High-Context (No Phonelobster)

[OgreBattle]

I figure a lot of gnashing on illusionism is tied to how much time it takes to create a character and the time spent gaining stuff for the character

If it's pretty fast like AD&D then it's funny when my minotaur doesn't get to use bulging minotaur muscles because he immediatly died. If it's lvl 6+ D&D 3e where I'm flipping through a dozen books for feats and items and so on then I want to do things specific to being a lvl 10 Merfolk Cleric of Mercantile Business.

I haven't worried about 'illusionism' in any tabletop game I've played though as I've never played a campaign for longer than a few months so just rolling up a character with specific abilities and using the specific abilities is all I wanted.

Some players like not knowing how the game works and get pissed off at games that lay out rules and mechanics cleanly like the Wizard of Oz. Like D&D4e having a chart explaining damage and DC's (the idea of the chart, not if the mechanics actually work as intended...) pissed off people in a way that obfuscating the mechanics (especially if they don't work) doesn't.

[Foxwarrior]

If you spent a lot of time designing your character, figuring out how to make them useful, then you want the DM to look at your character and use illusionism to make it exactly as useful as a character made by throwing darts at a dart board?

[hyzmarca]

If you spent a lot of time designing your character, figuring out how to make them useful, then you want the DM to look at your character and use illusionism to make it exactly as useful as a character made by throwing darts at a dart board?

If the DM has seen your character sheet, then his choices in designing the scenario will be influenced by your character, to greater or lesser degrees. That's just unavoidable. The only question is how it will be influenced, does he pick encounters that are more favorable to you, or does he design encounters to counter your specific abilities.

The third possibility, does he unpack a tournament module and run it without any deviation is substantially more boring.

[Grek]

I'd like to zoom in on just one part of this whole feature wishlist:

Gear: Because the challenges are not tailored to the players, they may find that they need specific magic items to get the job done. Player's should not have to beg the DM to get an item they need. On the other hand, it would be nice if important items had more story behind them than just buying with cash. Players will get most of their items through either the Legend system or the Crafting system. The Legend system lets you make research checks during downtime to discover the locations of lost magic items. This will be the only way to get rare or unique items (unless the MC just hands them to you), but can also be used for uncommon items. The MC will not be allowed to shut you down on this: if you succeed on your check, the MC must add the item to an existing location or create a new location to house it. The Crafting system will be available to all character classes and will let them assemble uncommon items from simple recipes. My current idea is to give each item a level, color, and material type. A Flamebrand sword might be RM5 (Red, Metal). Each ingredient would have a level and either a color or material type, and you'd make an item by simply combining ingredients with the right total level from those two categories. You could make a Flamebrand with iron (M0) and dragon-blood (R5) or with adamantine (M3) and ruby (R2). Color ingredients would come from sources such as gems, monster parts, rare plants, and of course various types of enchanted substances and raw magics. Players can make Research checks to learn where to find an ingredient, or Scouting checks to learn what ingredients a location might contain.

So there's a Legend system where players do research checks during downtime in order to discover locations containing stuff (here magic items, but other sections talk about using this to find tutors, and I presume you could also use it for mounts and castles and the like) and a Crafting system where you build things according to recipes, with fairly strong player influence over what sorts of recipes they'll end up getting the ingredients for. That honestly seems to be a very low context set of mechanics, a specific dash of low contexuality intended to make the mechanical 'you must be this tall to ride' elements possible to satisfy without recourse to GM placed drops or getting lucky on the magic item tables. If somebody wanted to write this up formally and turn it into a Book of Gears 'how do magic items even work' supplement, I could honestly see it turning out better than the default 3.5 Christmas Tree, and especially better than the default 5e Lol What Magic Items.

Brief side note: The way you add together levels in the crafting system is obviously bad. When you slay a dragon under that system, you are absolutely NOT incentivized to make your current sword into an RM5 Flamebrand, but to instead go back to town with the dead dragon and get adamantine swords for everyone and make RM8 Flambeaux instead. Or, if you can swing it, wait two levels for godmetal (M5) and forge RM10 Titancleavers instead. That's terrible from a narrative perspective. Instead, I would kindly suggest that the rank of the resulting item be equal to the level of the higher of the two components and that both the colour components and material components need be within five levels of one another to be compatible - if you have an R7 component, you need at least some C2 cloth to withstand the fiery power. But conversely, until you can get some C8 cloth, you're not going to get more than a rank 7 robe out of it, so you might as well enchant your C2 robe if you like the drape of it.

[violence in the media]

If you spent a lot of time designing your character, figuring out how to make them useful, then you want the DM to look at your character and use illusionism to make it exactly as useful as a character made by throwing darts at a dart board?

In some ways, yes. I like that there is an option in many of the aforementioned rogue-likes to have the game randomly assign you a character, and that character may be better or worse suited to the game state than one you would have hand selected. Granted, in those games there is limited backstory and the story of your character is solely what happens in the game. I guess I kind of like that; or I'm just tired of the trend where a character's backstory is somehow perceived as an important driver of that character's play-story. Inigo Montoya had a quest for vengeance, and he still had to find other things to do in the 20 years it took to find the six-fingered man.

[MGuy]

If you spent a lot of time designing your character, figuring out how to make them useful, then you want the DM to look at your character and use illusionism to make it exactly as useful as a character made by throwing darts at a dart board?

In some ways, yes. I like that there is an option in many of the aforementioned rogue-likes to have the game randomly assign you a character, and that character may be better or worse suited to the game state than one you would have hand selected. Granted, in those games there is limited backstory and the story of your character is solely what happens in the game. I guess I kind of like that; or I'm just tired of the trend where a character's backstory is somehow perceived as an important driver of that character's play-story. Inigo Montoya had a quest for vengeance, and he still had to find other things to do in the 20 years it took to find the six-fingered man.

Rogue likes are also low commitment. A run is quick and dirty. I think it's been said before, but the random stat thing is better for one shots or when character generation is quick and easy.

The value of any given design decision to me is based on how well it fulfills the intentions of the creator. I play rogue-likes/lites but I wouldn't want to put that into my heartbreaker if I'm wanting something like DnD (but hopefully better). I 'do' think that lifepath generation is pretty cool and have been spending probably more time than I should ruminating over making use of one in the future but my intent 'is' to have whatever is generated from it be important to how the character's story going forward.

It probably would be considered 'high context' in the context of this thread.