Quote from: estar;781843You guys realize that all the widely distributed classic settings had leveled NPCs.

Yes. I eventually did use the City State map (though that was around 1982 when I used it for the City of 10,000 Magicians in my Runequest Campaign), but I didn't have the stats of CSotIO or Greyhawk so they didn't have much of an impact on play. The other stuff was well after my world creation, and that of the first set of DMs I gamed with was done.

Quote from: estar;781844The original premise of Chaimail was that a hero was worth 4 veteran fighters and a super hero 8 veteran fighters. And the rules reflected that premise.

It's a picky point - and no doubt I only mention it because I am, apparently, weirdly fixated on certain details - but I believe that a Hero was equal to 4 fighter figures (and the Superhero was equal to 8 fighter figures. Since this was miniatures battles a fighter figure might stand for 5 or 10 humans, whereas a Giant or Dragon figure generally stood for but a single creature.

Quote from: Bill;781846Just for humor; isn't one of the fighters 'level titles'  "Superhero" ?

Yes indeed it is, you must have missed my reference to that. It was buried in my post you quoted.

Quote from: Bill;781835

Quote from: Bren;781718...Now in OD&D a Superhero was level 8, but by Superhero the D&D rules did not mean someone like Superman, the Hulk, or Thor....

Quote from: Bren;782126Yes. I eventually did use the City State map (though that was around 1982 when I used it for the City of 10,000 Magicians in my Runequest Campaign), but I didn't have the stats of CSotIO or Greyhawk so they didn't have much of an impact on play. The other stuff was well after my world creation, and that of the first set of DMs I gamed with was done.

It's a picky point - and no doubt I only mention it because I am, apparently, weirdly fixated on certain details - but I believe that a Hero was equal to 4 fighter figures (and the Superhero was equal to 8 fighter figures. Since this was miniatures battles a fighter figure might stand for 5 or 10 humans, whereas a Giant or Dragon figure generally stood for but a single creature.

Yes indeed it is, you must my reference to that. It was buried in my post you quoted.

I was supporting this statement
" More powerful than an ordinary commoner and equal to a powerful comic book superhero are very different levels of power.

Now in OD&D a Superhero was level 8, but by Superhero the D&D rules did not mean someone like Superman, the Hulk, or Thor. I'd be surprised if 10th level 3E characters are as powerful as those three superheroes, but as I said, I have no context for 3E. Are 10th level 3E characters really that powerful or are was that analogy also not meant seriously?"

Quote from: Bill;782212I was supporting this statement

Gotcha.

Quote from: Will;778140Most of you are falling into the trap that leads to inconsistent confused games.

There is an implicit setting. That doesn't mean it's the only setting you can ever run, but if you aren't aware of the way the rules skew, you end up thrashing about any time anything emulative happens. Unless your group just doesn't care, at which point the setting is somewhat irrelevant.

So, for example, at some point someone is going to say 'hey wait, if half the party can cure diseases, and we clearly aren't that unusual, how the hell is disease a problem in the Middle Kingdom?'

There are a bunch of ways to answer that, but it'll probably save you some grief to work that out ahead of time.

You completely missed what both sides were actually saying. The "most of them" don't fall into your trap; they adapt the game to their campaigns to get rid of the trap! The other guy works a "cosmic warp" to change the world into conformity with the latest official game company line -- or else is not running an ongoing campaign in the first place, instead starting from scratch.

Quote from: estar;781844As for the whole 10th level = Superman thing.

The original premise of Chaimail was that a hero was worth 4 veteran fighters and a super hero 8 veteran fighters. And the rules reflected that premise.

Since the rules had a 1:10 or 1:20 figure:man scale depending on model size (ground scale being constant), that's 40-80 or 80-160 men. Except that they were invulnerable to non-fantastic figures that failed to score 4 or 8 kills in a single round: no cumulative nickle-and-dime attrition as in D&D!

Quote from: Phillip;782297You completely missed what both sides were actually saying. The "most of them" don't fall into your trap; they adapt the game to their campaigns to get rid of the trap! The other guy works a "cosmic warp" to change the world into conformity with the latest official game company line -- or else is not running an ongoing campaign in the first place, instead starting from scratch.

In my experience a lot of people hammer down problems as they see them, rather than doing a deeper analysis of why the problem is there. Not all solutions are equally usable, and I've seen campaigns dissolve into piles and piles of house rules as the GM frantically tries to correct the game.

If you already are doing a deep, strategic change, then hey, I'm not talking about you.


For example, in 3e, lots of groups reduced magic items for various reasons. And, hey, you know what? That fucks up the game. (Unless you do other stuff, TOO)

Quote from: Will;782311In my experience a lot of people hammer down problems as they see them, rather than doing a deeper analysis of why the problem is there.

