What the hell is TNE?

zeruslord · Post by **zeruslord** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 3:31 am

There has been no work on the original TNE in about four months. We had one thread proposing a restart of the fluff, which Frank, among others, signed on to. The arguments at the end of the centaur thread seemed to be based on at least two completely opposite opinions on what TNE actually is and where it should be going. So, my question is, what should TNE be and where should it be going?

Elennsar · Post by **Elennsar** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 3:36 am

I am about equally torn between B) and D).

There does not seem to be strong enough support for the fluff for B, so D seems more reasonable.

But I'm not sure how much of that would go away even if we started all over again.

Note: I'm assuming CAN and such can be kept if we discover we do we want to keep them here. "Start over from square one." entirely seems excessive.

But the amount of rebuilding would be more than just fluff, so...eh, I don't know.

"We have basic mechanics. We need a setting rebuild and to redo the mechanics to represent that in particular."

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 3:48 am

Your question is worded alarmingly, the answers are all "what should it be" mixed with "what should we do" while the question is all "what is"

I did my best to decipher it but damn it.

Also a poll? Really? Ok then but it's not going to... well... you know.

Talisman · Post by **Talisman** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 4:08 am

I confess...I have not read enough TNE threads to vote intelligently.

One thing I know for sure...centaurs are in out controversial.

ckafrica · Post by **ckafrica** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 5:33 am

I don't think it is really centaurs that are controversial but the reasoning for their inclusion/exclusion as a playable race ever rather than just in Sumeru.

I want TNE to be a rules chassis which would direct me in how to wrap my own game world around it should I decide that Sumeru is not my thing.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 5:54 am

Assuming we're still going off of the TNE = D&D replacement basis: I want ancient dungeons and massive cavern complexes and dark, enchanted woodlands AND at least one human empire. I want to be able to create the stereotypical adventuring party, with wiggle-room to create a reverse-cliche party and at least two oddballs AND two gish-types. I want tavern wenches to woo and village mobs to flee from and city guard to surrender to when they've got thirty crossbows pointed (and three more at each standard foot exit). I want evil cults with demon summoners and corrupt priests of the light. I want to be able to waste almost all my money on debauchery, or save it for awesome bribes with the captain of the guard (behind the scenes or at the gate).

I'm fairly certain you can create a specific setting out of those elements.

Otherwise, if we can just get a few fantasy games made with specific settings using the same decent resolution mechanic, then maybe the rest of us could gain the power to rattle off new games with varied settings.

Elennsar · Post by **Elennsar** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 5:56 am

"I want to be heroic without being unstoppable, and I want cool places, cool stuff happening, and cooler people doing it."?

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 6:59 am

Yeah, because my list is that flavourless, or something. As written, it strikes out the option of being able to take out a full-on mob of anything even slightly greater than a human if you don't have a choke point, and only the really good ones can take on a mob of peasants when the pitchforks come out. And yet, the mobs still need protection from the monsters that a party of adventurers can take on.

Proper adventures occur with engagement ranges rarely exceeding 60'. Wealth is not tied to personal power, and bribery/debauchery/womanizing are separate mechanics to enjoy. The setting also assumes there's an actual evil force that can be called upon, with its own dangers for doing so; yet groups of people are willing to call upon them as cults, and can potentially summon these forces.

I can see several mechanics emerging from this as we speak.

Elennsar · Post by **Elennsar** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 7:07 am

Proper adventures occur with engagement ranges rarely exceeding 60'.

This sharply limits the effectiveness of some ranged weapons, since their primary advantage is their long range.

Just observing, there's merits to a game where the swordsman is the set up instead of the archer.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 7:23 am

So the bows end up being used like an evoker's magic missile, something with oomph that doesn't require being adjacent to the opponent, not a problem. It would also encourage mechanics that make shooting something's eye out from ranges much farther than 60' a bad idea, due to accuracy loss or ease of dodging or perhaps even loss of momentum and thus minimal damage.

Its long range use would be utility, such as setting fire to a building with a flaming arrow, and actual combat effectiveness would require large numbers of attacks; thus taking either too long to kill anything before it moves to cover or closes to melee.

See? Even more emergent mechanics.

Elennsar · Post by **Elennsar** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 7:26 am

Right. Its just that a game where bows are basically used as a tool of convenient to be put away (or just not carried) 80%(?) of the time means any character "focused on archery" is out of place.

Which (as a melee focused player) doesn't bother me, but it does twist mechanics quite far from "ranged has its place" just as important as melee...its more like reach weapons have their place.

It works, but it cannot be presented as "adapt as you see fit" quite so easily, to the extent we can do that with any rules presented.

