Quote from: Itachi on January 07, 2022, 10:55:51 AM

Quote from: Valatar on August 13, 2021, 03:41:42 PM
3. I still don't like PbtA  In all of the systems I do like, outright failure or outright success are still perfectly possible outcomes, potentially likely ones depending on the circumstances.  Sometimes you do great.  Sometimes you cock it all up.  That's realistic too, and realism is absolutely a priority for me for RPGs, as long as it doesn't come at a cost of making a system unwieldy.  d100 hit location charts to see which finger you hit can fuck right off.  My beef with PbtA is that I feel it's aiming for every test to be of the, "Well you kinda succeeded." result, a mishmash of mediocrity that eventually sorta limps over the finish line.

Not to change you mind about PbtA, specially because you seem to grasp it and know what you're talking about. But it's important to remember that the games actually have a spot where players are expected to shine, and that is in the playbook exclusive moves. In which case even the 7-9 results are usually advantageus, because they just mean you pick more good options among many. For eg, if your character is partiularly good at stealth he will have some exclusive Stealth move on you sheet that will look like this:

"When you want to infiltrate some place unnoticed, roll. On a hit you do it. On 7-9 pick 1, on 10+ pick 2:

- you find a valuable item along the way;
- you understand the security patterns of the place, gain +1 forward;
- you forge security evidence to de-escalate the alert state of the place;"

Yeah, but it's hard to -fail- in that situation. The most common result on 2d6 is 7, and that assumes you have no modifiers at all.

Yep, but notice even the 7-9 roll in that Move has only advantageus outcomes. The GM cannot insert complications like the normal 7-9 tests allow (like, say, "you do it but get hurt while jumping that fence.. take -1 HP"). @Valatar point is that the most frequent outcome (7-9) always result in some complication to the player, which is true... except in exclusive character moves.

Quoted100 hit location charts to see which finger you hit can fuck right off.  My beef with PbtA is that I feel it's aiming for every test to be of the, "Well you kinda succeeded." result, a mishmash of mediocrity that eventually sorta limps over the finish line.

I'd say in areas of competence due to position/effect logic, even failed tests can be interpreted as past, but with strain on yourself.
And kinda succeed can mean, you do it easily, but some minor inconvinience happened, some small chink in resources or stress.

(Also d100 hit location table seems to be quite easy one ).

QuoteYeah, but it's hard to -fail- in that situation. The most common result on 2d6 is 7, and that assumes you have no modifiers at all.

Well because assumption is you are already competent in your field of study. It's not zero to hero logic of D&D, more TV series logic when detectives, engineers, assassins already starts quite awesome in S01E01 and things escalate up from this.

QuoteYep, but notice even the 7-9 roll in that Move has only advantageus outcomes. The GM cannot insert complications like the normal 7-9 tests allow ("you do it but get hurt while jumping that fence.. take -1 HP").

Well but Ghostmaker just complained about test being too easy.

I picked up The Dark Eye for many of the same reasons you listed in your opening post.  I got really tired of the leveling.  You were stuck with PCs that could do anything with impunity in a civilized setting because no guard could effectively enforce the law or you had to come up with some reason the guard captain was a level 18 fighter that didn't want his own stronghold.  Plus certain monsters just ceased being a threat and the whole thing felt like a nuclear arms race.

I like the Quality Level that comes with the skill checks.  It allows me to bake in "success with advantage" that you get with the SWRPG from FFG without having to interpret the heiroglyphics on the dice (ok, it's not really that bad, but still).  As a matter of fact, I've included a house rule now that allows a near-failure to basically be a "success with threat" based on my experience with SWRPG.

I also like the armor soak and the restrained magic.  The constraints around magic give it a bit of an OSR feel (to me).  You're kind of stuck with static weapon damage but there are special abilities that can alter that a little bit.

For me, the drawback with TDE is that if you're in the mood for monster fighting, then you're going to need to convert some.  The system leans toward mostly interacting with human situations and the adventures definitely lean that way.  My solution has been to convert monsters from all sources and I haven't looked back.  It hasn't proven to be too hard.

As far as availability of translated books, I'm pretty sure we have all we need:  Core Book, Aventuria Compendium (good extra special abilities for what they call the mundane classes/non-magic classes), the Aventuria Almanac, the Gods book, Magic of Aventuria, and the Bestiary.  There's more than that, but that's ample amount to play with. 

I'm partial to savage worlds as my go to catch all system. Even got the collector's edition of SWADE. Unfortunately my players seem to like the consolidated d20 rolls for D&D so I haven't used it as much.

Quote from: Torque2100 on August 05, 2021, 11:05:14 AM
DW is also my counter-point for fixed weapon damage. It uses a system where the damage of a weapon is fixed but a die is rolled to bypass armor.

