Quote from: Ladybird;741460I fucking hate talent trees and the culture around them.

Could you elaborate?

Quote from: The Butcher;741427Except RQ, CoC and the rest of the BRP family. Everybody loves BRP. And BRP fans are the salt of the Earth.

Indeed! The positive ethos that permeates discussions amongst advocates of different flavours of BRP (RQ3, RQ6, OQ, CoC, Elric, etc.) is refreshing.  The contrast to the 'edition wars' of A/D&D is remarkable.

I'm personally not a fan of BRP myself, but it also happens to be one of those games that even if you don't enjoy, isn't exactly offensive either, so its not like there is anything for me to be actually MAD about it.

(Then again, I'm not mad about much any RPG, but you know what I mean).

Quote from: Ladybird;741460Amusingly, I'd say that video games, with their attempts to claim they're now all RPG's by putting TALENT TREES and DUALIST MORALITY everywhere (Because that's all RPG's are, right?), are the ones that are doing something wrong.

I fucking hate talent trees and the culture around them.

I like talent trees.
I wrote one for a Modern Warfare homebrew game back in 84 -85 really liked haow it played,

I use a sort of talent tree for Amber powers these days as well as more modular then the default system and lets PCs expand in funny directions.

Quote from: Akrasia;741513Indeed! The positive ethos that permeates discussions amongst advocates of different flavours of BRP (RQ3, RQ6, OQ, CoC, Elric, etc.) is refreshing.  The contrast to the 'edition wars' of A/D&D is remarkable.

Perhaps it's a case of this:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheLawOfFanJackassery

Haven't played any RQ, but if the pattern continues between my BRPs, CoC, and Elric! material it is more of variations on a consistent core -- like how TSR settings were. Ravenloft, Dark Sun, Birthright, etc. shared a same core, however much they introduced new mechanics & stuff. The same cannot really be said about the core editions over time. Outside of CoC 7e possibly being the first major outlier in its line, I'm not familiar with the BRPs family having full on rewrites of its core. Perhaps someone with more familiarity can fill in the blanks.

Dark Heresy.

First I was like "40k roleplaying?  As low ranking members of the Inquisition!?  It'll be like playing all my favourite characters from the Eisenhorn and Ravenor trilogies!  Sweet!"

Then I was like "Wow.  That's a lot of rules for guns.  And swords.  And guns.  And injuries.  And armour.  And guns.  And psykers.  And guns.  I... I just... Meh."

I mean, I get that it's an rpg based on a wargame, so it makes sense for the combat and weapons to get a lot of page-time, but I generally like my rpg's fairly light rules-wise.

I've not even looked at the other 40k games.

Quote from: Ladybird;741460Amusingly, I'd say that video games, with their attempts to claim they're now all RPG's by putting TALENT TREES and DUALIST MORALITY everywhere (Because that's all RPG's are, right?), are the ones that are doing something wrong.

I fucking hate talent trees and the culture around them.

Talent trees are okay in videogames. In RPGs, I feel they're far trickier to pull out without getting bogged down by CharOp wank.

As for dualist morality, I dunno. WoW, Diablo, GW2 all have their share of shades of gray. Hell, you can be a good guy zombie in WoW.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;741555Perhaps it's a case of this:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheLawOfFanJackassery

Adequately explains the niceness of the BRP fan community but fails to account for the bitterness of Traveller fans. I don't think the two communities are far apart in terms of numbers.

Quote from: The Butcher;741678Talent trees are okay in videogames. In RPGs, I feel they're far trickier to pull out without getting bogged down by CharOp wank.

As for dualist morality, I dunno. WoW, Diablo, GW2 all have their share of shades of gray. Hell, you can be a good guy zombie in WoW.

I believe "talent tree culture" is the sort of attitude that evolves when there are several ways in which to build your character, but only one way to win a game (kill everything). This results, at least in multiplayer game, in people who are excluded for having made "bad" choices in how they've grown their character. A person can have a character who's suboptimal but fun to play at a tabletop game, but video games have not opened up to that breadth of options yet.

Dualist morality in video games is not quite just the good/evil binary in itself. It also presents binary solutions. Take the cave of baby greenskins in Keep on the Borderlands. I'm sure this was written more as a thought exercise for the players, rather than something with one intended solution, or two diametrically opposed solutions. But if Keep on the Borderlands was a video game, you couldn't really come up with a plan and have the GM improvise the results. You'd be presented with some choices, like (A) Spare the babies (B) Exterminate the babies in the name of Pelor (C) Enslave the babies. If Bioware was making this game, Spare and Enslave would result in Good Guy Points or Bad Guy Points, respectively, and thus, people would have to pick with whatever kind of points they're trying to accumulate for later perks. No one would pick Exterminate, as neutral gets you nada.

(I might have Spare and Exterminate backwards, but the idea still stands)

Quote from: Shauncat;741696I believe "talent tree culture" is the sort of attitude that evolves when there are several ways in which to build your character, but only one way to win a game (kill everything). This results, at least in multiplayer game, in people who are excluded for having made "bad" choices in how they've grown their character. A person can have a character who's suboptimal but fun to play at a tabletop game, but video games have not opened up to that breadth of options yet.

Oh, she means a gameplay culture, not a design one. My bad.

Yeah, what can I say? I've been kicked out of my share of PUGs.

Hey this Numenera thing looks interesting.....

QuoteI dreamed of a game system that was designed from the ground up to be played the way people actually played games, and to be run the way that game masters really ran them.

Oh fuck off.

Not reading anymore. Don't care.

My initial opinions about DCC were highly skeptical.  When I first got the actual book, I started to like it.  When I tried running it, I fell in love with it.

Quote from: BarefootGaijin;741180Ouch.

As far as WoD goes, I want to like it. I want to play it. But it makes me think of over the top teenage angst. The bad fiction doesn't help. The art doesn't help. But beyond that, I just don't know what to do with it. It's nice and everything, but what do you do in the world of darkness?

You play a werewolf.

You flip out and kill people.

Quote from: The Butcher;741427Fucking Internet ruins everything. 3e/3.5e, 4e, OSR, all editions of Traveller, oWoD, nWoD, Savage Worlds... all have their toxic fans and communities.

Except RQ, CoC and the rest of the BRP family. Everybody loves BRP. And BRP fans are the salt of the Earth.

Of course, I've never frequented a BRP forum with any regularity. They may have vicious Stormbringer edition wars that put D&D forums to shame for all I know.

That is why I never visit them. I don't want to spoil the ilusion. We BRP fans are DA BESTEST

Quote from: Imperator;742508That is why I never visit them. I don't want to spoil the ilusion. We BRP fans are DA BESTEST

I think BRP is too much of a toolkit for anyone to get overly passionate about their particular flavour.  Someone can make a strongly stated case against a particular option like hit locations and everyone is like "cool, glad that the more abstract hit point and wound system works for you."

I think the biggest BRP related edition war happened in the early 90s with Avalon Hill RQ3.  And even then it was so compatible that people sticking with RQ2 could use pretty much all the material as is.

Even when Mongoose decided to go with 2nd age Glorantha rather than 3rd age, there wasn't nearly the up-in-arms that resulted from the 4E re-imagining of Forgotten Realms.  Just a "oh, that god learner stuff is cool, but I like Prax."

To get back on topic with this post, I'm going to say Trail of Cthulhu.  I did end up running it quite a bit, but what really killed it for me was the huge list of skills and the menu/checklist approach combined with the scene construction in the published modules.