Talisman · Post by **Talisman** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 7:32 am

virgilso wrote:Proper adventures occur with engagement ranges rarely exceeding 60'.

I can see this working in two ways...

1) Ranged weapons are all short-range, and are largely useless beyond 60' (or so). Result: The archer is a much-less-useful (and consequently, less common) archetype, since he loses his primary edge.

2) Ranged weapons work just fine, but the individuals encounters are designed assuming a 60' range. Result: The 4e paradigm where archers who ignore the arbitrary map are unusually powerful. The archer becomes a more powerful (and consequently, more common) archetype.

I'm not terribly fond of either but, if pressed, I would pick #1 since it lets the melee guys be useful (assuming, of course, that melee and magic are equally useful/powerful).

Ice9 · Post by **Ice9** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 7:54 am

As written, it strikes out the option of being able to take out a full-on mob of anything even slightly greater than a human if you don't have a choke point, and only the really good ones can take on a mob of peasants when the pitchforks come out. And yet, the mobs still need protection from the monsters that a party of adventurers can take on.

To a point, that's fine. But at least personally, one of the things I like about D&D is the change of scale as you rise in level. In a lot of games you start out realistic/badass/superhuman and you stay realistic/badass/superhuman. That's fine for those games - D&D, I want to start out fleeing from an orc and end up going toe to toe with pit fiends and laying waste to armies, Cúchulainn-style.

Which means at some point, the rules change - I'll gladly flee that mob when I'm on my way to face an ogre, but once I'm going to face wyrms and demons, those guys better move out of the way.

Elennsar · Post by **Elennsar** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 7:58 am

I'm not sure how well you can design a given set of rules to produce appropriate results for both guys who regard wrestling bears as an accomplishment and guys who fight with a blindfold to "make things fair" against greater demons.

I'm not saying it should not be done, but I'm not sure it can be.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 8:08 am

Ice9 wrote:That's fine for those games - D&D, I want to start out fleeing from an orc and end up going toe to toe with pit fiends and laying waste to armies, Cúchulainn-style.

Which means at some point, the rules change - I'll gladly flee that mob when I'm on my way to face an ogre, but once I'm going to face wyrms and demons, those guys better move out of the way.

If the rules are changing, then we have a different game. There might be familiar things from the other game, more than a few if we're lucky. But that doesn't change the fact we would need to have the two different games.

As far as the whole bow thing, option #1. That right there is an example of how setting/system are tied, if you allow longbows to be deadly and accurate at extreme ranges, then you need the 'fighters' to be just as good with a bow or have extreme movement options. It can still be a viable option with my assumptions as a gish between the evoker and the assassin (as mechanical effects go).

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 8:55 am

People say that D&D is a toolkit. It's not. It is an engine that runs Dungeons and Dragons. And it does so extremely badly, because Dungeons and Dragons world construction rarely takes into account things like TFC + 5 Minute Workday. Seriously, the game is slanted hugely towards offense, an understandable choice sinc it's about assaulting dungeons and not defending them - but dumbass writers keep putting in long running empires anyway despite the fact that this is clearly absurd.

D&D has a magic system that has Rary's Mnemonic Enhancer in it. That's so incredibly specific that it actually has a specific person's fucking name attached to it. You can't run Curse of Chalion or Game of Thrones with that unless you do a huge rewrite.

The worst thing D&D ever did was convince us that Lodoss Wars and Greyhawk were so different that D&D was a tollkit that covered all of heroic fantasy. That's not just a lie; it's a sad, pathetic and damaging lie. D&D offers variety of setting in the same way that the Model T came in a variety of colors. You can have any colo you want, as long as it is Black.

Having an assumed setting that has a lot of garbage in it is not the same as having a toolkit that makes settings. It's really, really not.

-Username17

Neeeek · Post by **Neeeek** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 9:30 am

Talisman wrote:
1) Ranged weapons are all short-range, and are largely useless beyond 60' (or so). Result: The archer is a much-less-useful (and consequently, less common) archetype, since he loses his primary edge.

Probably best anyway. Trying to shoot someone with a (and I specifically mean one) bow from anything beyond about 60 feet is going to fail most of the time if they know you are there and aren't distracted. People can dodge arrows if they know they are coming and there's only one guy shooting them just by running in one direction or the other. They have ample time between when the arrow leaves the bow and when it gets to them, and no amount of skill by the archer is going to change that. Heck, I personally can hit a human-sized target from over a hundred feet away with a bow, and there is plenty of time between when I release an arrow and when it hits at that range. An actual person takes three steps in any direction and they're safe.

Archery at long range involves large units essentially blanketing the sky with arrows. They don't aim at all, really, as much as just try to hit a general range.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 9:31 am

Nothing new there, for me at least.

