Fantasy Heartbreakers -- Why So Damn Many

[Neurosis]

'm not saying that making a game that doesn't even look like D&D is impossible to do, I'm just saying that it's a lot less risky for both the game devs and audience to harken back to something that people are already familiar with.

I think you're right, and it makes me cringe that I'm just about to release a game, looking to sell it, that resembles D&D neither in setting nor mechanics (although of course there are superficial resemblances to D&D in both, but I can't play those up without being very dishonest).

[Aryxbez]

"Fantasy" is an impossibly broad design space. It includes the Hobbit, Alice in Wonderland, the Black Company, the Iliad, Abhorsen, Discworld, Malaz, Hogwarts, Llankhmar, Cthulhu and the Wheel of Time. Any game that deliberately includes all of them will end up even more confused than DnD. I much prefer there to be different games for different styles of fantasy, so I can have grave injuries that take weeks to heal while armies march over frozen plains in one campaign and wizards duking it out with polymorph shenanigans in another campaign. Put both of them in the same game and you end up with the same broken mess that DnD gives you.

Well, I can't speak for all of those sources, but sounds like decent sum of them are just low level adventures. D&D already could encompass those, just simply put within the 1-5th power level range, and can just move up from there. Course, not saying it should be to omni-concept Tome Wizard extremes (that should be dialed down a bit), but I think you can certainly make the 1-20th power equivalent work. As for those games with overbearingly low level capability, high lethality, there's dozens of games like that I'm sure.

It was discovered that Phone Lobster and I basically cannot agree on design principles and it is pointless for us to even attempt to add to the same game. The ideal number of people working on a project in any serious way is about five. Too few and it never gets done, too many and you can't make progress because of design disagreement. Even then, it's not enough to simply grab five motivated people who can do basic math, they have to be motivated people who can do basic math who agree on what the final product is supposed to look like.

-Username17

Least it's not suggesting that such an undertaking isn't impossible, that would be all too depressing on so many levels (enough to make the Den feel somewhat pointless). I guess PhoneLobster would be an invaluable member to this theoretical Five Man Band, if guys could work together otherwise? Also in regards to "basic Math" hope it's not some of the threads on here, that at times just go over my head, the thread about "making the numbers work" was simple enough though. Also, don't RPG companies have bit more than five guys working on a project? If so, perhaps that's part of why they turn out bad...

So it sounds like to me, mostly here just need to find people who are willing to agree to the overall vision, so for sake of putting it out there. Then, later on, they can add their own personal stuff they wanted in the project, or hell, just own batch of houserules for their private games.

Totally want to see this happen, wonder if such a project was going on, if ye guys would make threads on here about any rules, want us fellow posters to give thoughts on and so forth.

[Murtak]

"Fantasy" is an impossibly broad design space. It includes the Hobbit, Alice in Wonderland, the Black Company, the Iliad, Abhorsen, Discworld, Malaz, Hogwarts, Llankhmar, Cthulhu and the Wheel of Time. Any game that deliberately includes all of them will end up even more confused than DnD. I much prefer there to be different games for different styles of fantasy, so I can have grave injuries that take weeks to heal while armies march over frozen plains in one campaign and wizards duking it out with polymorph shenanigans in another campaign. Put both of them in the same game and you end up with the same broken mess that DnD gives you.

Well, I can't speak for all of those sources, but sounds like decent sum of them are just low level adventures. D&D already could encompass those, just simply put within the 1-5th power level range, and can just move up from there.

That is both way too too simplified and completely wrong.

The Hobbit features both bumbling little men and a fully grown dragon capable of casting enchantments. That dragon is killed in a single shot by a mere ranger, with a reuseable arrow of slaying. So in DnD terms you have a bunch of at most level 3 characters, a dragon with a challenge rating solidly in the teens and a ranger with an artifact-level weapon. If you printed this adventure it would need hilarious amounts of railroading and handwaving to work out at all.

I am not even going to comment on Alice in Wonderland, because that story can't be told a DnD adventure, much less actually be played with mechanics.

The Black Company on the other hand has arcane magic that fits into DnD-land well enough, except it clearly works of fatigue instead of spell slots. However DnD's divine magic does not exist at all. Healing and buffs in general are very rare. Oh, and the defensive magics of real mages seem to be on the scale of epic level rituals. Magic items on the other hand are seemingly limited to transportation. This too does not seem to fit into DnD mechanics at all.

