D&D 4th edition rules and what we can learn from them...

[frogspawner]

There's not much to learn from 4E specifically, but a few more things from D&D in general.

Feats/tricks/feints, call them what you will, is one.

The Hide/Sneak mechanism is another. In D&D, I believe you can't "fail" to Hide - if you roll badly you just don't hide as well as you might have. It's then up to the (potential) Spotter to roll better. In BRP/RQ, having a defined skill percentage implies outright failure if you roll over it - but that's unrealistic. (Some people object to low Hide/Sneak skills but, using them this way, that's not a problem). From D&D we can learn to regard the whole range of possible results as a continuum of success.

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by Lord Twig

The biggest reason people do not use special tactics is because of limited resources, usually time. Like you said, is it better to throw sand in their eyes and hit them later or just hit them now and be done with it. Obviously the second option is quicker and that's fine!

Well, in the end, that's the question: whether the benefit of doing these sorts of things justifies the time taken from simply doing damage. In practice this means that the unit of trick+attack has to be about as valuable as attack x 2 for it to be a generally attractive option.

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by Al.

Horse for course of course.

I didn't like the decision and effect of yet more scores to keep track of. Sounds like you feel that they added something.



Al

I think they _can_ add something, but it depends on implementation. Whether they're worth it or not is a more subjective issues.

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by PK Games

Yeah, and that system really worked (SARCASM).

Within the context of what it was trying to do (its an avowedly cinematic system after all) I think it _did_ work well enough. What it was trying to do simply didn't suit everyone (some people found the card play element intrunsive, for example).

So if you're trying to suggest it was an intrinsically bad system, I can't join you there. It had flaws and if you weren't looking for the type of experience it was trying to supply, wouldn't suit you, but I think the three versions of the game did what they were trying to do well enough.

[darkthorn]

It is depressing that DnD is turning into a pen & paper version of a Massively Multiplayer video game. Required skill trees, power-ups per level, and arranging content per tier makes me feel sick. I like my computer games but the concepts of tanking vs range damage roles and grinding xp for items and power do not belong in my concept of rpg storytelling. Maybe the latest gen of rpg'rs or the battle-mat crowd will dig it. However, I am biased towards skill-based, story driven games.

/climbs on soap box
I think goals should be: Save the princess from the derranged necromancer.

Instead of : Achieve level 6 to wield flaming turds before you confront lvl12 necro.

In a story driven game, the lvl 1 adventurer could sell his kidney to the necromancer in exchange for the princess. He would have to cut back on the mead, but would have solved the problem and likely made a business associated out of the necro for future plot twists. Slaughtering your obstacles should never be the only way.
/climbs off soap box

just my 2cent

BTW Deluxe BRP is looking fantastic. I don't have the Magic World stuff, so I'm foaming to see how it is presented.

game on,
darkthorn

[raymond_turney]

Hi,

The issue here is, how detailed should your combat system model be?

I figure characters pretty much always use all of the combat tricks they know, so it is reasonable to just factor them in to skill levels

On the other hand, I can see coming up with a limited list of combat tricks and using the results of tricks picked to modify relative skills. Something like Empires in Arms combat, where if you pick echelon and the enemy picks ... by picking the right trick you get a big edge on the combat chart

The big reason I did not go for that in designing Fire and Sword is that I wanted combat resolution to be quick. Players stopping to think about their tactical options would slow the game down a lot. Also, there is an upper limit to the amount of rules complexity you can expect players to remember; neither my players nor I always remembered all of the existing F&S rules so it struck me that adding something like this would push the rules over the complexity limit.

If I were to add anything to Fire and Sword combat, it would probably be something like a -3 or -5 modifier to skill every time a character had to roll to resist incapacitation. This would cover the effects of getting tired, blood loss that did not incapacitate a character, etc. As it stands, Fire and Sword assumes that RQ is correct in having characters mostly go down in one blow, and pushes that to an extreme. I know this simplification is expensive in simulation quality, but it seemed worth it to reduce what we had to keep track of.

Also, there is an overall upper limit to the complexity of the rules, and I did not want combat to take up almost all of the complexity available.

In general, you should only add a rule if not having it significantly reduces player enjoyment of the game.

Ray,

[Al.]

Originally Posted by raymond_turney

In general, you should only add a rule if not having it significantly reduces player enjoyment of the game.

Ray,

How could anyone disagree with that?!

On the gripping hand the extra bits in Savage Worlds (which is sort of where I'm coming from in this debate) really do add FUN.

(They need to as the vanilla Savage Worlds combat gets old very quickly)



Al

[Al.]

Originally Posted by darkthorn

It is depressing that DnD is turning into a pen & paper version of a Massively Multiplayer video game.

D&D started as a wargame. Then it added dungeons and er dragons. Then it added some guidelines on getting better between battles then it added the nebulous concept of roleplaying.


Each edition of D&D has always shown its powergame er I mean wargame roots. But with each generation of rules there have always been people who have used it to run fun, dramatic, cool games

I am certain that some people will run fun, etc games with 4th Ed.

In summary of my posts on this topic.

I don't see anything in 4th D&D which I will lift for BRP.
But I will lift bits from Savage Worlds and d100ise them.
Just coz someone chooses a bad system it doesn't make them a bad roleplayer (or bad person)


Al

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by Al.

D&D started as a wargame. Then it added dungeons and er dragons. Then it added some guidelines on getting better between battles then it added the nebulous concept of roleplaying.


Each edition of D&D has always shown its powergame er I mean wargame roots. But with each generation of rules there have always been people who have used it to run fun, dramatic, cool games

Yeah. Honestly, the people who bewail a given edition as "moving away from roleplaying", but D&D was never written primarily about roleplaying (honestly, neither is BRP; its pretty gamist in design too. It just isn't quite as blunt about it and its simulationism muffles the gamism); roleplaying just happened because, in the end, you were playing an individual figure you got to design, and people tend to roleplay those even in games where it isn't at least theoretically the point.

[frogspawner]

Originally Posted by Nightshade

... D&D was never written primarily about roleplaying (honestly, neither is BRP; its pretty gamist in design too. It just isn't quite as blunt about it and its simulationism muffles the gamism)...

So what would a game properly designed for roleplaying be like, then?