Hell, I've gotten tired of waiting for some of this stuff and am beginning to work on notes for my own system for the Atayala setting (using the d20 resolution mechanic).

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 9:31 am

FrankTrollman wrote:The worst thing D&D ever did was convince us that Lodoss Wars and Greyhawk were so different that D&D was a tollkit that covered all of heroic fantasy.

And so you use that as justification to create a system that will NOT cover Lodoss Wars OR Greyhawk OR anything remotely like either and declare your toolkit so sacred and specific that it cannot accommodate any variations in races, classes, or specific locations and player choices about locations!

"The games D&D creates are very similar! Therefore I will create a system that cannot support them and call it a new edition of D&D!"

I applaud you sir on the most absurd argument ever.

Draco_Argentum · Post by **Draco_Argentum** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 9:32 am

PhoneLobster wrote:Also a poll? Really? Ok then but it's not going to... well... you know.

Quite right. If you want to shape TNE write it. Noone is going to follow a poll result that they disagree with then write 10000 words of a game they don't want to write.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 10:42 am

Draco_Argentum wrote:
PhoneLobster wrote:Also a poll? Really? Ok then but it's not going to... well... you know.
Quite right. If you want to shape TNE write it. Noone is going to follow a poll result that they disagree with then write 10000 words of a game they don't want to write.

And 10k words isn't nearly enough. I've been putting a fair amount of words/day into Warp Cult. The master document is now 34493 words, and the psychics powers list isn't done, the bestiary is barely begun, the equipment section is less than half its final length, and I don't have a final hiding mechanic.

Atayala or Sumeru or a hybrid is really all I have any interest in writing as far as fantasy goes, and I predict that the master document will be about 100 thousand words long. Sections of that are already written and lots of it can be added on by other people, but that's the kind of work load we're talking about. Frankly while you're welcome to take whole sections of things I write and incorporate them into your own work, attempting to get me to write up rules for settings that don't interest me in the slightest is kind of silly. I don't have enough time to write for the settings that do interest me.

-Username17

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 10:50 am

How much of Sumeru, system wise, is written that isn't on this forum?

DeadlyReed · Post by **DeadlyReed** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 5:51 pm

baduin · Post by **baduin** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 6:26 pm

A short list of arguments which are unhelpful when discussing a level-based game: (Note: I don't mean anyone in particular when I write 'you'. In addition, I am not putting words in anyone's mouth).

1) Discussion whether your enemies should be stronger than you (gritty) or weaker than you (epic). Why - because it depends on your relative levels and is decided by DM, not the rules.

2) A discussion whether you want to wrestle dragons, to overthrow gods, or to flee from a stablehand with a pitchfork. Why - because at low level you flee from the stablehand, and at a high level the gods fear you. The choice of level belongs to the players - as long as the game HAS any high levels at all.

3) A discussion about flavour elements which can be easily changed, such as spell names, the difference between magic and technology etc. Why? You can always change names. In fact, Wizards helpfully did it for you and removed all personal names from the spells - look at SRD.

4) A discussion about minuscule differences in power between items (a bow and a musket) which is dwarfed by some other items in the same game (wand of fireball or of scorching ray). Why? If the musket is as good as a +1 compound bow, it should cost as much. Problem solved. In fact, you can easily have a plasma cannon in the same game, with the same solution.

5) A discussion whether magic items should be bought and sold, or whether they should be manufactured, or found in dragon hoards, or whether the character should be simply awesome and have all powers by himself. Why? As long as it is clear what effects you get at which level, the practical method of getting it does not matter - for the game design. It can matter for players.

Tequila Sunrise · Post by **Tequila Sunrise** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 6:45 pm

Every time I see TNE I wonder "wha...?" Now at least I know it's a D&D revamp.

On the bow thing, I'd go with option 2. For anyone who has ever practiced archery, they know how absurd the Legolas-sim D&D rules are. In reality bows are only useful in very limited circumstances, namely that your target cannot immediately reach you. Because once your target reaches you, he's going chop that pretty little bow of yours in half, and your face with it. Oh and beyond very short range (somewhere between 20' - 60'), bows are useless as singly targeted weapons. Beyond that range, bows are only effective if you have a bunch of buddies with bows who have practiced firing at enemy units with you.

I don't like rules being that realistic, but I do like them to at least nod toward reality. I like in-game archery to be useful, but to have very different advantages/disadvantages than sword play. Namely, it should be really useful if the archer has a meat shield between himself and his enemy but if not, he should be better off dropping the bow and drawing a sword. No "I 5' step away and put another arrow in his face!"

TS