That's three fantasy classics, not one of which fits into DnD, even though the individual parts of the story might.

[Aryxbez]

Well individual parts working can sound good enough to me, with such adventures usually trying to run an adaption than playing it straight.

Apparently Alice in Wonderland isn't doable in RPG manner, so doesn't matter anyway. As for the Hobbit, could always be a dragon with a CR not in the teens? Unless have some kind of rule where hidden stealth attacks auto-crit Fallout 3 style, then imagine it wouldn't really work in any RPG anyway. If you lowered the level of the Dragon, sounds like it'd be easier to one shot the creature with an artifact + infinite Arrow of Slaying.

Example as you mentioned of individual parts working, a campaign with no divine magic, and possible those "epic style" rituals could just fit in with pre-existing spells, or they have large casting times they're just in the realm of fiat anyway. Unless it's truly a world where fighters don't get nice things, which case maybe it's just high level 3rd edition played with fighters.

Also, which seemed failed to make clear, was that in the Fantasy Heartbreaker, could just group those kinds of fantasy in with the low level range. True enough that won't be able to fit "everything" from fantasy sources in there, but if it can be mostly adapted. like to think that's good enough to tell stories with eh?

[Murtak]

Look, these stories flat out don't work with DnD mechanics. In fact most stories do not. This is not surprising because most stories can not transplanted into other settings and still work. I only listed a few examples and then picked the first three and none of them work in DnD.

Sure, you can just pick a dragon that is not really dangerous for the Hobbit. Except now that he is not dangerous we have no clue how managed to defeat an entire city of armed dwarves or how no one killed him for his hoard. In DnD terms he needs a significant level advantage or he is toast. He also has a fear aura, spellcasting and does enough damage with his basic attacks to damage a mountain. Judging from his description he is a solid fit for a standard DnD red dragon (except his hoard being too big for 3E; works fine for 2E though). But then he gets taken out by a single arrow. DnD can explain that too - Arrows of Slaying work fine, except of course their chance to kill a dragon is laughable and they don't return. But that part sort of works. What flat out does not is the massive power discrepancies. High level wizards and adult dragons in the same stories as giant spiders and worgs? Anyone trying to sell this as a DnD adventure would be ridiculed. And this is one of the stories that fit DnD best.

The Black Company is much worse. Basic combat could probably work with DnD mechanics - nothing too fancy in the books. If you just remove healing magic from the campaign (along with healing items, potions and the like) you can have that gritty campaign feeling. You will probably have to use some homebrew wound system, but that is not too big of a change so far. Casters however won't work. Black Company casters definitely do not run on spell slots and in DnD terms they seem to have high level abilities only. Magic Missiles or False Life are out. Try Hide Life, Monstrous Regeneration, Magic Jar and Banishment. Even the lower level wizards of the company seem to have a neverending supply of Major Image and Mind Blank, and they are repeatedly described as minor talents. On the other hand every wizard only knows a few select spells and can be caught helpless. Oh, also no magic items for anyone. The only way you are going to fit that into DnD is by rewriting the entire magic system from scratch.

Since you dismissed Alice in Wonderland, lets just move in the list - take the Iliad instead. Ancient Heroes, epic battles, the gods entering the fray - hey, DnD sucks for this story. Having your heroes go through a squad of lesser men without breaking a sweat is easy enough of course. Achilles invincibility could be a template or magic item, no worries there. But DnD has nothing that works for dramatic duels. And directly involving gods is a death sentence for anyone at all concerned with armies of mortals. So basically you can tell the Iliad in DnD if you only allow fighters, cut out the part with the gods and are fine with combat consisting of a lot of rolling basic attacks.

Abhorsen is the next in the list. To make this work at all you need to scrap DnD cosmology. Then you write up a system with mechanics for the different layers of the river of death. And then you shelve it, because necromancy is off limits to almost everyone. Then you do the same for your magic system, because you need a system that works off fatigue and casting implements rather than spell slots and ingredients. And then you give some low level magic and magic items to everyone. Oh, and then there is the other world, where technology works, but magic does not. Except at the borders. That is going to need mechanics. The good news is, DnD basic combat system and DnD spell effects themselves should work out fine. You can probably get by with rewriting half of the classes, a quarter of the magic system and of course basically the entire background needs to go.

