn't really have any character advancement to be honest, and the players were all really casual.

Would it be possible to just alter the Feng-Shui character advancement system so that it's more balanced?

I mean, if there's nothing inherently wrong with the Feng-Shui base combat mechanics, it shouldn't be too hard to just alter the advancement system.

Even if the advancement system is complex, it doesn't matter because you're only using that for PCs. So char advancement can be slower than character creation.