Not all solutions are equally usable, and I've seen campaigns dissolve into piles and piles of house rules as the GM frantically tries to correct the game.

Maybe I've been fortunate in my GMs or maybe what you describe is predominantly a 3E centric problem, but I've never seen a campaign dissolve based on GMs frantically correcting the game with house rules. And I've played with a lot of house rules. Like sooner or later every RPG ends up with some house rules.

House rules are just a subset of RPG game rules. And it's not like the original RPG designer was some Da Vinci-like genius whose thoughts mere mortals cannot follow. Yes, changing some RPG rules requires the players to go along with the changes and yes there are some players who have a problem with any rules being changed (and it may be impossible to get their buy in), but changing some rules doesn't and shouldn't need the analysis required to do brain science or rocket surgery.

It might very well be more of a 3e issue, or an issue with systems past a certain level of complexity.

I mean, I don't expect to encounter much troubles modifying, say, Risus.

It's particularly on my mind precisely because magic items and magic level in 3e bothered me a lot, so I'd read up on folks' experiments to modify it. And I attempted all sorts of modifications to get what I wanted. It wasn't until I got to E6, which effectively lops off 2/3 of the game, that I managed to easily hit what I wanted.

But also I read a lot more of various house rules about specific things, and people going 'oh fuck, look what happened next.' Maybe some of it was a greater degree of internet kibbitzing about the game with 3e than previously, I'm not sure.

I Think it could be a 3e specific problem, yeah. 3e isn't very tinkering-friendly.

Quote from: Will;782332It might very well be more of a 3e issue, or an issue with systems past a certain level of complexity.

I suppose that depends on what you mean by complexity. From the 3E and D20 rules I've read that system in particular seems opaque rather than transparent in design. What I mean by opaque is that that the nested feat trees, bonuses for this and that, etc. make it difficult to easily see what a change may do because the system doesn't even make it easy to see what the existing system will do as characters level up and choose new feats that stack with existing feats. Added to that is a change in play styles (that started under TSR but was taken even farther by WotC) to try to consciously set difficulty or challenge levels to match the party so that changes to various rules now may throw off the metrics used to set "appropriate" challenges. Thus the stakes for unintended consequences now are much greater.

In contrast, OD&D/AD&D are trivially easy to modify. Changes might have consequences, but the disparate systems used tended to compartmentalize a lot of consequences and the play style did not assume or need the sort of balance in encounters or party composition that seems such a thing in 3E and 4E. There was no need to balance the challenge so if a house rule made an encounter harder or easier than what it would have been without the house rule that didn't matter since there would be other encounters that were harder (including too hard for the party to survive much less defeat) or easier anyway.

Runequest 3 (Avalon Hill version) is probably at the limit of system complexity that I find at all useful in a game. However because the basic RQ/BRP D100 system is centered on a consistent, elegant, and simple system modifiying any game using it is easy. Every different version of the BRP system (e.g. Call of Cthulhu) can really just be considered a set of house rules or modifications. And again, none of these games have a play style that presumes a balance between an enounter and the party strength.

WEG's Star Wars D6 2nd and 3rd editions has an underlying universal system and it is pretty easy to modify. One does need to watch for consequences, especially to any change involving Force users, but that seemed pretty manageable to me. And the system needs some mods for mid-high level Force users (e.g. 5D-8D in Force skills).

Honor+Intrigue seems tactically a lot more complex than the original BoL, but again not too hard to house rule things and the classification of opponents as Pawns (mooks), Retainers (lieutenants), and Heroes and Villains (PCs and Big Bads) makes it easier to balance encounters. Both Star Wars D6 and H+I play presumes the PCs are heroic in a dramatic sense (not necessarily in a white hat sense) and that while they may be defeated today, eventually they will prevail over their enemies.

QuoteBut also I read a lot more of various house rules about specific things, and people going 'oh fuck, look what happened next.' Maybe some of it was a greater degree of internet kibbitzing about the game with 3e than previously, I'm not sure.

I think a lot of this has to do with people who kibbitz about games. First they often spend more time and energy memorizing and learning rules than does the average or casual player. Also there is a subset of those folks who play a lot of games at cons or in various gaming societies where they gain an expectation that rules will be run in almost exactly the same way from group to group. Which makes their time and energy spent memorizing the rules useful across multiple groups. But house ruling overturns that expectation. This makes the people who have that expectation and who spent all that time and energy learning the rules in the book, predictably unhappy. Thus complaints.

Whereas if one is less invested in having the rules be the same from group to group, then one is likely to be upset only if the changes make the game unfun to play rather than being upset just because the changes made the game different than the RAW.