I am going to skip Discworld because no doubt you are going to dismiss that one as unplayable too.

Malaz then. Lets see. Notable features: anyone can become a god. Major conflicts are settled with armies. Even the most powerful beings go down to coordinated assaults, but at the same time individual fights are incredibly onesided against such beings. Right there DnD is out. DnD is built on the core assumption that as you level up you can waste entire armies of formerly challenging enemies. This breaks pretty much every malazan story ever. But even ignoring this we have tons of issues with these stories. First off, while the classic dumb melee fighter exists, in this setting is unbelievably tough and can shrug off both crippling injuries and all sorts of spells. Fair enough, we just rewrite some of the basic classes. They could use an upgrade anyway. Next, most casters get their energy from a specific plane and their powers are tied to that plane. There goes the entire magic system (again). But most importantly the entire series focuses on the clash of armies - and DnD has no mass combat system, let alone a system that integrates individual combat and mass combat.



And this is why it is perfectly normal to write a new RPG. Any system that can handle the Hobbit well is unlikely to work out for Malaz and vice versa. It is not an issue of high level vs low level - the basic requirements for the game are incompatible. And this is a large part of what is wrong with DnD. DnD tries to cover everything and ends up contradicting itself. Frankly I suspect that it only works out because it was one of the first systems and people are used to just ignore large parts of the system by now. But the sheer scope of the game is silly really. Have you looked at the number of planes? At the sheer number of demon classifications? At the unbelievable variety of dragons? Chromatic dragons, metallic dragons, planar dragons, gem dragons, undead dragons, dragonnes, half-dragons, wyverns and at least half a dozen humanoid races supposedly descended from dragons, not counting those from Krynn. How many ggods are there? How many spells does a first level cleric has access to? I can't even tell you how many pantheons
exist in the Forgottem Realms. By now DnD's design space is completely untractable, in both mechanics and setting. It makes a fine case for demonstrating the issues with writing the One True Fantasy RPG. Speaking for myself I vastly prefer having different systems for different stories. Cthulhu and the Hobbit are hard to fit into the same game and I doubt I would enjoy it if someone managed to.

[tenuki]

*applauds*

[hogarth]

Look, these stories flat out don't work with DnD mechanics. In fact most stories do not.

Indeed. The only stories that D&D can tell are D&D stories, and most stories aren't D&D stories.

And this is why it is perfectly normal to write a new RPG. Any system that can handle the Hobbit well is unlikely to work out for Malaz and vice versa.

But what usually happens (in my experience) is that someone tries to write a system that can handle The Hobbit and they end up more towards the D&D end of the spectrum. Which is not really surprising, if you consider that most novels would be unsatisfying games (because there's no chance that the novel will end in mid-sentence, but there's usually a chance that a game will end in mid-campaign) and vice versa.

[shadzar]

Look, these stories flat out don't work with DnD mechanics. In fact most stories do not.

Indeed. The only stories that D&D can tell are D&D stories, and most stories aren't D&D stories.

sadly THIS is what most people dont udnerstand about why D&D was based on MANY places, and why some thigns do NOT work in D&D and never will.

the cinematic 4th edition approach, for example doesnt work, because D&D isnt a screenplay tool.

Dragonlance Chronicles, had to be altered to work as a game.

the differnce between stories and a game at the VERY core of the matter, is choice. the story you have none if you play through it. you will get to a point where you change something and can no longer follow the story anymore. if that doesnt happen, then you had no choice, and were jsut re-enacting the story, rather than playing a game.

any story tried to be emulated in D&D will fail or be a railroad.

the closest you can come, is create the stories world in D&D and play around in it, not trying to follow the footsteps of the main character of the story, but being somewhere else, or just having the world as a backdrop for similar stories.

[JonSetanta]

Black Company casters definitely do not run on spell slots and in DnD terms they seem to have high level abilities only. Magic Missiles or False Life are out. Try Hide Life, Monstrous Regeneration, Magic Jar and Banishment. Even the lower level wizards of the company seem to have a neverending supply of Major Image and Mind Blank, and they are repeatedly described as minor talents. On the other hand every wizard only knows a few select spells and can be caught helpless.

There is a Black Company RPG, it's semi-d20, but uses skill checks for magic