A small thing, but I haven't been able to enjoy DW combat since I started watching HEMA videos and realised DW has penetration vs damage exactly back to front - it gives swords high armour penetration & low damage, while giving axes (etc) low penetration and high damage. Eg DW 2h sword is d10 pen 5 damage, 2h axe is d8 pen & 6 damage. Reality is the exact opposite - IRL big clunky weapons are better penetrators, but less lethal, than swords. Swords are best vs unarmoured & lightly armoured targets.

Dunno about if axe give less damage, but it generally gives damage easier to fix if you're not dead, while sword... and rapier even more with it's puy d6 in most D&D game.
Though I'm not sure if axe would be good armour penetrator. I think good shield destroyer, but with armour - I'd pick hammers.

Quote from: Wrath of God on January 09, 2022, 09:16:47 AM
Dunno about if axe give less damage, but it generally gives damage easier to fix if you're not dead, while sword... and rapier even more with it's puy d6 in most D&D game.
Though I'm not sure if axe would be good armour penetrator. I think good shield destroyer, but with armour - I'd pick hammers.

Hammers especially pointy hammers are the best penetrators yup.

Quote from: Hzilong on January 09, 2022, 04:04:29 AM
I'm partial to savage worlds as my go to catch all system. Even got the collector's edition of SWADE. Unfortunately my players seem to like the consolidated d20 rolls for D&D so I haven't used it as much.

I do like SW. I've never ran it for fantasy, it's always been for horror or Deadlands. I'd love to run Hellfrost.

Quote from: Valatar on August 02, 2021, 12:35:12 PM
I'm definitely grouchy and overly-opinionated, it's how you can tell I'm a nerd with a hobby.  Thanks to all the replies thus far!

As far as PbtA goes, I know that technically a roll is supposed to be representing a whole series of events and isn't as granular as a single skill roll in d20, but the fact that Zorro would have a very high chance of stumbling on any given attack ruins the simulation for me.  The 5% nat-1 auto-miss in d20 already doesn't sit very well with me, so the much higher chance PbtA has of the best fighter in the world not managing to stab a goblin without repercussions completely curdles my milk.

I played an older edition of Savage Worlds back a decade-ish ago in a Deadlands game, I don't clearly recall the ruleset but tenbones certainly piques my interest!  I'll have to give it a look.

Dark Eye is also something that's been on the edge of my radar, but the scarcity of resources for it in English have kept me away thus far.  I need to get off my butt and actually dig deeper.

And yes, WoG is dead on with my love of granularity.

D20:  Miss/hit/crit or pass/fail for skills.
Alternity: Crit fail/fail/ordinary success/good success/amazing success.
Shadowrun/WoD: Botch/fail/success/more successes usually betterer.
Genesys: Sliding scales of successes vs failures, threats vs advantages and occasional triumph or despair.
WHFRP/Savage Worlds: Fail/success/increasing degrees of success for more result.

The more the system can narrow down exactly what happened when I did a thing, the happier I am.  If a player gets a super awesome roll, there should be a super awesome result.  A thing I especially like about Alternity with the control die and Genesys with the boost and setback dice is that getting the super awesome result isn't just randomly rolling high, but often a result of the player needing to arrange as many advantages as possible.  You can still just get a lucky or unlucky roll, but the player has control over the circumstances around the roll and can try to improve their odds.

Zorro in a PbtA game would probably have a +3 in his relevant equivalent martial physical action Stat so him outright failing would only happen on a natural 2d6 roll of a 2 or 3. He would always succeed on an roll of 7 through 12. That's a bit over 50% of the time. Then he'd have some Moves based on whatever Archetype he was within the Zorro game construct...

But I think the Zorro d6 rpg that just came out last year might be a better fit.

Indeed. And between 4-6 that still would be success, just with side-effect, so generally he'd achieve his swashbuckling efforts way more often than even best of D&D swashbucklers (always losing at nat 1).

Considering side effect can very well be - you strain yourself a bit, or goblin screamed and allarmed others, that's still one deadly machine.
I mean this is not simulative engine but I cannot see how that ruins simulation - you think best killers in the world do not get tired when mowing through crowds of enemies. Does not sounds very simulationisty to me.

The least-worst RPG system is the one your players enjoy that you can run regularly without that system's issues lessening your enjoyment.

Every system has issues. The question is which issues affect your enjoyment and that's not universal, it's personal.

Whole chunks of OSR D&D doesn't make shit for sense, and don't get me started on Palladium. I can argue the issues all damn day, but few (if any) of the issues of OD&D or PB games really matter to me in actual play.

Perhaps because I rarely run anything RAW.